Humainologie creative dialogue 9/11 and the Lessons of History September 22

“Everything we were told was bullshit, from the level of support we had to what we were allowed or expected to do. … Now I realize no one above us knew what the hell was going on either. It’s systemic willful ignorance all the way to the top.” - Jay O’Brien, 41, Army infantryman, veteran of the war in Afghanistan “All of this, I think, didn’t have to be this way. The U.S. had the opportunity in the early years to negotiate with the Taliban, when they were much weaker. They had the opportunity to try to create an inclusive government. But instead they chose the path of war, and here’s where we are now. Nobody has really won from this. The people in the countryside are breathing a sigh of relief because there’s no war, but the people in the cities are terrified. Nobody is actually happy with the outcome. And that’s a tragedy.” - Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, in a recent interview with Amy Goodman, “The Other Afghan Women: Rural Areas Hope Taliban Rule Will End Decades of US and Warlord Violence” democracynow.org Because this month marks the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center (“9/11”), I will suggest that our creative dialogue for Wednesday September 22 focus on Learning the Lessons of History. This is a huge “topic,” and one of life-and-death importance. Even with a few hours of attention to it, however, I think we can make important advances in our understanding. And by doing this we are in a sense acting as good parents to the generations that will follow us here on Earth. This email will provide some of my own ways of thinking about the “lessons of history.” It’s a long email, so if necessary just look at what I have put in bold font. It is your own participation in the dialogue and your contributions that are essential. To prepare for the dialogue, each of you is invited to bring one or more important lessons that you think we should have learned from history. As resources, you might use good quotes or books including some of the synopses previously circulated or good TED talks, whatever. There are many excellent resources for identifying useful lessons of history. In this email, below the Zoom link, I will make a few contributions of my own, and these too may help get your own thoughts started. Please write down your contributions in advance of the event. Here is the Zoom link provided by Shinobu: Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue Time: Sep 22, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Oct 27, 2021, 8 occurrence(s) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83728528644?pwd=VmxxbDRSdHoxbU1Jam5rYnlPbnB0UT09 Meeting ID: 837 2852 8644 Passcode: 12345 Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center in New York City was attacked, as well as the Pentagon in Washington D.C. If you take time to watch a video of what happened, you may be able to better understand the seriousness of our topic for the dialogue on September 22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4CAwjfY-dU The war in Afghanistan (which had begun well before the World Trade Center attacks) is one part of the violent aftermath of “9/11.” Recent commentary on how the United States responded to “9/11” has been quite critical. A Washington Post article begins with “9/11 was a test. The books of the last two decades show how America failed” - and then provides titles to books published in the past twenty years that are relevant. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/interactive/2021/911-books-american-values/ The quotes I have used above, from Jay O’Brienand Anand Gopal, indicate the utter confusion which is at the root of the disastrous war in Afghanistan – and indeed at the root of a lot of other forms of human self-destruction. A familiar quote, from George Santayana, is “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Another way of stating it is that those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. These quotes are important; however, they are too imprecise to be of much use in practice. I will suggest that the lessons we aim to learn must use a specific frame of reference. The essential question is what purpose we want our history lessons to serve. For what purpose are you trying to learn from history? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? For example, if we want to learn from history how we can destroy our enemies, we get one set of lessons, which would be very different from the lessons we would learn if our purpose is to turn our enemies into friends. The practice of medicine, including preventive medicine, has the purpose of promoting human health and well-being. Medical research and practice are therefore directed toward learning lessons that serve that purpose. Obviously medical professionals make mistakes; and we have a long way to go in the quest for the relevant lessons. Nonetheless, the purpose is clear from the framework of medicine as defined. If the purpose is corrupted, for example if the profit motive begins to replace the purpose of promoting human health and well-being, this will lead to bad outcomes for human health and well-being. International law has the purpose of promoting human rights (including health and well-being). It has similarities to the purpose of medicine. Governments that refuse to abide by international law will look for lessons that serve purposes other than those of international law. I hope this will provide us with a more precise and useful point of departure for our dialogue next Wednesday than the simple but important observation “those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.” Here are five lessons I will contribute to the dialogue for September 22. Each of these is intended to serve the outcome of healthy global community. Essentially, this means our responsibility to promote human health and well-being in the framework provided by international law. Lesson 1. Capitalism poses almost insurmountable obstacles to achieving a healthy global community. This has long been familiar to wise observers. