Beliefs Create a License to Kill

 

Some Beliefs Create a License to Kill:  The evolution of weaponry meets the Human mind’s identity protector.

For at least 10,000 years human minds have rationalized the killing other innocent people.  And even justified their own death to protect their mind’s belief.    

Now, when this happens, combined with weapons capable of destroying hundreds, tens of thousands, or even humanity, we must all stop and think.

Recent shocking events in Kenya under doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie offers yet another disturbing example of humanity’s capacity to rationalize the irrational.  

One of our species superpowers is being rational.  Unfortunately, our minds now devote most of its energy and attention to rationalizing.  Creating various reasons to justify some beliefs.  As a social species some beliefs betray our own survival, descendants, and humankinds future.  

Yet there are the “Truths” that we should all “hold” “to be self-evident”.  This wisdom was offered to humanity in one phrase up front in the American 1776 Declaration.  A simple phrase, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God’.  Translated into rational thinking… we must protect ‘nature’ and each other, via ‘the golden rule’.   This special rule is the foundation of every major religion plus many indigenous cultures before religions existed.   

There’s no shortage of examples where our minds have overridden our social species spirit hardwired into our DNA over the last 300 thousand years.  Our capacity to cooperate, coordinate, care for, and give comfort to others.  We are also hardwired to compete and even kill to protect ourselves and those we love.    

But Mackenzie, the leader of the Good News International Church, didn’t do that.  He reportedly persuaded his followers that fasting to death would bring them closer to Jesus. Hundreds of people died in this tragedy. At least 100 were children. Both parents and children were starved, beaten for eating, then suffered and died because a leader’s interpretation of religious belief became more powerful than their natural instincts for survival, their obligations to one another, and their ability to question his authority.

How could people believe such things?  Most of us use our intelligence to rationalize this as insane.  He didn’t.  But what is most disturbing is that most of us imagine that we don’t have the capacity to believe in mass murdering others.  That belief only fits someone else.

But from Kenya to Waco to Jonestown… righteousness was rationalized.  Mackenzie’s cult reminds us to David Koresh and his Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and Jim Jones insanity in the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. These tragedies differ in important ways, but each demonstrates how a charismatic leader, an apocalyptic worldview, group conformity, and the suppression of doubt - can produce catastrophic consequences.

People can become so convinced that they possess the truth.  Questioning the leader becomes a betrayal, obedience becomes a virtue, and death becomes a promised victory rather than a preventable tragedy. 

This is a problem across religions, political ideologies, nationalism, racial supremacy, revolutionary movements, and even supposedly rational national-security doctrines.  Each can produce similar results of justifying the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children. Sometimes when this happens in war we call it “collateral damage”.  

Our extraordinary capacity to reason has become our extraordinary capacity to rationalize defending what we deeply believe.   In fact, we can rationalize almost anything when our identity, our community, our fears, or our vision of the future depends on ‘being right’.

Consider that our greatest danger is not weapons.  Or people believing in something they are deeply passionate about.  The danger is becoming convinced that the beliefs or identities of others - puts them beyond the need for evidence, self-examination, compassion, or accountability from ourselves.

Religious prophecy is now meeting modern warfare in a way that extends far beyond isolated cults.

Some Christian Zionists, particularly within parts of the American religious right, interpret the establishment and expansion of Israel through biblical prophecy.  Many believing that the Bible is a real-estate manual – as events in the Middle East are fulfilling predictions about Armageddon and the end times.  This is the belief that infected Mackenzie’s mind.  

Christian Zionism is diverse, and not all its supporters expect or welcome a final apocalyptic war. Most Jewish people, Christians, or supporters of Israel should never be treated as though they share one political or religious outlook.

These times do however confirm Neil deGrasse Tyson’s assertion that there are three types of truth.  Our personal and political truths. Plus, objective Truths.  These three truths rarely sync within everyone’s mind.  But, objective Truths are like gravity and math. They don’t care what people believe or how deeply they believe it. There is almost always costly consequences when objective Truths are ignored.

Nevertheless, we should all be concerned whenever anyone interprets contemporary violence as a necessary step toward a divinely or politically ordained conclusion.

Israel has a legitimate interest in protecting its population from Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack deliberately killed over a thousand innocent civilians and took many hostages. Hamas’s genocidal rhetoric and attacks must be confronted. Lethally if needed. But the existence of this murderous enemy does not make every means of defeating that reprehensible enemy morally acceptable.

Hamas destruction cannot justify the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians, the deliberate targeting of noncombatants, or the treatment of an entire population as collectively guilty. The same moral standard must apply to every government, armed group, and human population.  When destruction is rationalized as the only way to eliminate a dangerous ideology, the destruction actually fuels the very logic we claim to oppose.

When that happens some people start believing that escalating violence will solve the problem.  Others fear this could bring about the end of the world—or the fulfillment of prophecy.  This puts all of humanity at risk.

When a matter of personal faith becomes a geopolitical danger, then influences decisions about war, diplomacy, and nuclear weapons, all humankind is threatened.

We will never know which particular conflict will produce Armageddon. But we can be sure that allowing apocalyptic certainty to influence decisions - could trigger a catastrophe affecting billions of people, regardless of their own religious beliefs.

Weapons Have Evolved. Yet our thinking has not.  For thousands of years, humans have developed increasingly effective means for killing one another. Spears became swords, swords became guns, and conventional explosives gave way to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. And now security is only a hope, as humanity faces cyber and biological capabilities that threaten essential infrastructure, some genetic profiles, or potentially amplifying the effects of other catastrophic technologies.

Meanwhile, these dual-use technologies are becoming cheaper to develop or acquire, easier to conceal, and more difficult to attribute to their perpetrators. With Artificial Intelligence accelerating these dangers.

Our dominant mental concepts of national security and ‘peace through strength’ remain rooted in deterrence:  convincing any adversary that attacking will cost more than it can gain.

