On Peace and Considerateness
Peace heals. The medicine so needed as a salve to soothe and assuage the horrors of war can be grown right where you are, in your very being. In an other article here on Medium, I have shared how the notion of Syntony — as a creative aligning and tuning with the evolutionary processes of which we are a part — is a powerful source of synergy and fecund force of resonance at the root of life; how it can lead to harmony. But what about peace?
As with most things, that depends on how you use the term — what you mean by it. Harmony and peace do not mean the same thing. A great place to turn to understand what is meant by harmony is Daoism (also called Taoism). Daoism is the sanctuary of harmony. Yin and Yang, those fabled pairs of mutually defined opposites, are the symbol of harmony in Daoist (Taoist) thought and practice. Six centuries before the Christian era, Laozi (Lao Tzu or sometimes Lao Tsu) wrote of this principal principle of Daoism, underscoring the essential interdependence of things:
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because
there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other; …
Front and back follow one another.[1]
Allan Watts, the famed scholar of ancient Far-Eastern texts and cultures, makes the following comment on this passage: “to see this is to see that good without evil is like up without down, and that to make an ideal of pursuing the good is like trying to get rid of the left by turning constantly to the right. One is therefore compelled to go round in circles.”[2] Harmony, in this conception, is a process of flowing balance. It is the naturalness of ebb and flow, wax and wane, give and take. Therefore, it cannot be thought of as an absolute: as something that can be achieved in a perfect state of excellence, such as through striving for purity. Watts says that to try to purify one’s nature is “to be contaminated with purity” (how many people do you know who are ‘contaminated with purity’?!). Like Daoism, evolutionary conceptions of syntony incorporate a philosophy of naturalness. So harmony becomes a dynamic, living process. As syntony, it is something that must be fed, nurtured, and kept in balance — not the static kind of balance involved in standing on one leg, but rather the flowing balance of walking over a changing terrain, which can be delightfully described as a process of continually falling forward and catching yourself.
Peace can be thought of in very similar terms, but usually isn’t. Most often, peace is thought of as a state of being; the realization of a particular state of consciousness. We consider people like Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama to be full of it — we call them “peaceful” people. Peace, in this sense, is a state free from struggle and strife, free from dissonance and disharmony, and full of tranquillity and calm. In societal terms, it is the absence of war, which at the individual human level is the absence of conflict. If there is any dynamic quality to it, it resides in the way such conceptions of peace view issues of accord with others and the environment in general: the more peaceful, the more one is in compliance with the flows of which one is a part; offering no resistance and creating no disturbance. In short, peace as a state is conceived as tranquillity and accord with one’s milieu. It is a static conception of harmony — like being balanced on one leg. And surely, this is a state that is difficult to attain and even more difficult to maintain. But it is not the sort of peace involved in syntony and evolutionary stewardship. That is to say, it is not a sufficient conception of peace, for syntony involves walking and running and jumping and dancing, not just balancing on one leg!
How can any formulation of something as “the absence of” another lead to growth, development, and evolution? I mean, peace should not be conceived of as merely an emptying of the sentiments and dispositions that lead to conflict and war (simply — or not so simply — ridding ourselves of impulses and desires, especially those of rage, reprisal, or revenge). It must be the creation of something as equally strong and palpable as conflict and war, but opposite to it; something we can sense just as we can sense conflict and war; something we can purposefully produce — just as we do conflict and war.
If we were to take a continuum of conflict, from negative situations (where conflict increases) to positive situations (where the possibility of conflict decreases and the inverse-opposite of conflict increases), we could represent it something like this:
Where would you place peace on this continuum? Clearly, the zero point indicates the preconditions for peace, but it also indicates the preconditions for conflict and war. Let’s look at this a bit less abstractly. If you remove the threat of war from a country that has been devastated by bombs and attacks, will that country be peaceful? What do you think will be the disposition of the people whose habits, expectations, and fears have been conditioned by terrible experiences? And now consider conflict at the individual level: in a family where domestic violence is endemic. Let’s say the perpetrator of the violence is removed or otherwise effectively restrained. Are the victims now at peace?
