What Now?

“I am Charlie.” 12 Parisians die for reasons incomprehensible to those of us in the West. Speech offended the assassins, French nationals of Islamic heritage, and the culture they represented. Ties between the three murders and al Qaeda in Yemen began to surface, with a strong suggestion that the military precision of the Parisian attack was the result of organized mission and thorough training of the perpetrators.

The FBI continues to stress that the cyber-penetration of Sony Pictures was a direct intrusion fomented by a body of governmental hackers in North Korea. The Sony-financed motion picture, The Interview, offended Kim Jong-Un. Oh, it’s generating digital sales at unprecedented levels, quite the opposite result from what the North desired.

The Islamic State has summoned Muslims wherever they may be to attack the “godless” West wherever they can. Spontaneous attacks from lone operators not linked to formally-coordinated and directed central sources, are that much more difficult to identify and control. They are offended at our culture, legal system, freedom of religion and our open and free speech.

Vladimir Putin believes that the “liberal” West is soft and believes he is the standard-bearer for the new conservatism that centralizes authority, squelches dissent and justifies a new militarism that will reward aggression with little more risk than “economic sanctions.” He is deeply offended by Western efforts to contain his expansionist views. Democracy is fading in the newly developed/liberated world as a model of a waning and failed past.

The Ayatollah Khamenei doesn’t trust the United States to lift sanctions as part of the nuclear negotiations with his Iranian “elected” government and has told his people to solve their economic issues without kowtowing to American demands, regardless of the sanctions. He is offended by everything we stand for. Although Cuba and China have moved slowly to becoming more open societies, free speech is clearly not a value in their political systems either.

In the United States, conservatives are offended by liberal agendas, speech and social demands. Liberals rail at what they feel are spirit-crushing conservative values. Using the power of state legislatures and conservative courts, traditionalists have often gerrymandered and voter ID’d liberal voters out of their political voice, too many hinting that they have a constitutional right, backed by their vision of a right to bear arms, that if there is political shift towards liberalism in the future, to use their weapons to reinstate their conservative mandate. And is it really cops against blacks or something much deeper?

These issues of tolerance oscillate within the American religious community every day. Traditional Catholics are struggling with the new vectors of an increasingly tolerant Pope Francis. Evangelicals have equal issues with the writings in the New Testament that tell us not to sit in judgment of others, not to cast the first stone, and to love our brothers without requiring that our brother share our views. Jews are migrating towards conservative and pro-Israeli GOP values, away from their longstanding commitments to social equality.

People with guns and strongly-held beliefs are everywhere. Add sophisticated hacking technology to the weapons mix. People who are offended by those elements of our Western civilization that define our way of life – free speech and assembly, freedom of religion and an open society – believe that their strongly-held beliefs justify “whatever it takes.” Many find their interpretation of political documents or religious demands – “mandates from God,” they cry – as the broad-based justification for their vicious intent. They believe they have a right… actually a mandate… to kill.

We may call it “my way or the highway,” “intolerance,” “bigotry,” “racism” (or its ethnic counterparts), “the one true way,” “the one true God,” “we are God’s chosen people,” or whatever other terms we have generated to express this divisive tendency, but life on this planet is not going to get better anytime soon. Societies are circling their social wagons; stereotypes are increasingly the “go to” reaction of those who believe that they are under attack. Muslim extremists are everywhere, but so are hundreds of millions (a billion?) Muslims striving for a peaceful “leave me alone” life of ordinary means. But just ask people in the West how they really feel about Muslims in general. Likewise, travel in the Middle East and ask the question in reverse about Christians and Jews.

If you picture military training targets – from straw-filled bayonet bags to printed practice targets showing “Arab terrorists” – it’s clearly easier to attack opponents we have marginalized, dehumanized and pre-vilified. So we attack. Opponents use the same marginalization, dehumanization and pre-vilification against the attackers. It escalates. For those at the extreme end of any issue, who see their mandate from God or some equally deep cultural or political mandate as completely non-negotiable, violent confrontation seems inevitable. Random acts of death and destruction await. And there are increasing numbers of people who define themselves in such extreme terms.

Underlying all of these trends are massive shifts in access to water, oil, food, and natural resources created by global climate change, creating new levels of desperation and the fertile emotional and economic grounds so easily exploited by charismatic leaders with extreme views. Hitler grew is such rotting economic fields.

Many nations see the West, particularly the United States, as colonizing powers (the failed states in Iraq and Afghanistan are viewed as the American puppets), even going to so far as to believe that Israel is an American colony under U.S. control. Really, they actually do. Nigeria’s violent Boko Haram is founded as an anti-Western dynamic, gaining initial public traction by battling a corrupt and repressive police force. The Islamic State – an uber-violent spin-off from Sunni al Qaeda – was a reaction to the double whammy of Shiite governments in Iraq and Syria repressing Sunnis under their aegis just as one of the worst sustained droughts decimated farmers now left with nothing but dust.  These killers are the new heroes to too many people.

Humanity. We’re fighting over resources. We’re fighting when we think our way of life may have to change (as life always changes). We’re fighting when we think life is so unfair, we have nothing to lose. We justify those choices in our political, cultural or religious mandates… which only accelerates the violence. People suffer and die.

What can any one of us do in this escalating horror? We all have biases, but… It starts with looking at yourself, your family, your values and how you relate with those around you. What really are your biases? How deeply do any such biases impact how you related to others? How well do you get along with, even tolerate, those with views (even strong views) that are different from or even opposite from your views? How well do you tolerate dialog from those who oppose your perspectives? If we begin with that introspection, then take steps to embrace those with differing views, we just might be able to begin a slow rebuilding of tolerant social structures. It starts with respect. And if we don’t…

I’m Peter Dekom, and tolerance of deeply divergent views is one of the most difficult but necessary prerequisites for any semblance of global peace.