While deterrence can prevent some aggression, it no longer plays an vital role in international security.  It is an incomplete answer in a world where some actors welcome martyrdom, embrace apocalyptic expectations, miscalculate their opponents’ intentions, or believe that the destruction of the existing world is desirable.

What happens when deterrence confronts someone who does not fear death, a leader believes that divine providence guarantees victory, or a biological, cyber, or nuclear attack is misattributed, leaving a nation with minutes to decide whether to retaliate?  Or, when weapons of mass destruction become accessible to actors who have no interest in preserving the world they wish to destroy?

A strategy built primarily on the threat of retaliation cannot reliably prevent every form of catastrophe. It might stop most attacks, but it only takes one to disrupt or destroy the society it intended to defend.

Peace through fear is an insufficient strategy for human survival. Our human family is larger than our currently divisive/polarizing beliefs. 

Our profoundly lethal psychological tendency is to divide humanity into us and them. Or, believe there isn’t enough of what we need.  Especially, when we identify with a nation, religion, political party, ethnicity, or ideology – and then begin to see those outside our group as threats.

Once that division becomes absolute, empathy can disappear. The suffering of outsiders becomes less important. Their deaths become statistics, unfortunate necessities, or even evidence that our cause is succeeding.

But a Palestinian child and an Israeli child have the same fundamental human needs. A Christian in Kenya, a Muslim in Gaza, a Jew in Israel, and an atheist anywhere else can all experience love, fear, grief, joy, and the desire to live, thrive and flourish.

Our beliefs may differ profoundly. Our humanity does not.

We do not have to agree about religion, history, territory, or political systems to recognize that other people are members of our human family.

Nor does recognizing our common humanity require us to tolerate murder, terrorism, oppression, or other abuses. We can defend ourselves, protect vulnerable people, and hold perpetrators accountable without abandoning the principle that innocent lives have equal value.  The challenge is to resist becoming what we oppose.

Evolving Our Thinking Before We Destroy Ourselves

Humanity’s technological evolution has vastly outpaced our moral and political development. We have acquired the capacity to destroy civilization without developing equally effective institutions for preventing the conditions that make such destruction possible.

We spend enormous resources preparing to fight wars while mostly neglecting the underlying causes of violence: poverty, trauma, humiliation, exclusion, injustice, fear, propaganda, and the deliberate exploitation of human psychological vulnerabilities.

Prevention is not a substitute for protecting people from immediate threats. It is an essential complement to that protection.

Imagine if we applied a comparable level of urgency to preventing war, reducing extreme poverty, protecting the environment, preventing infectious diseases, strengthening mental health, improving education, and building institutions that earn public trust.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for addressing most of these interconnected challenges. The 17 goals recognize that human health, economic opportunity, environmental sustainability, justice, and international cooperation cannot be separated into unrelated problems.

This is not idealism detached from reality. It is an attempt to address the conditions that repeatedly produce human suffering and instability.

Rotary and thousands of other service organizations already work on pieces of this larger challenge. The opportunity is to connect those efforts, prioritize prevention, and build a movement of movements capable of creating the political will for addressing the many interdependent causes of insecurity.

We need to move beyond treating each crisis as an isolated emergency and begin building local communities and international institutions capable of recognizing and preventing threats before they become catastrophes.

A Question of Survival:

Paul Mackenzie’s followers died because a human being convinced them that a destructive belief offered a path to salvation. Jonestown and Waco remind us that similar dynamics can arise in different circumstances. Modern conflicts reveal that the same human vulnerabilities can operate on a vastly larger scale.

This danger is no longer confined to a cult, a battlefield, or a single nation.

Humanity now possesses weapons capable of inflicting suffering on a scale that earlier generations could scarcely imagine. Yet we remain vulnerable to ancient impulses: fear, tribalism, revenge, unquestioning obedience, and the conviction that our own group’s survival or triumph justifies almost any sacrifice by others.

We cannot afford to wait for human nature to change spontaneously. We must build systems that reward critical thinking, encourage humility, protect human rights, and make cooperation more effective than confrontation.

We need to learn to question our own beliefs as rigorously as we question those of our adversaries.

We need to recognize that our security depends not just on defending borders, but also on protecting the interconnected systems that sustain life and reducing the conditions that drive people toward violence.

And we need to understand that no religious prophecy, political ideology, national ambition, or claim of historical grievance can make the annihilation of our fellow human beings a rational foundation for a secure, free, or sustainable future.

The evolution of weaponry without a corresponding evolution of our thinking is a race we cannot afford to lose.

We are one human family depending on relatively healthy environment, with no guaranteed second chance. No one is coming to save us.

The question is whether we can learn to live together before our capacity to destroy one another overwhelms our capacity to reason.

In just 10 words.  Keep people and nature healthy. Don’t believe everything you think.

 

 

Scarcity is a Disease

 

Scarcity is a Disease.

A collective Mental Illness breeding conflicts and needless death and suffering.

 

We live on a planet overflowing with resources, knowledge, technology, talent, and solutions. Yet we continue to behave as if there isn’t enough to go around. Our greatest scarcity isn’t material. It is a failure of collective mental health, imagination, compassion, empathy, unity, and wisdom.  Our planet has always had enough for us all.  We’ve only lacked the wisdom to share.

The Great Scarcity Illusion: Humanity’s most dangerous disease is the belief that we don’t have enough.  Meanwhile, millions of people, mostly children (11,000 -13,000 daily) perish due to this delusion every year.  

We have enough intelligence to send spacecraft beyond our solar system, the technology to communicate instantly globally, enough agricultural knowledge to produce enormous quantities of food sustainably, and enough scientific understanding to prevent or treat many diseases that once killed hundreds of millions of people.

We’ve created artificial intelligence, edited genes, manufactured increasingly sophisticated weapons, and moved dollars by the billions around the planet at the speed of light.  Yet we’ve not ensured that every infant and child has adequate food, clean water, basic health care, education, and a safe place to sleep.  And we don’t seem to mind. 

