I listened to President Biden speak at the UN yesterday. His call for global cooperation was appropriate, but achieving this goal requires we ask New Questions that lead to New Solutions that permit this goal to become reality… not just wishful thinking!
I asked just such a new question at the UN in 2019, when – at a UNA-USA event – I asked “Is war obsolete due to scientific advancement?” I invite you to watch the video of my question and post your comments below.
Cooperation will never be possible in a world in which waging war is still seen as an accepted conflict resolution method. If you think war MUST always be an option, you don’t know that the root cause of war has been made obsolete by advances in science. Yes, we have thousands of years of history that tell us “war is always going to be with us”. And we have a Military Industrial Complex that NEEDS war to be a thing to survive.
But human history is filled with examples of ways of living – ways humans behave – going away when new discoveries made those ways obsolete. Just watch The Day The Universe Changed (James Burke’s brilliant documentary series) to see what I mean.
If you support President Biden’s call for global cooperation (so we finally end the threat of the worst effects of the climate crisis and truly end the COVID-19 threat as well), I urge you to consider that achieving this goal – “making it so” as Captain Picard might say – will require challenging the basic standards of behavior worldwide that have prevented us from doing this to date.
These behavioral standards – born of beliefs that were true once but are no longer true today – are literally killing us!
Fortunately, human behavior is something we have control over! It’s why God gave us “free will”. If we want to go in a different direction – one that will get us to true world peace – we have the ability to do so! Just watch James Burke’s series. You’ll see humanity has done this countless times before!
Here’s to achieving the cooperation we say we want… by learning the new ways of thought … the new habits of mind… that will get us there!