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. had this to say: “Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.” - MLK, Jr. “Where Do We Go from Here?” August 16, 1967. Once wealth and power become the center of a society’s field of values, it sets that society up for conflict – perishing together as fools, as MLK called it. There are alternative ways of designing a society. In India, for example the Harmonious Coexistence model is gaining ground. In that model, healthy human relationships are the center of the field of values. Here in Calgary, Naomi and Mahendra and the Folk Tree Lodge family are planting the seeds of this alternative model. Even if we remain stuck in the capitalist model for a long time to come, there are ways we make progress. In two of the books for which you have previously received synopses, the authors recognize the problem of capitalism and suggest possible ways to achieve better outcomes despite the capitalist system. See the synopsis of Richard Wilkinson’s book The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier and the synopsis of Robert Reich’s book Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few. Lesson 2. International law is a necessary framework for our efforts to achieve a healthy global community. My book The ABCs of Human Survival: A Paradigm for Global Citizenship https://www.aupress.ca/app/uploads/120173_99Z_Clark_2010-The_ABCs_of_Human_Survival.pdf is written to make discussions of history and world affairs more coherent and productive. The book includes a chapter on axioms and also thirty principles. It is built around the concept that international law is essential for achieving healthy global community, so I won’t go into that any further here. Lesson 3. If people lead, the leaders will follow (Spanish proverb). The leadership must come from the grassroots. The possibilities we have for leadership are endless but as Helen Keller observed, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” Our weekly dialogues, the Calgary Centre for Global Community and Humainologie and a project I hope to launch in October with Jas Kainth and Nyabuoy Gatbel illustrate just a glimpse of the possibilities. Salima’s Humainologie initiative emphasizes empathy, and Simon Sinek has a presentation on empathy as the key to leadership. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJyNoJCAuzA Participation in elections is also important (remember the Federal elections coming up on September 20), as well as protests, grassroots organizations, on and on. These are all important parts of what we can do. How can life ever be boring with all of that available to us? Lesson 4. We must learn from our successes as well as from our failures of the past. I have appended below the main text of this email, as some historical background on the “lessons of history,” an example of learning the wrong lesson and then an example of learning from past mistakes, with vastly improved outcomes after that awareness and learning from past mistakes had taken place. Lesson 5. Each of us must be the change we want to see in the world. This paraphrase of a quote from Gandhi puts the ball in our court. Here is a two-minute video about a Black musician who has influenced many white men to leave the Ku Klux Klan https://accidentalcourtesy.com/ We should behave in a way that tends to make friends of our would-be enemies. Today’s (September 17) entry for The Daily Stoic (appended below) indicates this is a lesson that a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, had understood. Who knows, maybe even the government of the United States can learn it. We can use Daryl Davis as a role model and that can be part of applying this lesson, of being the change. That same imagination that we can use for writing stories is an important resource for changing the course of history. Optimism is essential, complacency is dangerous, pessimism is a waste of time. Arthur Some historical background on the “lessons of history” Adolf Hitler had “learned the lessons of history.” At the Versailles conference in 1919 which brought World War I to conclusion, the terms imposed on Germany were punitive. France in particular wanted to see Germany ruined. France and its allies (Great Britain and the USA) had won the war but had failed to learn an important lesson: the importance of making friends of your enemies as soon as the opportunity arises. That failure led to the terms of the “peace” forced upon Germany in 1919 and set the stage for the rise of Hitler and World War II. John Maynard Keynes had understood the mistake that was made at Versailles in 1919 and wrote about it long before the rise of Hitler. (See the Wikipedia article on John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace.) Hitler got the message that the terms of the “peace” were sending to Germany. He led a powerful German recovery from the defeat of World War I. Hitler’s purpose seemed like a good idea in Germany at the time and the National Socialist efforts succeeded brilliantly for a while. However, Hitler’s purpose itself was deeply flawed and it led to bad outcomes for Germany. In that Second World War, Germany was again defeated, but this time around the Allies had learned that important lesson. The Marshall Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan was designed to help the former enemy, Germany, rebuild after the war. As a result, Germany has to this day remained an ally of its erstwhile enemies. To “learn the lessons of history,” it is important to know the outcomes we want to achieve; and to study our historic successes as well as our historic failures. September 17 entry from The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday Dealing with Haters “What if someone despises me? Let them see to it. But I will see to it that I won’t be found doing or saying anything contemptible. What if someone hates me? Let them see to that. But I will see to it that I’m kind and good-natured to all and prepared to show even the hater where they went wrong. Not in a critical way, or to show off my patience, but genuinely and usefully.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.13 When someone has a strong opinion about something, it usually says more about them than whatever or whomever the opinion happens to be about. This is especially true when it comes to resentment and hatred of other people. (It is a sad irony that the prejudiced often harbor secret attractions to those they so publicly hate.) For this reason, the Stoic does two things when encountering hatred or ill opinion in others. They ask: Is this opinion inside my control? If there is a chance for influence or change, they take it. But if there isn’t they accept this person as they are (and never hate a hater). Our job is tough enough already. We don’t have time to think about what other people are thinking, even if it’s about us.