We are a social species capable of cooperation, coordination, and caregiving.  Our minds are even capable of wisdom.  Yet children keep dying before their parents - the greatest of all human tragedies.  Just the fear of losing a child is terrorizing. 

It appears scarcity, as we commonly understand and respond to it, is the product of our culture and social institutions. It is not an individual medical diagnosis.  But it is destructive patterns of thinking: Fear that there isn’t enough.  Suspicion that someone else will take what we need.  A perceived need – then willingness to compete - even when cooperation could leave everyone better off.

The irony? We have become remarkably sophisticated at producing things and remarkably unsophisticated at organizing ourselves to meet even the most basic human needs.

We put a robot on Mars, but getting food to a hungry child on Earth requires a committee, three budgets, five approvals, and then a miracle.  We need to examine the disease before prescribing more of the same medicine.

Scarcity is not Real. It is only in our minds.  Droughts can destroy crops. Wars will disrupt food supplies. Poverty prevents people from purchasing necessities even when those necessities are available. Climate change threatens ecosystems and livelihoods.  Some minerals, habitats, and other resources are genuinely limited here on earth.  But Neil deGrasse Tyson rightfully argues that space contains vast mineral and energy resources and accessing them could reduce conflicts over what limited resources we might have on Earth.  

If we wisely chose to sustainably use our existing resources humanity while developing the technology to access resources beyond Earth, almost no limits would apply.

Currently, the world’s resources are not distributed fairly.  Because food exists somewhere doesn’t mean a hungry person can obtain it. The fact that medical treatments exist does not mean a poor family can afford them.

There is, however, an enormous difference between acknowledging a genuine shortage and treating scarcity as the permanent condition of human existence.

Plus, a difference between having limited resources and choosing to devote enormous resources to wasteful or destructive activities that leave fundamental human needs unmet.   Consider what humanity spends on military competition, political campaigns, luxury consumption, and protecting accumulated wealth. Some of those expenditures serve legitimate purposes. But rarely do our priorities reflect our actual needs.

We have learned to count dollars with remarkable precision. We have been less successful at counting the human lives saved by prevention, the suffering avoided through cooperation, and the economic value of a healthy environment. And now we are all paying the price for microplastics.

Why do we measure what we spend more carefully than the costs we could save from prevention?  That is not an accounting problem. It’s a wisdom problem.

The Mental Health and Economic Wealth in a Scarcity-Driven World

We are a reactionary species.  That once served us well.  Fear often alerts us to danger.  But it’s destructive when it convinces us that everyone else is a threat. Anyone who believes there is never enough may hoard, distrust, dominate, or constantly compare themselves with others. Communities can do the same. So can corporations, political parties, or entire nations.

The symptoms are familiar:

• Competition for wealth, influence, attention, and political power, even when cooperation would produce greater benefits.
• Fear of outsiders, as though helping another community must weaken our own.
• Endless arguments over who deserves assistance, while insufficient attention goes to preventing the conditions that make assistance necessary.
• An obsession with short-term gains at the expense of future savings and future generations.
• The belief that security comes primarily from defeating potential adversaries rather than reducing the conditions that produce conflict.

These patterns can resemble the behavior of an anxious individual who cannot stop worrying about losing what they have.  Or, at the collective level, we call it a scarcity mentality.

It is dark humor to admit that humanity has developed nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization yet struggle to develop the collective self-control required to keep everyone reasonably safe.  

We have mastered the technology of destruction faster than the psychology of cooperation. And that should worry us all given the current evolution of AI.

This does not mean that every disagreement, ambition, or competitive activity is unhealthy. Competition can encourage creativity and excellence. Governments must make difficult choices. Individuals need personal boundaries, financial security, and a health environment.

The greatest problems now arises when competition becomes our default response to interdependence - when fear repeatedly defeats opportunities for mutual benefit.

There is Scarcity.  And we should Worry deeply about it:   It is the shortage of qualities that would allow us to use those resources wisely.

First, a scarcity of unity. We share one atmosphere, interconnected economies, oceans, supply chains, and a microbial world that respects no national border. Yet we organize much of our thinking around competing national, political, religious, and economic identities. And then defending them with mass destruction.  We are connected in the real world yet divided in our mind’s and imagination.

Second, a scarcity of love for nature. We depend on functioning ecosystems for food, water, clean air, pollination, and countless other necessities. Yet we often treat the natural world as though it were an inexhaustible warehouse with free disposal services. The bill eventually arrives, and nature does not accept excuses.

Third, scarcity of empathy. We can see suffering in real time on our phones, then swipe to a cat video. There is nothing wrong with enjoying cats. They are excellent at providing perspective. But our ability to witness suffering has grown much faster than our ability to respond constructively.

Fourth, a scarcity of wisdom. Science and knowledge tell us what we can do.  Religion and wisdom asks whether we should do it, and the consequences that are likely to follow.  We rarely consider how our decisions affect the larger system. We have more information than ever, yet still manage to confuse technological progress with human progress.

Fifth, a scarcity of trust. Without self-evident objective Truths, there can be no trust.  Making cooperation difficult and expensive. Every agreement requires more safeguards, all  institution faces greater suspicion, and every collective project becomes a contest over motives.  Some skepticism is healthy. Permanent suspicion is exhausting and unsustainable.

Sixth, scarcity of prevention. We spend enormous effort responding to crises after crisis. Even as they become more expensive, dangerous, and heartbreaking.  We are far less consistent about investing in the conditions that prevent disease, violence, environmental damage, and poverty in the first place.

Seventh, a scarcity of humility. We are so certain our own group understands the problem and that the other group is the problem.  If only others would recognize our superior wisdom, everything would improve. Naturally, everyone else has the same thought.

Maybe the first step toward wisdom is admitting that none of us has a monopoly on it.

We Have Solutions. We simply lack sufficient cooperation.

Humanity has already demonstrated what collective action can accomplish.

