I took a bit of a rabbit hole tumble recently. The New York Times ran a puff piece recently about how the past year had been such a great year for New York - athletics, music, celebrity weddings etc. The bit that caught my eye was the couple who scaled the antenna of the Empire State Building to unfurl a banner saying "When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace." I am a bit , maybe more, acrophobic, so the very idea of scaling the antenna atop the Empire State Building, gave me an unpleasant flutter in my stomach. But the banner - very cool. I wondered if I could find out who first said it or if it was original to the antenna scalers. Yup, slipping over the edge of the rabbit hole.
Chrome attributed the quote to Jimi Hendrix sometime in the late 1960s. But a deeper dive came up with the multi-time prime minister of the UK, William Gladstone, with a date of 1948. Problematic - as several sites reported Gladstone as having died in 1898. So, maybe, 1848? Gladstone would have been almost 40 then and was known as a powerful orator - so maybe. DuckDuckGo - attributes the quote to Mahatma Ghandi in a letter to Hitler in 1939. When was Ghandi born? It was then that I grabbed a root sticking out of the side of the rabbit hole and cautiously pulled myself back out. I lay there panting: Why I was following a link leading to Mahatma Ghandi's childhood? Hmmm?
Ah, right - the quote: When the power of love beats the love of power the world will know peace. It seems to assert a more inclusive version of the selfless vs. selfish dichotomy that I explored in a previous post. A kind of exploration of selfish power vs selfless peace. Hmm.
If we use the President Trump's disapproval public opinion ratings [66% Reuters, 56% NBC, 61% Fox, 63% Marquette Law School - some recent drops record others in the 66% range.] as an indication of those who prefer the power of love as opposed to Trump's love of power, then love seems to win that comparison.
But something doesn't quite ring true there. If we were to apply that finding to the world at large, we would find a world at peace. Instead we find a world in which Trump and Netanyahu's war on Iran is merely a drop in a bucket - though one that seems to be threatening to overflow. Russia's war on the Ukraine isn't getting as much publicity as it did before Trump's war on Iran, but it too staggers on lo' these many years. Israel's side war in Gaza - no peace there either.
There are over 130 armed conflicts taking place across the globe today, according to data from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). No matter how you parse those data, they do not reveal a world at peace.
You wonder why war seems to dominate, given that the numbers appear to reveal a popular demand for peace. It strikes me that, in all likelihood, it is not the combatants actually fighting the war who started it. Rather it was the self-aggrandizing politicians whose fiery eloquence and posturing first pulled the trigger. A voice of the people post on Facebook suggests a better option:
"Why don't they rope off a big field. Take all of the leaders, strip them down to their underwear and give them big sacks of manure to swing at each other. The last man standing is the winner, war over."
A lovely, albeit messy, suggestion from the selfless side of the room. And the implication is clear - wars are most often fought at the bequest of, and in the personal interest of, the politicians currently in power. The objective being to increase that power and usually enrich the leader him/her self and their families, relations, business partners, and other complicit cohorts.
This reveals is a organizational problem. Militaries are usually built around a strict and clear chain of command. You do not question orders. We had a major kerfluffle recently when U.S. Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, alongside House members such as Jason Crowe—released a video explicitly advising service members to refuse illegal orders. And, somewhat ironically in hindsight, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth similarly noted in a 2016 video that the U.S. military does not follow unlawful orders from a commander-in-chief.
Putting the onus to "just say no to war" on the back of largely powerless service personnel seems unrealistic. But even more unlikely would be my wish that before undertaking the killing of those entities that their leaders have defined as "bad" or "evil" each soldier could ask "Does this action make my life and the lives of my friends and family better? Does it make my country a better place to live in?" Do I have the right to kill these people?"
I realize the seeming simplicity of this perspective. It is kinda like the contestants in a beauty pageant declaring their desire for a "world at peace." Why do we smirk? Instead I would be tempted to quote Psalms 8:2 "Out of the mouths of babes," but in the context of this example that would seem linguistically patronizing. So, "Out of the mouths of beauties!"
And what could be more beautiful than a world at peace?
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