Some of Us Are Too Afraid for Peace and Compassion

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

" Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

" There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“The Birth of a New Nation,” Sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 7 April 1957, Montgomery, Alabama.

To embrace the idea of peace and compassion, you have to open your arms and your heart to others. You have to welcome difference, cherish diversity, and be comfortable with uncertainty. To many people who have adopted the basic tenants of Western civilization and have become irrevocably attached to modern technology, those who are different from the mainstream media’s idea of normal, those who are not white, or not human, and that which is not certain are conditions to be feared and avoided at all cost.

Nuclear waste piling up in South Korea
(AP Photo)

To be afraid of that which is different is a paralyzing and numbing experience that shuts out all reason. Gabrielle Roth, movement teacher and one who has mapped out human emotions and our responses to them in a deep and profound way, said, “Fear writes its signature all over the body, but we are all so used to it we've become desensitized to the loud and clear message of our body language. And this pervasive fear simply compounds itself; it paralyzes our life energy, seizes up our feelings. We're so afraid of what we are going to lose, so painfully attached to what we have, that we numb ourselves into a living death to shield us from the pain of real living. By clinging to life as we have it, we deny ourselves a vibrant present and future."

So many of the choices being made in the world today seem to be driven by a fear of losing what we have. But is what we have really worth so much suffering? Is what we have worth the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Sadly, I am not just referring to the consequences of war. The daily activities of individuals, industries, and politicians cause worldwide deaths that rival the atrocities of war.

In 2003 in Tacoma, Washington, health officials revealed that arsenic contaminated the soil in Pierce County at levels 50 times higher than allowed by the state. A copper smelter that closed down in 1986 after polluting for nearly a century was the cause. Because they were afraid of facing the truth, officials decided that the pollution is not a public health emergency. Instead, they are recommending that people limit their contact with the soil, wash their hands, wear gloves, clean dirt from their shoes, vacuum, and mop often!
Of course, regulating and limiting the copper plant during its lifetime was out of the question. Copper is an integral part of just about every piece of technology on the planet and there may be no greater fear that most of us have than to be without our technology. But there are consequences to our ultra-dependence on technology and that technology often bites back.

The real problem may not ultimately be what we do to each other, says Edward Tenner in his book, “Why Things Bite Back, Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences,” but the tendency of the world around us to get even and “to twist our cleverness against us.”

Tenner says, “wherever we turn we face the ironic unintended consequences of mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical ingenuity – revenge effects, they might be called.” But technology alone usually doesn’t produce a revenge effect. “Only when we anchor it in laws, regulations, customs, and habits,” says Tenner, “does an irony reach its full potential.

Another way that so many show their fear is through sport hunting. Some people are so afraid of the natural world and its wonderful uncertainty and unpredictability that they must exert the ultimate form of control – to kill something.

Animals hunted for trophies suffer much more than any animal killed for food. Since the hunters wants intact heads for display, they will not kill the animal quickly by shooting it in the head. Instead, they use arrows or bullets aimed at the body of the animal, usually resulting in a wounded animal staggering, limping, and panicked while the killer continues to shoot. Death is often slow and painful. But the hunter has his or her trophy head to show friends and to brag about bravery and courage in the fight. Acts like this are repeated every day around the world.

Until we stop treating animals as slaves and exhibits - animals that have proven time and time again that they are thinking, feeling, reasoning beings - we will have no chance of healing the isolation we feel from the world and from each other.

Of course, what chance do animals have when, according to the World Health Organization, more than 200,000 people are killed by pesticide poisons worldwide every year. That means 547 men, women, and children die every day from pesticide poisoning.

We are all afraid of losing something. Schools are afraid of losing money, so they collect millions of dollars from soft drink and junk food companies to display advertisements on school grounds that encourage our children to fill their bodies with mind numbing sweets that create learning and physical disabilities for thousands every year.

Fear of Iraq has had many consequences. The U.S. war may be responsible for over 100,000 documented civilian deaths. By comparison, the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima killed 300,000 people. In Iraq today, the most serious weapon of mass destruction is a bottle of water - water tainted with disease because of the sanctions. Without medicine, diarrhea means death to many children and elderly.

The U.S. is the world leader in the manufacture, sale, and use of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, in the 1970s, a company in Maryland sold Iraq the "seed stock" for its chemical warfare program.

Author Franz Kafka told us, "You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do ... but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid."

We have got to find our way through the fear to peace. We must stop the endless war we wage against not only our fellow humans, but against the natural world.

Nearly all of sculptor, painter, and writer Michelangelo’s art expressed the idea, says Wayne Dyer, “that love helps human beings in their struggles to ascend to the divine. This was true in some three hundred sonnets that he wrote and it showed itself in his depiction of spiritual themes in his painting, sculpting, and architectural design.”

One of Michelangelo's poems may sum up our challenge in these troubled times:

“The greater danger
for most of us
is not that our aim is
too high
and we miss it,
but that it is
too low
and we reach it.”
-- Michelangelo

Cast off your fear, aim high, and crave peace.

RESOURCES

1. See “Recipes for Creating Peace.”

2. Visit the Creators of Peace website.

3. The International Peace Museum was started by the students in the second grade at Indian Hill Primary School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Each student drew a picture and wrote a few words about what peace meant to them.

4. Reprinted in 73 countries and 7 languages, “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear,” a powerful essay by Wendell Berry, has been made available in print by Orion” magazine.

5. Visit the Non-Violence Network.

Who's the real radical?