The eradication of smallpox showed that countries, scientists, health workers, and international institutions can cooperate to eliminate a devastating disease that took more lives in the first 80 yrs of the 20^th Century, than all the wars, revolutions, genocides, and murders combined…during the entire century. 

The global effort against polio has brought that virus to the brink of eradication. International scientific collaboration has accelerated protecting the ozone, the development of vaccines, improved food production, and expanded access to information.

These accomplishments did not happen because the world suddenly became free of disagreement or selfishness. They happened because people found sufficient common purpose to work together and use unambiguous words to engineer solutions.

The distinction between ambiguous words like peace, democracy, or terrorism vs unambiguous words like health, prevention, interdependence, and responsibility greatly matters.

We do not have to eliminate every conflict of interest before cooperating. But we must all recognize where our interests overlap.  Then build institutions capable of acting on that recognition.

The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals offer one framework for doing so. They connect poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, clean water, energy, economic opportunity, climate, biodiversity, justice, and international partnerships into a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic plan. These are not 17 unrelated problems competing for 17 separate pots of money. They are the interconnected dimensions of human and planetary well-being

Clean water improves health. Education expands opportunities. Economic security can reduce vulnerability. Healthy ecosystems sustain food supplies. Strong institutions help communities manage disagreements without violence. Progress in one area can reinforce progress in others.

The challenge is to stop treating every problem as an isolated emergency and start recognizing the system in which the problems arise.

Imagine what could happen if governments, businesses, universities, nonprofits, service organizations, and community groups aligned more of their efforts around shared goals. Affordable, measurable, and achievable goals when communities unite and choose their priorities.  This is possible if they can agree on a list of half a dozen of the 169 subgoals within the 17 SDGs. 

Imagine less competition over who gets credit and more cooperation over who gets results.

Imagine organizations sharing knowledge instead of guarding their territory, and funders rewarding measurable prevention rather than waiting for a catastrophe to attract attention.

This would most likely save money, enabling more progress with the government budget. 

What a radical concept: preventing an expensive problem before paying to manage it. 

The Real Meaning of Abundance:  Abundance does not mean that everyone can have everything they want without harmful consequences for others.

Abundance can mean recognizing that we already possess extraordinary capacities to meet many essential needs, with much left for personal and community growth, provided resources are intelligently used, opportunities distributed more fairly, and waste reduction maximized, with cooperation across borders and physical boundaries. 

It means recognizing that some of our most valuable resources are renewable - in a different sense from oil or minerals. 

Knowledge grows when shared. Trust grows through truth and repeated cooperation. Skills can be taught. Scientific discoveries can benefit millions. Compassion can inspire action. A successful public-health intervention can prevent suffering far beyond the original investment. 

Love, wisdom, and unity are not commodities that must be taken from one person to give to another.  In many circumstances, the more we cultivate them, the more we have.

That is a very different model of wealth. A model of healthy wealth.

It also suggests that the solution to scarcity is not simply to produce more. We may need to produce more food, energy, or housing. At other times, we need to waste less, share better, change incentives, or stop destroying the natural systems on which abundance depends.

And sometimes we just need to change the way we think.

 

A Prescription for a Healthier World

If scarcity thinking is our collective illness, what would recovery look like?

First, we should distinguish genuine shortages from shortages created or intensified by poverty, waste, inequality, conflict, and poor organization.

Second, we should put prevention closer to the center of public policy. Healthy people, healthy communities, and healthy ecosystems are not luxuries to be pursued after the economy is doing well. They are foundations of a resilient and healthy economy.

Third, we should measure success by more than financial returns, military strength, or political victories.  Countries should use the SDGs not the GDP.  We should ask whether our decisions improve the health of people and nature, now and in the future.

Fourth, cooperation should make easier. Shared goals, transparent information, partnerships, and accountable institutions can help people work together even when they disagree about other matters.

 Finally, we should make room for a little humility and humor. We are a clever species, but cleverness does not automatically produce wisdom. Sometimes we need to laugh at our own contradictions before we can see them clearly.

 We could begin each major policy debate with three questions:

1. What human or environmental needs are we trying to meet?
2. What are the root causes of the problem, and how much can we prevent?
3. How can we work with others to achieve the greatest shared benefit?

 These questions will not solve every problem. But they may help us spend less time fighting over the symptoms and more time addressing the causes.

 From Scarcity to Shalom

I have come to think that the health of our world depends on recognizing how interconnected everything is: the health of mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment, government, and economy.

When one part deteriorates, the others are vulnerable.

A society cannot remain healthy indefinitely while neglecting the mental and physical health of its people, degrading its natural systems, or allowing preventable suffering to become routine.

 Nor can we build lasting security simply by making ourselves stronger or richer than everyone else.  Our best security depends on reducing the threats that affect us all.

Perhaps this is one way to understand shalom: not merely the absence of war, but a condition of well-being, wholeness, and right relationships.

It is an ambitious vision. But the alternative of spending enormous resources treating preventable crises while insisting that we cannot afford to prevent them is simply unsustainable…and thus, insane.

 We must be truthful about the consequences of how we use our resources. The world does not lack every resource it needs. It does not lack every solution. It does not lack people who care, scientists who understand, or communities willing to help.

 It only lacks is the unity, wisdom, political will, and institutional cooperation to bring those assets together at the scale required.   That is the scarcity worth addressing.

 And it begins with a simple recognition: We do not need a perfect world to start building a healthier one. We need to stop treating our divisions as inevitable and our shared problems as somebody else’s responsibility.  Each of us can make a difference in our family, community, and environment.

 These are enough challenges and opportunities to keep us busy without inventing additional reasons to fight.

 We have enough intelligence and even Artificial Intelligence to create astonishing technologies. We just need the wisdom to use them well.

 We already have enough resources to make substantial progress. Now we need the will to organize them around human and planetary needs.

 And if we can learn to cooperate in the face of shared threats, we may discover that the greatest shortage was never simply a shortage of things.  It was a shortage of us working together.

