liSunset in the Desert, Israel -:- Photo by Iris Dotan Katz
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REFLECTIONS ON OUR TIMES
David Brazier:
Human Folly & the Need for IntelligenceWe had the economic crisis triggered by human malpractice in regard to housing loans. We have had fires, floods, storms, droughts, mudslides, and rising sea levels brought on by human destruction of the natural world. Many forms of life have become extinct. We have had the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters resulting from devices that we built that could not be kept under control in the natural circumstances they encountered. Then we had the pandemic, the source of which is still being debated, but which certainly had something to do with human exploitation of animals. Now we have a vicious war brought on by human ambition and refusal to compromise. What next? We can already see that these factors alone will give rise to more ecological damage, to food and resource shortages and to higher costs for transport and heating which, in turn will exacerbate problems of poverty and the division of the human population, both in terms of nationalisms and in the increasing rich-poor divide. Yet, we seem to be deficient in seeing how so much of this is our own doing and we continue to persist in delusion. I fear there is worse to come.
Now much of this misery could be abated or have been avoided if humans had learnt, on the one hand, to listen to each other with compassion and understanding and, on the other, to intelligently observe the effects of their actions. This is Buddhist doctrine, but Buddhism is only pointing out what is obvious. Then, a second point of Buddhist teaching is that we are "foolish beings of wayward passion" - we are driven by greed, hate and delusion and much of the time these motives remain uinconscious to or hidden from ourselves and from others because we want to think of ourselves as virtuous. We divide the world into those we call good and those we call bad and want to put ourselves in the first group. This, however, only further fuels the delusion.
An unfortunate facet of contemporary life is the way that the media fuel these divisions. I recently read an account by a Russian student studying in UK. He tells how he is not discriminated against by the authorities nor, mostly, by ordinary people, but goes on to say, "On the other hand, the biggest pressure undoubtedly comes from the British media, even though it’s not directed at me personally. However, reading the Telegraph, Guardian or BBC, and their almost constant Russian hysteria tires me quite a lot." So why are the media so hysterical? Presumably they are controlled by people who are now frightened.
The media is fuelling self-righteousness, division and hatred. We are now welcoming millions of Ukrainian refugees, and it is good to help people in distress, but how long is it since we were repelling thousands of Syrian ones on the Belarus border and letting them die in the snow? Are Ukrainians good and Syrians bad by definition? Some of the countries welcoming Ukrainians are still sending Syrians back. Is this sane?
These tendencies are not just evils to be eliminated by moral instruction - they are the working out of the human predicament, the koan of our species. Impermanent are all compounded things. Ever so often that koan ripens into a major challenge. This is one of those times. The world as we have recently known it is now in a very fragile condition. The certainties we have operated from, including our own sense of righteousness, are being shown to have set up a disaster. So far we are still trying to play the same game. We welcome Ukrainian refugees while still turning back Syrian ones. We see the sins of the Russians while covering up our own part in creating the crisis. We think we are better because we have democracy and that, apparently, gives us the right to exploit half the countries on the planet by controlling the world money system and intervening militarily wherever things are not going our way, but we feel outraged if any other country behaves as we do.
Buddhism advocates an approach to life that sustains faith, compassion, and equanimity in whatever circumstances come along. It advocates intelligent examination of the conditions and the factors at work in producing a situation including the ones that we ourselves are responsible for. It is not in favour' of scapegoating individuals since this is generally just a way of avoiding one's own responsibility or complicity. The world is not made up of easily distinguishable good guys and baddies, it is made of people who mostly do their best within the perspective allowed to them by their circumstances, but who readily fall into fear, jealousy, envy and other unfortunate states as soon as things start going against them - we ourselves no less than others. We cover this up by clinging to ideals. Thus politics is full of ironies, contradictions and hypocrisy.
The Present Political Situation in EuropeThis is all quite normal. Let us look at the present geopolitical situation, since this is, with good reason, on everybody's mind at the moment. When the Iron Curtain came down, there seemed to be a real opportunity for peace and prosperity in the world. Countries almost everywhere, feeling safer, reduced their expenditure on weapons and spent the money on schools, hospitals, roads, houses and so on. Euphoria.
However, what was happening must actually have been threatening to those who believe in US supremacy. USA was the only major country that increased arms spending at that time. Why so? Russia was opening up and asking to be part of Europe. De Gaulle's vision of a "Europe des états de l'Atlantic à les Urals" started to look possible. Geographically such a vision makes a lot of sense. Russian raw materials cooperating with West European technology would be a world beater - and that is exactly what some in the USA were afraid of. American hegemony depends upon a divided Middle East and a divided Europe. How else are 5% of the world population going to remain the one and only super-power?
