Dear Friends,
One wonders whether history must always be like this, with "us" feeling that we are justified in taking any action that will support our side against "them." We process folk say "No." All of us are composed of our relations to our own past but also to the myriad of "others." We are truly members one of another. The wounds of others wound us. Their genuine fulfillment fulfills us. This is true not only of those we call "friends." It is true of those we call "foes."
Whitehead noticed in the extraordinary "Galilean origins of Christianity" an emphasis on "the tender elements in the world which slowly and in quietness operate by love."
A Hindu, Gandhi, noticed that Jesus called us to love our enemies, and he incorporated not only love of the British but also Hindu love of Muslims and vice versa into his successful struggle to free India from British rule.
A Christian, Martin Luther King, learned from Gandhi that we need not treat Jesus' teaching as simply impractical idealism, and he broke his people out of segregation.
Another Christian, Nelson Mandela, invented a truth and reconciliation program that also expressed a realistic love of enemy.
Indeed, if we search through history, alongside the thousands of instances of treachery and cruelty, of deceit and revenge, here and there people have attained freedom and justice while expressing love for their oppressors,.
This has two advantages. Hatred and violence toward others may win a battle here and there, or even build an empire, but the hatred engendered in the defeated festers in them and endangers whatever may have been gained. Killing leads to more killing, but the independence of India has not resulted in a bitter Britain. Whereas even today the scars on the white Southern psyche from the Civil War corrupt American politics, the desegregation of public facilities is genuinely accepted by most white Southerners without rancor, It is hatred, deceit, and violence that are unrealistic solutions to human problems. They are leading the world toward the suicide of the human species. Love is the realistic answer.
John Cobb