 Perhaps the world’s most urgent health initiative should begin with a checkup on our collective state of mind.  And don’t believe everything you think.  Especially when you think there isn’t enough to go around.

 

Enough said? Let's do something wise.

 

"One thing is sure, a great change of our psychological attitude is imminent. That is certain." And why? "Because we need more -- we need more psychology. We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil." Carl Jung  1959, BBC's Face to Face TV series aired a 40-minute interview with Carl Jung at the old age of 84 years old--18 months before his death.

"Today the most important thing, in my view, is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some kind of perpetual motion.  It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions.  It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world.  Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning." President Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic. September, 1997?

"It is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man's greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes" - Carl Jung

United we stand a chance against the coming chaos.  Divided we are greatly endangered.

Below is a Wpost opinion piece...and my longer personal story linked to weaponized smallpox that John Bolton did not mention in his excellent take on what may be humanities greatest - and most immediate threat... now accelerated by AI.   

Oct 14 (Wednesday), 2026  Washington Post Opinion page.

 

“John Bolton: How the U.S. should respond to Russia’s plague incident

Even if initial worries prove unfounded, history shows Moscow cannot be trusted regarding biowarfare.”  (a 6-minute read)

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/10/13/russian-plague-death-should-prompt-us-biowarfare-review/

 

By John R. Bolton  (Former ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and national security adviser under President Donald Trump.)

 

The recent death of Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old Russian laboratory technician, of pneumonic plague raised worldwide concerns because of her workplace: the Irkutsk Antiplague Institute of Siberia. With the covid pandemic in mind, the public focused on whether another such crisis could be upon the world. Moscow asserts there is no cause for alarm. But Russia’s record for veracity is hardly encouraging.

 

Despite having only information provided by Russian officials, U.S. Centers for Disease Control Director Erica Schwartz said last week that the “threat to the United States is extremely low.” President Donald Trump downplayed the possibility that the episode might be linked to biowarfare research, saying, “We’re going to find out soon enough, but we don’t think so.”

 

Taking a more cautious approach to Moscow’s assurances would be advisable, especially in light of important lessons from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its possible connection to Chinese bioweapons research. Even purely epidemiological research can provide findings highly relevant to sophisticated bioweapons capabilities. Notably, the Trump administration’s 2026 intelligence-community threat assessment states expressly that “Russia’s scientists continue developing new CBW” — chemical-biological-warfare — “capabilities,” and that “China probably possesses CBW capabilities that threaten U.S., allied, and partner forces as well as civilian populations.”

 

Worries about another pandemic are warranted, but so, too, are worries about Russian and Chinese threats to U.S. national security. Even if initial apprehensions prove unfounded, the Irkutsk incident should be treated as a red flag, not a false alarm. There is a long history that should not be ignored.

 

Kanatjan Alibekov, from 1988 until his 1992 defection from Russia, was a top official at Biopreparat whose “primary function was to develop and produce weapons made from the most dangerous viruses, toxins and bacteria known to man.” His 1999 memoir, “Biohazard” (published under his Americanized name, Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman), remains basic reading for understanding Russian biowarfare research.

 

Journalist Judith Miller and her co-authors advanced the story in 2001 with “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War.” They demonstrate, for example, how much Washington learned after the Soviet Union’s collapse, such as at “the premier Soviet germ factory” at Stepnogorsk, in newly independent Kazakhstan, with its facilities and scientists fully available to the West.

 

Moscow expended considerable time and effort to recover from losing so many resources and talents, but recover it did, as the U.S. intelligence community confirms. Of course, not every Russian biology lab engages in weapons-related activity. Nonetheless, governments with illicit weapons-of-mass-destruction programs — nuclear and chemical as well as biological — routinely conduct activities in plain sight that can have both a legitimate civilian application and a military one. As more-sophisticated research becomes increasingly sensitive, and “dual use” explanations less plausible if not impossible, more precautions are taken. Actual weaponization work is as fully concealed as possible.

 

Interestingly, the Irkutsk antiplague facility’s website says it also studies brucellosis, anthrax and tularemia, all of which have been researched over decades for potential biowarfare use. The institute also acknowledges its work in biodefense research, particularly against bioterrorism. This “defensive” activity may be entirely legitimate under the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, to which both Russia and China subscribe, just as the United States and many other nations do.

 

The problem is that, scientifically, purely defensive research is hard to distinguish from offensive research, and defensive research can readily advance more threatening work elsewhere. For countries that take treaty obligations seriously, this is not an issue. Rogue states, however, sign arms-control agreements and then violate them at will, using “defensive research” as a dodge. Indeed, one reason President George W. Bush’s administration rejected a draft verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention is that biological programs are inherently unverifiable. As the saying, sometimes apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill, goes, the only countries that comply with arms-control agreements are countries you don’t need arms-control agreements with.

 

Today’s fear of the expanding weapons spectrum, from drone technology to artificial intelligence’s perhaps existential threat, should not distract us from the hard reality of already-existing threats. Moscow’s gray-zone warfare in Europe — exemplified in August by a failed attack on Germany’s Leipzig airport using an explosives-laden drone, which German officials blamed on Russia — should be another red flag. It has long been known that properly prepared, aerosolized biowarfare agents can be spread by innocent-appearing crop-duster airplanes, or, now, by drones.

 Merely demanding more “transparency” from Russia, as the World Health Organization is doing, is far from sufficient. We simply do not have, and probably will not have, enough information to draw firm conclusions. We do know enough that the Irkutsk incident should not be left unexamined, even if the current White House is extraordinarily considerate of Vladimir Putin’s wishes.

 Instead, the relevant congressional committees should conduct systematic reviews of both the global bioweapons threat to America and the adequacy of U.S. defenses. That review should include the national-security implications of U.S. taxpayer funds being granted to foreign research institutions, to avoid subsidizing America’s enemies. Time is short.

