The Alien's Dilemma: Part Two

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So we last left Zoron circling our solar system attempting to ascertain earth's potential to eventually abandon bloodshed as its dominant form of conflict resolution.  Such an evaluation could span centuries, and during that time Zoron might have encountered the broadcast signals of old radio and TV shows that would only now be making their way to the scout craft.  Among them might be early cartoons such as Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. Elmer's lisp might not make it past today's PC censors, but my generation delighted when Bugs out-foxed Elmer, leaving the frustrated hunter fuming "Dwat, that wasscally wabbit!" 

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Zoron might have, in the scout's early attempts to understand our spoken language, mistaken "wabbit" for "yabbit" - and Zoron had heard yabbit over and over throughout our sordid history. Zoron had come to realize that "yabbit" often was included in the rhetoric that preceded violent conflicts in earth culture.  It could be heard in predictive patterns - almost a call and response, from playgrounds to battlegrounds: "We are peace loving people who believe in friendship and freedom. Yabbit, they started it!" At which time the two sides clobber each other with baloney sandwiches, small arms fire, or nuclear devices, depending on their resources and lack of self-control. 

I hope you will pardon my use of what must be one of the worst extended puns in the short history of blogging, but shifting Elmer and Bugs' wabbit to yabbit and then to the painful moral equivocation of “ Yeah But" allows me to sneak up on what might be the only solution to the Alien's Dilemma that gives us any hope of avoiding a lonely life of galactic isolation - and far more likely - self-destruction. 

Anyone who has studied history know that advocates of peaceful co-existence have arisen more than once here on our fortuitously positioned third planet out from the sun. But with stunning regularity they and their movements - political, religious or philosophical - are eventually confronted with violent opposition. Sometimes the MLKs and Ghandis of the world prevail at least to the extent of creating significant, but never total, change. But much more often the glimmer of peaceful coexistence crumbles before one horrific "Yeah But" or another. 

Consider Einstein. A cultural, largely unobservant, Jew, Einstein was the darling of the radical pacifist movement of the 1930s and early 1940s. He was an early personification of the 1960s slogan, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" And then Hitler, Stalin and The Empire of Japan unleashed upon the world a level of barbarous brutality previously unknown in history.  Einstein's pacifism crumbled before the onslaught.  We responded with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, crushed by weapons based, in part, on Einstein’s brilliance. “Yeah But they started it!" And “Yeah But it would have been worse if we had invaded the mainland!" 

The problem with "Yeah But,” is that it is occasionally nigh onto irrefutable. Hitler, Stalin and Imperialist Japan, did have to be stopped, and they did start it. But somehow those global affirmations allows "Yeah But” to gain traction in other, far less certain, arenas. The mainstream West, across belief systems, sees ISIS as evil entity who “started it” and so we launch our drones. The affects of the drones allows the radical leaders of ISIS to holler “Yeah But they started it!" and they ratchet up their level of mayhem. And so it trickles all the way down to “Yeah But” he cut me off on the freeway, and “Yeah But” she meant to spill her chocolate pudding on my sandwich. 

I do not know why we remain enslaved to such an intellectually and morally bankrupt worldview. We may caught in Darwinian shackles, carnivores destined to react violently to any perceived threat.  Maybe there is a “Yeah But” gene that CRISPR can excise. I do not know. Perhaps Zoron, and the other intelligent members of the Galactic Empire are descended from beings who resolved their “Yeah Buts” through shunning.  A bully, whether on the playground or in their pinnacles of power, was shunned by all, and for Zoron’s people this was fatal.  Their bullies simply shriveled into dust and drifted away on an uncaring breeze. Of course, if this is the case we are in trouble. We would simply be an unacceptable risk for such a non-violent culture, and Zoron would soon throttle up, up and away. 

For those of us left here, it is not really a case of “nowhere to run to.”  Much of what we have accomplished as a species we have accomplished in spite of our occasional descents into mindless violence.  Like the slowly maturing children of exasperated parents, we really do know that “Yeah But” leads eventually to death and destruction. We know that we need to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to its siren song; we need to shun those who jump up and down, pointing at the “different other" next door hollering “Yeah But! Yeah But!”  We need to greet each day and meet each “Yeah But,” with the tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm.  A cultural norm, after all, is only the sum of our personal perspectives. We can live each day in such a way as to add make harmony the norm, to shun “Yeah But,” to give Zoron, and Earth a glimmer of hope. 

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