In each case, by moving from conditions of conflict and war to conditions free from conflict and war all we do is create the preconditions for peace. It is now possible to create peace, and increasing levels of peace, by actively and intentionally creating the conditions for it to emerge, manifest, and thrive. However, it is just as possible to slip back down into conditions of war and conflict — either intentionally or simply through inaction and neglect. This sense of peace does not take it to be something static. Rather, it is seen as something that must be brought to life, nurtured, and kept alive through active attention and caring. In this sense, it is something we consciously construct, bringing it into this world through caring thought and purposeful action much the same way that we bring conflict and war into this world through uncaring thought and purposeful action. Of course, the purposeful intentions for each are diametrically and mutually opposed. Nevertheless, both are products of our will, not the absence of it. In this sense, to wish for peace or to hope that someone finds peace is as meaningful as wishing for food or hoping that they find some. It might happen, they might find it, but it’s not a very helpful or empowering sort of sentiment, is it?
One of the great leaders of Mexico, President Benito Juárez, once said, “El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz” — respect for the rights of others is peace. This formulation of peace captures its intentional quality, for one can only create this type of peace through the conscious practice of respect in interaction with others. And beyond respect, peace draws dynamism from understanding. Let me explain. Respect involves a form of distancing of the other. I respect you, and to honor who you are I do not interfere with you — I respect both who you are and how you are so I don’t try to change you or to influence you in one way or an other. If I did, I wouldn’t be respecting you (although I could still cherish you dearly). However, if I tried to understand you, to understand who you are and where you are coming from, then I would have to engage with you. I would need to question the things I didn’t understand (even though I might respect them) and to try to learn why you are the way you are. This would bring me closer to you since I could not understand you without some sort of interaction (even if it is only through the tools available to the historian who seeks to enter the life of someone long gone through such artifacts as their letters; getting to know and appreciate how they wrote, what they wrote about, even the style of their calligraphy). So President Juárez was quite right: respect for the rights of others is peace. But to complete his dictum in a sense of syntony we would need to augment the notion of respect with that of understanding. Understanding brings people closer — without requiring that “respectful distance” that would otherwise keep us from reaching out to help them — and thereby allows for the dynamic growth and nurturance of peace.
This augmented notion of intentional, interactive, dynamic peace is in accord with Daoist notions of harmony, and it is this notion that lies at the core of evolutionary conceptions of syntony. One way to remember it, and to distinguish it from conceptions of peace as a static state, is to think of the following acronym:
Many people think that respect is the height of thoughtful and caring attention and don’t stop to consider the need for mutual understanding in order to create and nurture truly healthy and authentic relationships. Notions of peace often fall prey to similarly simplistic interpretations. Let’s look for a moment at some colloquial expressions that only reinforce static, non-syntonious conceptions of peace:
• Being at peace, and living in peace, with yourself and others. These expressions suggest that peace is a static state, a point at which one can arrive and in which one can dwell. They do nothing to promote the sort of on-going interaction and dialogue between oneself and one’s environment required to create relationships of mutual agreement and dynamic harmony. Instead, they point to the individual as the container and source of peace. When a relationship such as peace is seen to be a process of interdependent becoming, then how can it be contained or emanate from any single being? The only way is if we equate peace with death. And frankly, we do this all the time! Isn’t that the sort of sentiment we express about someone who has died? R.I.P. (requiescat in pace — rest in peace) is reserved for the dead, yet I guess that such a state must be envied by those who wish to live in peace and consider it this sort of quiet and still state, undisturbed by conflict or stress. Such conceptions truly present peace as a form of death, not as a lively play of consciously created consonance. More positive, dynamic images of peace come from nature scenes of happy and exuberant ecologies: otters playing in the surf, butterflies dancing in the sunlight, and so on. There is no rest in this peace, only life-affirming reveling and the recreation of positive synergies.