 (135 comments so far. None mentioned weaponized smallpox)

 My response below.    (For those who dislike long detailed reads…please retain these 18 words.  ‘Keep people and nature healthy.  Don’t believe everything you think.  Unite in making close friends and fewer enemies.’   And if you have any editing suggestions... please offer them  - chuck@igc.org

Biological Weapons, Global Interdependence and Our Deficit of Wisdom:  By a former issues director for the Global Health Council (originally National Council for International Health) then the World Federal Association for 4 more years.

 John Bolton’s warning in his October 13 Washington Post opinion piece, “After Russia’s Plague Incident, US Readiness Needs Urgent Review,” deserves more serious attention. The former U.S. ambassador to the UN and the US national security adviser made a very compelling and accurate case for reassessing America’s vulnerability to biological weapons. But his warning raises a larger question: After decades of expert warnings, why does our government continue to treat global health security primarily as a national defense problem rather than a shared human responsibility?

I have been raising these concerns for decades. In 1996 and 1997, I gave congressional testimony about the threats posed by the inevitability of biological weapons and the inadequacy of our responses.   As issues director for two national organizations focused on human and national security, and elected as member of the American Public Health Association’s Action Board, I saw the dangers of treating global health threats as secondary to conventional national security concerns even by US intelligence agencies.

Even their warnings were largely ignored. And still are. 

Smallpox provided a valuable lesson.   Before Ken Alibek published his 1999 memoir, Biohazard, I interviewed him face-to-face in Virginia. Alibek, formerly the second-in-command of the Soviet Union’s Biopreparat biological weapons program, described work that should have permanently changed how we think about national security and US foreign policy.

 His account of Soviet efforts to weaponize smallpox was especially frightening. Smallpox had been eradicated through an extraordinary international public health campaign, officially certified by the World Health Organization in 1980. That virus had killed more people in just the last 70 years of the last century than all the wars, genocides and murders combined over that entire century. Yet, according to Alibek and subsequent accounts of the Soviet program, Soviet scientists continued developing smallpox as a weapon even after eradication. And upping its fatality rate in unvaccinated populations that was commonly around 30 percent.  Alibek described efforts to make the virus infect and kill even more people.  The most extreme claims about engineered increased fatality rates have not been independently verified, but the underlying lesson is unmistakable: scientific advances to understand or control disease can also be redirected at weaponization.

 The Soviet program was not a historical curiosity. Research published by experts on biological weapons documents the scale of the former Soviet program, including its work on smallpox, plague and other pathogens. After the Soviet Union collapsed, questions arose about the security of its facilities, the fate of its stockpiles and the risk that scientific expertise or dangerous materials being spread beyond official controls.

The danger went beyond a government deliberately launching a biological attack. It was how a pathogen, research capability, and basic knowledge to weaponize a pathogen - might escape the systems intended to contain it.  Accidents and wars happen.

 The Iraqi warning signs came from the first Gulf War in 1991.  It provided a disturbing example after the conflict following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.   U.S. intelligence reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed immunity to smallpox, a disease that had not circulated naturally in Iraq for decades. Other reporting raised questions about Iraq’s biological weapons ambitions and its interest in smallpox and even camelpox.

 These findings did not establish that Iraq possessed a deployable stockpile of weaponized smallpox. They did, however, raise questions that deserved sustained investigation. A 2002 Washington Post report revisited intelligence assessments and allegations concerning smallpox and several countries, including Iraq.  And the US needed to prepare for the possibility that biological weapons, even smallpox could be used against its forces and civilian population.

Larger questions remained: What if a regime facing military defeat decided to use a biological weapon?  Or, its release unintentionally during the chaos of war?

 I’ve not yet seen any public or political accounting of how close the world might have come to such a catastrophe during that conflict. We cannot know whether Saddam Hussein considered using a weaponized pathogen.  Were we lucky that no accident occurred? What could have been the consequences had a contagious disease like smallpox escaped into a largely susceptible population. These are important yet unresolved questions. 

 The US also has a troubling history of contributing to dangers it later confronts. During the 1980s, the United States supplied Iraq with biological materials for research, including materials with potential dual-use applications. The US also provided Iraq with dual-use assistance and precursor chemicals that contributed to Saddam Hussein’s regime use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Iraqi Kurds. These historical facts underscore the risks of supporting a government for short-term strategic reasons without adequately considering how the capabilities supplied might ultimately be used.

 

The lesson goes beyond the transfer of scientific knowledge being dangerous. First, the distinction between defensive and offensive applications is less certain than what policymakers intend for us to believe.

 Second is the inevitable limits of bio and cyber security.   Bolton is right emphasizing the difficulty of determining the origins and purposes of biological research. A laboratory ‘gain of function’ research of a dangerous pathogen may be trying to prevent an epidemic, develop treatments or improve vaccines. Much of the same underlying knowledge can also be misused.

 

Third, the most sophisticated intelligence services cannot guarantee that every dangerous program will be discovered, every stockpile accounted for, or every scientist and institution acting responsibly.  Nor can border controls and military deterrence guarantee protection against every naturally occurring outbreak, laboratory accident, or deliberate release.

Cybersecurity faces related problems. Software vulnerabilities evolve, attackers adapt, and defensive systems cannot guarantee that every intrusion will be prevented. Biological and cyber threats are not identical, but both demonstrate the limits of trying to secure complex, interconnected systems through defensive measures alone.

In this sense, bio and cyber security are oxymorons.  And sustainable security is a delusion.  Nations depending on strong defenses, effective intelligence, international verification, responsible research standards, and emergency preparedness are going broke in this reactionary mode. Preemptive or offensive efforts will only perpetuate this dilemma or make things worse.   

Preventing, or at least reducing conditions that encourage people and governments to turn their capabilities against others is an economic and security necessity.

