Suppose you believe that human nature is unchanging and bad actors are constantly present in the world. How realistic is it to achieve peaceful coexistence with those who are driven by intense hatred and wish for your destruction?
Is there a practical approach to mitigate such threats while maintaining a commitment to peace and understanding?
Why not try to solve something easier, like the absolute value of pi or the quotient of infinity divided by zero? This idea of peace and understanding, at least on the macro scale, apparently does not compute.
In the micro sense, to the extent we each have autonomy over our own actions, the best I've ever been able to come up with is a line from the Gospels, Mark 12:31: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
You can debate with me all you like about the rest of this passage, as to why a guy would start a business and then leave the country and expect it to go well in his absence, or the singular nature of God, or what exactly is owed to Caesar (this is America, we ARE Caesar...), but I've found that one item from it pretty useful in my travels.
As for the behavior of nations and peoples and powerful institutions, they're gonna do what they're gonna do: all I have any real say in is how I manage my own affairs and regulate my own behavior. If you actually believe that your ideas and priorities have any chance of influencing the direction any of these bigger things might take, good luck with that; or, as so often needs to be asked of so many things in the big bad world, how's that been working out for you so far?
You ask for a practical approach, that's the best I got. Aside from a running standoff with the two biggest forces seeking to instruct me that neither self nor neighbor are worthy of my love (bureaucracy and popular culture, from which too many behavioral cues may be taken, whereupon I have now and then lost my way), this single axiom has served me fairly well.
Why not try to solve something easier, like the absolute value of pi or the quotient of infinity divided by zero? This idea of peace and understanding, at least on the macro scale, apparently does not compute.
In the micro sense, to the extent we each have autonomy over our own actions, the best I've ever been able to come up with is a line from the Gospels, Mark 12:31: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
You can debate with me all you like about the rest of this passage, as to why a guy would start a business and then leave the country and expect it to go well in his absence, or the singular nature of God, or what exactly is owed to Caesar (this is America, we ARE Caesar...), but I've found that one item from it pretty useful in my travels.
As for the behavior of nations and peoples and powerful institutions, they're gonna do what they're gonna do: all I have any real say in is how I manage my own affairs and regulate my own behavior. If you actually believe that your ideas and priorities have any chance of influencing the direction any of these bigger things might take, good luck with that; or, as so often needs to be asked of so many things in the big bad world, how's that been working out for you so far?
You ask for a practical approach, that's the best I got. Aside from a running standoff with the two biggest forces seeking to instruct me that neither self nor neighbor are worthy of my love (bureaucracy and popular culture, from which too many behavioral cues may be taken, whereupon I have now and then lost my way), this single axiom has served me fairly well.