• Peace is non-violence. Again, to define peace in terms of what it is not only leads us to the zero point between what it is and what it isn’t. Non-violence is clearly a precondition for peace, but a state or even an attitude of non-violence by itself, is neutral and therefore neither destructive nor constructive. While violence is destructive, peace is constructive, and both require action and intention — not mere states of being: processes of becoming. The lack of this sort of understanding leads to such movements as those which seek to teach tolerance among peoples. Teach tolerance???!!! You mean, put up with others and restrain my impulses to do violence to them even though I don’t understand them and maybe even hate them? Is this an attitude that is conducive to peace? I don’t think so. Why not strive to teach empathy and acceptance? Tolerance is a neutral conception — static and uninvolved. Empathy and acceptance are positive conceptions — active and caring. Simply put, non-violence is to peace as tolerance is to empathy and acceptance.
• Being a warrior of peace and fighting for peace. There is not much to be said for such inclinations. They are understandable, but only if one confuses means with ends, or thinks that ends justify means. Being aggressive, or in any way forcing peace, can only lead to a tenuous condition of peace as a state: the zero point. However, since such approaches do not replace dynamic conflict with dynamic harmony, this zero point will quickly slide back into the negative once the force that artificially sustains it is removed. Of course, there are those who fight for peace through non-violence, but is what they are doing really described by the term “‘fight’? I mean, fighting is forceful. It involves conflict and a battle of wills, at the very least. How can any engagement in battle be peaceful, let alone conducive to relationships of peace? In short, fighting for peace is as reasonable as cruelty for kindness, harming for health, and killing for life. In a similarly infelicitous way, being a warrior of peace adopts the same aggressive and intolerant stance that it seeks to transcend. There is no way one truly can champion peace as any type of warrior — not even as a light warrior — simply given the meanings of the words! The word ‘warrior’ has its roots in war, and those who take it as their identity immediately lay claim to all the images relevant to war; the bloodshed, injustice, pain, and death of it. Indeed, a warrior is someone who wages war (by definition), so how can someone wage war to make peace!?? It just doesn’t work!
So, syntony can provide a path to learning how to live in harmony with deep enjoyment — in harmony with ourselves and in exultation of dynamic and constructive relationships that cultivate positive synergy and vitality. Syntony is a process that we can create — if we want to. But to want to means wanting to co-create peace in an ongoing dance of harmony and interaction with others (other people, to be sure, but also with other beings, and indeed, with other things as well). This type of stewardship, of taking on the mantle of evolutionary co-creator, breaks down the barrier between “us” and “other.” We can only engage in it if we care enough to do so. That is, if we care enough for “all of us,” and if we stop separating things into atomistic, individualistic compartments. In short, it means reaffirming the sacredness of life — of life as a dynamic process to be maintained and furthered, and not as a state of being. Our true nature is as Human Becomings, not as Human Beings…
In his book on Birth Without Violence, Frederick Leboyer evokes the attitude, the disposition, that the sacredness of greeting a new life invites: “Only a little patience and humility. A little silence. Unobtrusive but real attention. Awareness of the newcomer as a person. Unselfconsciousness.”[3] When I read these lines I thought, “that sounds so right! And if that is how to engage with a new life coming into this world, then it must also be appropriate for how to engage with all things sacred.” When all things are considered sacred, it evokes an entire worldview.