"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice."
-- Confucius

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."
-- John Morley

"I support the bigot's right to speak out,
as if I start limiting them, they may start limiting me.
I also support my right to ignore them."
-- Laura Packer

"The question is not whether we will be extremists,
but what kind of extremists we will be.
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King

The mainstream media often calls the efforts of those who oppose the threats of seemingly endless consumerism and industrial expansion as "radical" and "extremist." They attempt to portray those who want to stop some defenseless animal from being killed or who want to end the destruction of the Earth's forests and oceans as weak minded, ignorant obstructionists who are anti-technology.

This rhetoric only serves to cloud and confuse the issues, making it appear to those who are against such destruction that they are in the minority and, in these days and times, even unpatriotic.

Plane sprays to control western corn rootworms feeding on and laying eggs in these soybeans. (Photo courtesy USDA)

Call me weak and ignorant if you must, but to my way of thinking, the systematic destruction of the Earth's oceans, forests, and atmosphere, the killing of animals to obtain furs for the rich, the attempts to sneak genetically engineered foods into the marketplace without labels identifying them, the claims that it is OK to douse our food supply with billions of tons of deadly pesticides, and the sanctioning of the deaths of children who starve in the midst of vast abundance because profit for few is the top priority are the radical and extreme behaviors.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language defines the word radical to mean, "departing markedly from the usual or customary" and "favoring or effecting fundamental or revolutionary changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions."

It is tragic that toxic pollution, the suffering of children, the poisoning of hundreds of thousands of people world wide by pesticides, and wonton cruelty are defined by so many as being "the usual and customary."

Believing in the health of the Earth’s life support systems and the importance of every life, human or animal, cannot be considered the views of a special interest group. Those beliefs must be the ONLY interest.

One of the most repulsive examples of the acceptance of suffering as mainstream may be in the area of workplace safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that more than 32 million workers are exposed to harmful substances from more than 3.5 million workplaces. But over the last 30 years, OSHA has issued only 170 citations to employers for not having proper procedures to protect against toxic substances leaving the workplace.

Unfortunately, businesses with fewer than 10 employees are exempt from OSHA inspections, even though it is believed that these small companies may be the source of many of the problems.

Auto shop with paint spray booth (Photo credit unknown)

Solvents such as benzene, carbon disulfide, methylene chloride, and ketone are a few of the names of the 49 million tons of solvents that are produced annually in the U.S. and 9.8 million workers are exposed to them daily. They are in nail polish, paint, plastics, rubber cement, furniture and thousands of other products. They are absorbed through the skin or ingested. This is not a new problem. People have been suffering from working in toxic industries for a long time.

Hundreds of years ago, madness spread among the mirror makers of Venice, Italy and the hat makers of London. Eventually, the disease was linked to inhaling mercury vapors. The phrase "mad as a hatter" comes from these troubled times, since mercury was used in the manufacture of felt for hats, and many of the workers eventually went mad from mercury poisoning.

Yet industries continue to deny their impact, both on the Earth and on their workers. It is much cheaper for them to pay out the few wrongful death lawsuits that are brought against them than to clean up their acts and treat their workers with dignity and respect.

Ever wonder about that phony butter used on popcorn in theaters and in those microwaveable packets? Its strange smell and aftertaste have made many of us wonder what it is. It has been recently revealed that this chemical is quite dangerous and has already killed.

In 2002, the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" newspaper reported that over the last few decades, more than 30 workers have contracted the fatal lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, at the Glister-Mary Lee Popcorn plant in St. Louis, Missouri. This disease destroys the lungs and all these people will suffocate without complete lung transplants. Investigators found workers at the plant had 3.3 times the rate of lung obstruction in the general population.

Federal officials believe the workers contracted the disease by breathing the fumes of the chemical that makes that fake butter flavor in popcorn and other foods! The flavoring contains the chemical diacetyl.

The company claims that it has begun taking precautions by having employees in some areas of the plant wear respirators. One has to wonder why they weren’t doing this all along.

On the chemical’s "Material Safety Data Sheet," required by law and readily available on the Internet, inhalation hazards are clearly listed as being very serious. The data sheet says, "If inhaled, remove person to fresh air. If not breathing give artificial respiration. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen ... Do not breathe vapors. Mechanical exhaust required. In confined or poorly ventilated areas, the use of an appropriate respiratory protection may be required."

Unfortunately, it is usual and customary to cut corners wherever possible in protecting one’s workers. It is considered radical to suggest that everyone deserves protection from the start.

Protest rally of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), August 24, 2001 while the Taliban were still in power. (Photo courtesy RAWA)

Tens of thousands of people every day protest the ideals portrayed as normal by the mainstream media and by our political and business leaders. Across the nation and across the globe, thousands more are living in intentional communities, farming sustainably, boycotting products of companies that generate toxic waste or sell poisons to children, and many thousands more make their views known to their elected representatives.

All together, these numbers add up to unreported millions. It is no surprise that you will rarely hear about these people in the corporate controlled media. You won't see these activist leaders chronicled on network or even public television talk shows. But you will see them in the supermarket, on the playground with their children and at many jobs across the land.

Don’t believe the rhetoric, don’t accept that it is unpatriotic to want peace, and don’t succumb to the constant insults and demeaning comments that suggest those who care for the future and for the Earth rather than for shareholder profit are somehow weak and misguided.

The earth, the air, and the water are the values that matter, not the stock market index. If that idea is considered radical, then so be it.

RESOURCES

1. "Radical." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

2. See a comprehensive reporting of toxic substances in the workplace by "USA Today."

3. For a list of problem industries with cancer risks, visit Toxic Torts.

4. Take action with the help of CoOp America.

5. See all the risks of diacetyl at the US Department of Labor.