Why Does No One Question War?

In My New Series: Wake Up!

Why do so few seem to register, not to mention shout, that our cultural values are totally upside down?

Why are students in our local school district without paper and pencils while billions disappears into foreign countries every week?

On Bill Maher’s show the other night Rachel Maddow said that our military structure is the largest organization in the world. Talk about too big to fail.

This present course is insane. It’s insane to kill our future by not choosing to fund world-class, innovative education, while we choose to bomb the natives of other countries. It’s insane to pay Wall Street workers millions while our teachers, those who are actively building our future, get paid squat and are being laid off by the thousands.

We live in an insane hierarchy. Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker starts with the quote from Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges: “War is a drug.” That just about sums it up.

Perhaps in a far-distant past killing was a necessary part of culling the population so that resources didn’t get used up and the best warriors continued to reproduce to protect the tribe in uncertain times. And times were always uncertain up until about 10,000 years ago and the advent of agriculture. Those kinds of times are much more certain now, but other uncertainties have taken their place. Will we have a planet on which to live? Will there be any humans on it? Will humans kill the majority of other species before they die out?
And I’ve got news for you: science isn’t going to get us out of this mess, nor will some genius inventor (need proof: observe the Gulf oil spill).

I’ve considered this a lot and have come to a few painful conclusions:

• Why do we war? Because humans like to kill humans (and other creatures), and humans would rather die than let go of being right (e.g., my country right or wrong).

• War is not logical, and logical solutions don’t even touch it. Logic is the fly on war’s sleeve.

• We don’t have peace because we don’t want it. Peace gets lip service and war gets all the resources.

So, now what? Our future, if there is to be a future and not just a repetition of the patterns of millennia or the disappearance of this species, depends on activating and distributing a better drug than adrenaline. The most important transformation aspect of Bigelow’s film was FEELING the breathless, driving adrenaline addiction of the main character and seeing that adrenaline trumps every other kind of stimulant. Adrenaline has just as destructive an impact on relationships, as the film also showed.

So here’s another idea. I find it infinitely better than adrenaline. All our work is designed to generate a natural experience of intimacy and co-creation that is so juicy that humans start preferring that exquisite flow of well being. What’s better than adrenaline?

• the flow of connection when a deep truth is spoken;

• spontaneous laughter bursting from several people playing together;

• letting love into your cells and breathing fully.

What’s better than adrenaline in your life? Are you willing to grow that? Now?