Commitment

I've made it abundantly clear that I feel peace begins with each and every one of us. In the short term I feel the best way I can make strides towards peace is by working on furthering my own inner peace. By working towards being more at peace with myself, I will also be working towards putting myself in a position to more positively impact the world. It's difficult to be rational and compassionate when the overwhelmed by the stresses of life. Therefore I am making a commitment to reduce stress in my own life and find inner peace.

In the long run, I suspect education is key to peace; people ruled by irrationality will always be plagued by conflict. My passion for erudition and education have me on a path which I hope will enable me to affect meaningful change, even if only in a small region. Thus I'm making a long-term commitment to help others find peace by educating them.

Inner Peace

As I've intimated from the beginning of this blog, I feel that personal, inner peace in each person is necessary before peace on a larger scale can even begin to be a viable option. Daily stress, worrying about making ends meet, and existential angst all put us in an adversarial mindset where we are more likely to look at other people as as impediments to our own happiness than as fellow beings just trying to making a living in this world. Although it can be difficult to find the time, it greatly benefits each of us to find a way to shut out the world and regain our mental focus every once in a while. I know I find myself needing to do it fairly often, but it dramatically improves my quality of life.

The Ritalin of the Masses

Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses; what we need now is something to serve as the Ritalin of the masses. The modern citizenry generally lacks both the ability and the desire to focus on current events long enough to have an informed understanding of what’s going on in the world today. Unfortunately, this problem extends far beyond just a lack of political awareness, and seems include a lack of awareness about any topic which isn’t found on the cover of People magazine.

In the decades following the Second World War, the notion of American exceptionalism reached its zenith and has since diminished so far as to now be nothing more than a joke. American ignorance has become infamous both domestically and world-wide. In some segments of the population, being uneducated is almost a mark of pride. The inverse is true as well: intelligence is a source of derision and children quickly learn to hide it lest they face harassment; it’s not surprising that few kids want to be labeled a nerd.

In a democracy, an ignorant public is a liability: already more than once in my lifetime the people of this country have been misled by shrewd politicians more concerned with their own agendas than with the good of the nation. I remain convinced that, in a country with a better-educated populace, the case for invading Iraq would never have been accepted so readily (if at all), nor is it likely that George W. Bush would have served two terms as president.

The current trend is not encouraging either, as education becomes less concerned with thought-processes and more of a goal-oriented affair. Test scores are now the primary focus of K-12 programs in this country, students aren’t taught how to evaluate arguments or come up with rational solutions to problems. Rote memorization and regurgitation of facts in order to correctly bubble in answer sheets seems to be all we want out of the next generation of students.

When voters are unable to critically assess claims made by people in public office, they are in a position to be influenced by emotional appeals rather than logic. Once that becomes the norm, as it has in the United States, policy debates become popularity contests and all it takes to further one’s personal agenda is convincing rhetoric. Since the people who actually care about peace and justice in the world also tend to be people who rely on reasoned arguments, it’s clear that a lack of awareness on the part of the electorate can only detract from the creation of a peaceful world.