 

We must transform ‘peace through strength’ into ‘security through cooperation’.  Since the invention of nuclear weapons, our foreign policies should have placed far greater emphasis on making close and caring friends.  And far fewer vengeful enemies.   Yet, national sovereignty and the delusion of independence remains our dominant global organizing principle of international affairs. Governments understandably seek to protect their populations.  But the pursuit of security through competition instead of kindness, compassion, and cooperation is necessary to protect everyone and our life support systems .

 

Viruses don’t recognize national borders. Neither do many of the consequences of cyberattacks, environmental degradation, economic instability, terrorist attacks, or war. A pathogen released in one country can become a threat to the entire world. A cyberattack on critical infrastructure can disrupt systems far beyond its original target. Environmental damage in one region can undermine food security and public health elsewhere.

Our independence is therefore limited by our irreversible interdependence. We may declare sovereignty, build walls, stockpile weapons and prepare for adversaries, but none of these measures can make us independent of the health and stability of the wider human family and our any civilized social species sustainability.

 

And in our era where almost anything can be and has been weaponized - disarmament is not an option. Even if governments eliminated existing weapons, dangerous knowledge would remain, and new technologies could create new ways to cause unprecedented harm. The challenge is not to eliminate weapon, but to develop the institutions, relationships, and shared commitments that make their creation and use far less likely.

 

After World War II the nations involved agreed there should not be another world war, genocide, or use of WMD.  But those in power decided to protect national sovereignty (independence) instead of ensuring the protection of 30 universal human rights that most nations did agree on.   Nations now in power are unlikely to ever enforce those rights. But we have the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals that could be our best  global security strategy.  These offer a framework for systemically, comprehensively, holistically, and synergistically addressing our growing interconnected threats. They encompass health, education, food security, poverty, inequality, environmental sustainability, effective institutions and international cooperation.

 

These goals are often discussed as a development agenda, separate from national security. That separation is a profound mistake.  Strong public health systems prevent or help detect outbreaks before they spread. International cooperation makes it easier to quickly share vital information, build trust and respond adequately to emergencies.

Effective transparent institutions can reduce corruption and improve accountability. Education and economic opportunities will help communities withstand instability and build resilience.  Environmental protection reduces risks to the natural systems on which human health and food security depend.

 

No single goal can accomplish these things alone. The goals are interdependent, just as the threats they are meant to address are interdependent.  This is why I have long argued that prevention deserves a much higher priority than crisis response. Humankind will never eliminate every threat, but united we can reduce the vulnerabilities that make disasters more likely and their consequences more severe.

 

The SDGs are not a substitute for intelligence, laboratories, military readiness or responsible oversight of biotechnology or AI. They are a framework for growing and strengthening the social, institutional and environmental foundations on which sustainable security and maximum prosperity depends.

 

Bolton concludes with a warning “time is short”. I agree. But I would add that we have a deficit of wisdom.

 

For decades, we’ve known that the technologies capable of improving human life can also threaten it. We’ve known that personal and national security cannot be separated from global health. We’ve known that scientific knowledge crosses borders and that a disaster anywhere can become a danger everywhere.

 

Yet we continue to devote enormous resources to preparing for conflict while underinvesting in preventing the conditions that produce it.

 

Our collective choice is not between national defense and global cooperation.  We need both. The choice is whether we recognize that defense alone cannot yield lasting security in our interdependent world.  Thus, our highest priority must be the health of people and nature: healthy minds, bodies, families, communities, sustainable environments, and institutions capable of working together across national boundaries.

That requires a change in the way we define security. Instead of making national independence our ultimate objective, we must acknowledge our shared dependence on a healthy and stable world.

The biological imperative is clear: Make more friends and far fewer enemies. Prevent what we can. Cooperate where we must. And stop confusing the ability to retaliate against a threat with the ability to prevent one. 

We have the scientific knowledge to understand these dangers. We must engineer an international framework to begin addressing them. What we lack is the collective political will to put human survival ahead of rivalries that endanger all of us.

Time is short. But our deficit of wisdom is our greatest threat. 

Our centuries three greatest murderers and the Unabomber.

 

 

This morning I woke up thinking the three most evil men in the world were nuclear powered Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump.  Each basically mass murderers of innocent people, holding the path to future chaos in their warped minds, with no individual willing to stop their insane logic while ignoring the evolution of weaponry and war.  The previous evening my wife and I watched the 'Unabomber' movie with “Ted Kaczynski”. Now we have a greater threat he tried to warn us about. 

It was between 1998 and 2002, as Issues Director of the World Federalist Association (a US NGO committed to establishing enforceable ‘world law’ instead of another suicidal ‘world war’ with nuclear, biological, chemical, cyber, or nano forms of WMD.  Back then I was privileged to visit nearly a dozen key US Congressional Districts urging citizens to lobby their policy makers to fund a more humane foreign policy.  The evolution of war and weapons was accelerating.  The hope was to end the insanity of our nation’s ‘Peace through Strength’ mentality - and instead prioritize 'peace through justice, the protection of human rights, and the environment via investments in global health, with a focus on prevention. 

At each presentation I began with a sincere apology.  My baby boomer generation had failed to heed the clear warnings of threats in the year 2000 - offered in the 1980 summary of President Carter’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger.  Next I showed one PowerPoint slide.  It was a simple graph - with three lines representing the future.  The first line was curved upward representing the exponential growth of technology.  The second, our Pleistocene species linear thinking capacity - heading up diagonally underneath the curve.  The third represented government change. It was a flatline until the attacks on 9-11 - then a blip at 2002 representing the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  During the 1990 decade our world went from having 'superpower' nations to superpowered individuals. And Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult, and Osama Bin Ladin birthed in a new era of accelerating and likely catastrophic threats.   

It was Ted Kaczynski’s choice of a mail delivered weapon however, that made me glad he was a mathematician and not a biologist. But I was imagining the possibility of people in the future looking back at him and thinking his 1995 manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, and making him a profit of the down fall of our civilization. His ranted and criticized about how our modern technological systems would diminish human autonomy, concentrate power, and make individuals increasingly dependent on systems they cannot control.  And that's where we are now.

