A Game Worth Playing

To Hell in a Handbasket

“The world is going to hell. Why bother?” If you live in Iraq or Zimbabwe this may be true, I grant you. Last week, listening to Earth Day speakers on the radio I wept as I heard about the loss of rainforests, wetlands and fisheries, all accelerating so fast we cannot stop it. There is much to despair about. There is so much violence, hate and greed on the planet. I’ve been up close to some of it. But look closer and you may see some surprising things.

 A Kinder World?

Stephen Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, suggests that the world is getting safer and less violent. Yup! After all the horrific wars of the 20th century and the dropping of the atomic bomb no less, humans are getting kinder and gentler. Who would have thunk it? There are now between 50-60 armed conflicts active in the world. But in fact, wars are less frequent today and less deadly than they were in earlier times. Cruel punishments, rape, torture and slavery were routine throughout much of history. The concept of peace is even a new idea in the world. Apparently something in civilization itself has had a moderating effect on human violence.

Different Realities

Things have changed though. Most  of those killed in today’s wars are civilians. And most conflicts take place in the poorest countries. The biggest death tolls come not from fighting, but from war-related disease and malnutrition. International terrorism is the only form of political violence that is getting worse. The difficulty in creating equal opportunities for all and just uses of resources, while the world’s resources are dwindling as we watch, is what drives some of us to utter hopelessness.

The Enemy is Us

The deepest challenge we face now, is not the physical world itself, but how we are responding to it. We may be very sophisticated technologically but technology cannot save us from our volatile emotions and our reactivity. Our tendencies to hold grudges and to fly off the handle, normal as they appear, could be the thing that ultimately does us in as a species. If there is someone you cannot get along with now, in peaceful times, just imagine the conflict that will happen when the seas rise and humans are forced into mass migrations northward to save themselves.

A New Game

Despite all this, my heart insists we should not give up. Life is so extraordinary that I would risk everything to save it. I am totally up for that game. If violence is an inherited conversation, as I am suggesting, then transforming old conversations that no longer serve us offers an exciting opportunity to play a new and thrilling game: creating a new world for future generations to play in.