On Seeking Common Ground: The unification of mankind won't be achieved through any existing political ideology

At TK's the talk turned to politics. -gw

"Dinner time," uploaded on December 11, 2006 by aaardvaark on flickr

A couple nights ago I got together with some friends for dinner. Table chatter turned to talk of current affairs. We talked a lot about the war in Iraq and related foreign policy issues. All three of us are highly educated, critical and informed and yet there was not even an iota of common ground between us.

One of our party is a non-interventionist progressive. His position is that predatory American foreign policy has caused the world to hate us and want to kill us. He is vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and wants to bring the troops home.

The other guy represents the realpolitik crew. His position is that the U.S. should seek a narrowly-tailored military response confined to Afghanistan and perhaps Pakistan. He believes that Iraq and 9/11 have been conflated in our political discourse in a way that clouds the real issues and promotes flawed solutions.

I have strong consequentialist leanings. Western Europe, Japan and South Korea, to name a few, have enjoyed peace and prosperity under the protection of the American military. Conversely, I believe that the obliteration of millions of souls in the Congo, Iraq, Yugoslavia, North Korea and Cambodia stands as a sorry indictment of American inaction or half-measures.

At the end of the evening I left burdened with a sense of deep futility. The three of us were engaged in worthless jaw jacking - something the world could definitely use less of. None of our positions even comes close to an adequate solution for the problems the world faces today, because they are all fundamentally devoid of spiritual substance.

Fast-forward to this morning when my wife gave a talk at the Minneapolis Baha’i Center. Laura read a quote from the writings of the Baha’i Faith: “No scheme which the calculations of the highest statesmanship may yet devise; no doctrine which the most distinguished exponents of economic theory may hope to advance; no principle which the most ardent of moralists may strive to inculcate, can provide in the last resort adequate foundations upon which the future of a distracted world can be built.” Instead, the Baha’i writings hold out the vision of a “Divine Program….embodying in its essentials God’s divinely appointed scheme for the unification of mankind in this age.”

I hope I live to see the unification of mankind. But I am certain that the unification of mankind won’t be achieved through any existing political ideology. Aren’t political ideologies how we got into this mess in the first place? When a spiritual transformation takes place across the globe, humanity will be unified and peace will prevail. The haters better step off.

tk, “The unbearable heaviness of being,” ladies[heart]tk: XOXOXOXOXO
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{Re-posted with permission}