Of course, this could not be said openly. USA stands as the defender of democracy - the rule of the majority - yet it is a country run by an elite and, in a world context, it is a small minority of the total world population. If the world were run on a majority rule basis, China and India together would be permanently in power. So USA, via NATO, kept Europe divided and West Europe went along with it as long as USA footed the bill. Materially this was a good deal for West Europe (as also for Japan and S Korea, for similar reasons). USA would pay for our defence and we could relax and spend our money on good things. You can say that USA was grandiosely ambitious and West Europe was greedy, but this is all so human, isn't it?
It has produced a situation where, now, life expectancy in France, Germany, UK, Japan, S Korea, and so on is four or five years longer than in USA, child mortality is lower, diet is better, health standards are higher, less people are in gaol, many fewer are killed by fellow citizens, racial problems are less, and so on. The effort to remain top dog is very costly and cannot be sustained indefinitely as many other countries in history have found. Are we now at the point where this arrangement breaks down?
Keeping Europe divided meant keeping Russia in the role of enemy and promoting the myth of it being outside of European civilisation. Russia's opening had allowed states it previously dominated to have independence and Russia trusted that they would remain neutral and not become a threat to Russia. However, NATO took advantage and pressed eastward, taking in most of the former Soviet dependencies, promising them a similar deal to West Europe. You can probably see that this was unrealistic in that the USA cannot afford to subsidise half the world without impoverishing itself. Longevity in USA has actually fallen in some recent years. Will NATO expansion now prove to be a house of cards on the point of collapse? Maybe. President Biden is visiting East Europe giving assurances, but does he actually have the ability to back them up?
Ukraine was the final straw for Russia. The prospect of NATO nuclear weapons in Ukraine was just too much. So the bear has risen and is lashing out. Yet, such lashing may well not stop at Ukraine. If you are seeing all this from the Kremlin, you see that the West has reneged on the tacit understanding that East Europe would stay neutral and has refused to let Russia join the prosperity deal that it offers to other countries. It has little to lose and much to gain.
In a couple of weeks, Russia has conquered the parts of Ukraine that it is most interested in, securing Crimea, joining up the Crimea and Donbas, and taking over the east of the country. Its major remaining objective is, presumably, to capture Odessa and cut the rump of Ukraine off from the sea. That objective may be soon within its grasp. But what then?
The temptation to now invade the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania must be hard to resist. "But they are part of NATO," you will say and I say, "Exactly!" Is it reasonable to assume that NATO will risk a nuclear war for the sake of any of these three? Not really. Is it reasonable to think that the NATO forces already in those countries would be sufficient to defeat Russia in a conventional war? Again, the answer is no. Unless the USA now puts many thousands of its own soldiers into those three little countries, Russia can overrun them when it wishes and will the USA be willing to put its soldiers in the sights of Russian guns? The political gain for Russia in demonstrating that joining NATO does not really provide security would be enormous. The whole Western ("Clinton Doctrine") strategy of NATO expansion would then be in tatters. Other countries would see NATO as a paper tiger. So, unfortunately, and notwithstanding all the rhetoric in the Western press, the demonising of Russia is backfiring and we are all getting burnt. This puts all our comfortable assumptions to flight. I hope I am wrong about the likelihood of the war expanding, but I do wish that we could give up our illusions of superiority and grandeur that have created this situation and are still inflaming it.
How Should it Be?All this could easily have been avoided if there had been goodwill and intelligence. That is the enlightened approach. Create conditions in which all parties can feel secure. Trust will grow. Playing goodies and baddies is childish. Real world issues are complex, but mutual understanding is possible and compromise and generosity is generally the only way to bring real peace. The world cannot be dominated by one country and when one country tries to take that path - be it Britain, China, USA, or even the ancient Romans, the result, after brief periods of glory, is a disaster all round.
Yet, war is not the only disaster. Economic crisis, ecological destruction, technological meltdowns, pandemic and war - what next? If humankind is to survive and prosper, we need to find better ways to confront what befalls and ways to avoid setting up such tragedies. We need wise compassion, faith and equanimity. We need to live wholesome lives, abandon prejudice against this or that group and have some humility about our own role in what unfolds. For sure we should resist oppression when we can, but it is also important to demonstrate an alternative, not just threaten and interfere, assuming that because we are the good guys nothing that our side does is ever wrong.
Things are going to get worse on a number of fronts and we must look after one another. Things we have relied upon and taken for granted - luxurious food supplies, energy to keep our houses super comfortable, transport and travel, security from violence and intimidation - all these aspects of civilised living are under serious pressure from political, ecological and geo-economic factors that are all likely to get worse in the near future. War refugees, climate refugees, - the numbers are increasing. I hope that the worst can be avoided, but such prayers may go unanswered if we do not learn the error of our ways. And if we don't and things keep getting worse, then faith, mutual support and a better philosophy of life will be of paramount importance. This is what the Dharma offers. Keep faith and practise.