Learning how to listen … that is the first step toward syntony. As a species, we are just at the beginning of learning how to listen to the living breathing rhythms of our world — to babies being born, to each other, to our planet, to our ancestors and those not yet born, and to the deeper pulse of the cosmos flowing in, through, and around us. If this is what you want to do, then know that you can! Erich Jantsch suggests that “… we are in the process of learning to take seriously those responses which are no longer innate, but emerge from tuning in to general evolutionary forces. Syntony” he says, “is on the verge of becoming more conscious.”[4] It won’t be automatic, though. He points out that “an understanding of the internal (coordinative) factors in the evolution of human consciousness will probably become possible only in the framework of a wider theory of evolution.”[5]
It is precisely such a framework that evolutionary systems design (ESD) seeks to provide in the form of an approach that can be used by individuals and groups to create systems of syntony.[6] The emergence of such systems of syntony is predicated on the creation of conditions for empowerment. It is the sort of thing that Margaret Mead alluded to on her death bed, according to Jean Houston, who captured her words in A Mythic Life:
Forget everything I’ve been telling you about working with governments and bureaucracies! I’ve been lying here being an anthropologist in my own dying — fascinating experience, by the way; there is no hierarchy to it — and I’ve had an important insight into the future. The world is going to change so fast that people and governments will not be prepared to be stewards of change. What will save them is teaching-learning communities [emphasis mine]. They come together in churches or businesses or even in families. They could meet weekly and do your kind of exercises, especially ones that develop their capacities. There must be humor, laughter, games and good food as well. That will keep the participants coming back. Then, when they feel ready, they will choose projects to work on to help their communities. The only way to have a possible society, Jean, is to develop the possible human at the same time.
That’s the spirit! Others see the need for this sort of thing, too. In fact, my father has a very similar vision of such collaborative learning communities. “What our world needs,” he says, “is … flexible and functional learning environments where people, young and old, can be exposed to concepts and ideas relevant to their present and to their future.”[7] Therefore, if we want to be stewards of our evolution, to curate emergence for thrivability, we’ve got to become engaged in helping make these conditions be present in our own places and spaces. To search for, find, curate, and create the common-unities with which to associate, in which to immerse, and through which to transmit and osmose the transformative patterns of alchemical transmutation and evolutionary transcendence that upshift our patterns from manufacturing war to growing peace.
The lesson of this moment in history is that we can’t be “uninvolved” or “uncommitted” even if we try to be: through the very act of being alive, of eating and speaking, of interacting with the world, we influence, shape, and are shaped by the evolutionary flow of which we are a part. So rather than seeking to be either invading bears that force ourselves on others or diplomatic ostriches with our heads in the sand, we must answer the question phrased so well by songwriter Ellen Stapenhorst: “Can you stand by and do nothing because you cannot do it all? If not you, if not me, who will it be?”
Compassion has become a key concept by which to live our lives in this day and age. And yet, syntony as an organizing force for societal evolution asks more of us than just to follow the simple dictum, be kind. Think about Einstein’s exhortation, “remember your humanity, and forget the rest” — that means remembering what it means to be a part of humankind. This is part of the difference between being respectfully compassionate and being actively considerate. Benito Juarez showed us that respect is not the height of thoughtful and caring attention if it doesn’t involve consideration of the need for mutual understanding to create and nurture truly healthy and authentic relationships. To be compassionate involves internal resonance; to be considerate involves interactive syntony. It is not a matter of being one or the other: this is a both/and situation here! It is the call to be the systems you want to see in the world.
How will you answer?
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Endnotes
[1] Laozi. Dao Te Ching translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. Chapter 2, p. 4.
[2] Watts, Allan W. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage Books, 1957. Pp. 115–116.
[3] Leboyer, Frederick Birth Without Violence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978 trans., ©1975. P. 112.
[4] Jantsch, Erich. Design for Evolution: Self-Organization and Planning in the Life of Human Systems. New York: George Braziller, 1975. P. 270.
[5] Ibid., p. 200.
[6] Laszlo, Alexander. Evolutionary Systems Design: A Praxis for Sustainable Development, Organisational Transformation and Social Change, 1(1):29–46. January 2004. DOI: 10.1386/jots.1.1.29/0.
[7] Laszlo, Ervin. The Age of Bifurcation: Understanding the Changing World. Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach, 1991. P. 92.
