War is an ism – nationalism, dogmatism, capitalism – paid by: the living human being has made a sacrificial offering to an ideology so powerful that it has destroyed the two things that make us most human: compassion and deep thinking.
“Those people who clearly see the need for changed thinking must themselves take the discipline to think in new ways and must persuade others to do so,” the visionary Kathleen Lonsdale wrote in what remains the clearest and most illuminating manifesto of what peace can be. Few saw this more clearly or expressed its cruel folly more convincingly than the Lebanese-American poet and philosopher Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883–April 10, 1931) in one of the reflections included in the. Vision: Meditation on the Way of the Soul (public library) — a remarkable collection of essays and poems taken from Gibran's Arabic writings on the spiritual life, never before available in English.
Speaking personally and with great compassion to each soldier fighting an inhumane war, he writes:
You are my brother, and I love you… Why then… do you come to my country and try to humble me, to please the leaders who seek glory by using your words and happiness by taking the fruits of your labor? Why do you abandon your wife and children, follow death to a distant land because of the rulers who wish to buy a high position with your blood and great honor for the sorrow of your parents? But is it honorable for a man to fight with his brother?
[…]
I have seen those who are ambitious trying to instill in you the love of self-sacrifice, so that you can make slaves of your brothers. They say that the desire to live requires an attack on the rights of others. And I say, “Protecting the rights of others is the best and best end of man.”
Emphasizing the present in the past, evolutionary and cultural, he considers the cost – always the same in ancient times – of this dangerous deception:
Arrogance, my brother, was the root of blind competition, and competition created party loyalty, and party loyalty created political power, which became the motive for conflict and enslavement. The soul asserts the rule of wisdom and justice over ignorance and tyranny, and rejects the authority that brings knives and irons out of the mines to spread folly and oppression. This is the political empire that destroyed Babylon, destroyed Jerusalem to its foundations, and demolished the buildings of Rome.
Asking why a person would sacrifice his humanity to serve “nationalists” who “instigate bloodshed and murder,” he adds:
O brother, what prompted you to surrender to the one who harms you? True power is the wisdom that protects the universal, just law of nature. Where is the justice of political power if it kills a murderer and arrests a robber, and then itself marches into neighboring countries, killing thousands and plundering the very hills?
[…]
You are my brother, and I love you, and love is justice in its highest manifestation.
A couple with CS Lewis, we write during the world war, about our work in turbulent times, and revisit Gibran on the building blocks of friendship, how to raise children, how to deal with the uncertainty of love, and his recipe for our spiritual perfection as a species.