His most striking predictions are now central to AI debates.  Machines making decisions humans cannot fully understand. He anticipated a society in which technical systems become so complex that people increasingly defer to machines, eventually becoming dependent on them.

Loss of human autonomy. He argued that technological systems could progressively constrain individual freedom, even as individual technologies offer substantial benefits.

Concentration of power. He envisioned a future in which a relatively small elite controls powerful technologies while much of the population loses economic importance.

Dependence that becomes difficult to reverse. He recognized that societies can become so dependent on their technologies that abandoning them is no longer a practical option.

 

These were not merely abstract concerns. They overlap with current discussions about AI-driven unemployment, surveillance, the concentration of AI capabilities in a few competing companies and governments, and the possibility that future AI systems could become difficult if not impossible to supervise.

 

Was Kaczynski's central error treating technological progress as a system that could not be meaningfully reformed?  He advocated destroying the industrial-technological system rather than developing institutions capable of governing it.  We may already be too late for that given the lack of any enforceable trust in governments or corporations.

 

Technology does undermine freedom, but could also expand it. Is it worth the risk?  Medical advances, communications, scientific discovery, and improvements in living standards have saved lives and increased human capabilities. But we prioritize weapons development and their perpetual evolution. This will not end well. 

 

The question is how can we reliably govern technology, who benefits from it, and if we will all bear its costs.

 

History, if it exists 20 years from now, may see him as the prophet of AGI – and regard him as an early prophet of technological dependence - while others will see his work as a warning that contained important insights and destructive conclusions.

 

But Kaczynski wasn’t the only person to foresee the risks of advanced machinery or artificial intelligence. Other thinkers and computer scientists raised concerns about intelligent machines, automation, and loss of human control. Even his connecting technological dependence to loss of individual freedom and failing social cooperation.

 

No one really knows exactly when AGI will arrive, what capabilities it will possess, or whether its most alarming potential outcomes will occur.

 

Unfortunately, we may have already passed the tipping point of prevention having ignored the irreversible interdependence of all human and natural systems now for centuries.   

The most useful lesson now is not that Kaczynski was right about everything. It’s that we must urgently address the social and psychological consequences of powerful technologies ASAP.  Humankind has already become dangerously dependent on them.

We need quickly ask and answer three questions:

1.  How do we preserve human agency when machines can outperform people at more and more tasks?
2.  How do we prevent a small number of corporations or governments from exercising disproportionate control over technologies that affect everyone?
3. How do we distribute the benefits of AI so that technological progress improves the health and well-being of individuals, families, communities, and humanity as a whole?

One suggestion offered today by a C-span listener who called in, “put all data energy centers on water - in lakes and oceans. Then sink them if needed.

AGI is coming. And our linear minds and constipated governments are not ready.  

Kaczynski's most valuable contribution is ultimately warning us of the problem.  We must start finding solutions. We need not reject technology and the progress possible.  Can human agency alone be relied on to dictate the future of humanity?

The greatest question now appears to be - can we pursue humane, democratic, preventive solutions before we lose the capacity – because of our own stupidity of ignoring the solutions humankind has always had but refused to prioritize.  Keeping our human family and nature healthy, and stop believing everything we think…then defending outdated concepts now leading us to our extinction - before AGI does.

 

Two OCT 7th anniversaries are forever wars. Oct 7, 2001 & Oct 7, 2023

Our addiction to oil and support for Israel has the US locked into a permeant state of conflict, constitutional dilemmas, divisive politics, plus unsustainable debt related to defense spending with a powerful mental resistance to change.   

The historical record of the 9/11 Commission specifically documented Osama bin Laden’s (OBL) grievances over U.S. military presence in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel. It also emphasizes his religious-extremist ideology.  But few American minds consider OBL’s specific reasons related to US presence in Saudi Arabia with its Muslim holy sites or the persistent suffering and deaths of innocent Muslims due to US and Israel weapons and foreign/security policy in the region from the first gulf war and arming Saddam Hussain before that.   

US foreign policy differences between Afghanistan and Iraq are clear. But post-9/11 wars eventually cost about $8 trillion, over 4000 American service members lives (not counting contractors), and about 200,000 Muslims. 

The reason for military action by US and allied forces in Afghanistan on Oct 7, 2001, was to deal with OBL.  While the invasion of Iraq was sparked in 2003 by false claims about Iraq’s nuclear weapons of mass destruction.  Saddam did have chemical WMD and there was evidence he also had Biological WMD…because he got them from the US and used them against his own people and his 10-year war with Iran (an enemy of the US during that time). 

But having a strong US military presence in Iraq, the center of the oil rich Middle East, was an asset for future needs.  That invasion and occupation, however, was like hitting a hornet’s nest without considering other consequences.

October 7: The Connections We Keep Missing.  And now two painful anniversaries. October 7, 2023, Hamas and other armed groups launched a devastating attack on Israel. More than 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were abducted. The United Nations has documented the deliberate attacks on civilians and other grave violations committed that day. (United Nations Digital Library⁠)  New reports have now surfaced confirming that Israel’s leader had been warned - several times by different Middle East nations, days ahead of that horrific attack.  If this is true, Bebe had his reasons. And those reasons match with his nation’s extremists and illegal actions in the Wast Bank and taking Lebanese land bordering his nation.  Isreal’s extremists appear to believe the Bible is a real-estate manual.  

Twenty-five years ago today, on October 7, 2001, the United States and its allies began military operations in Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks.

These two events are separated by 22 years and thousands of miles. But they belong in the same conversation. But Hamas is not al-Qaeda.  And not because Israel’s actions, America’s actions, or the actions of any other government can be reduced to a single explanation.  And certainly not because the murder of civilians can ever be justified by the grievances of those who commit it.  

The connection is deeper.  Violence does not occur in a vacuum. It begins in the minds of men.

What did the US learn from 9/11?  The 9/11 Commission found that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda drew upon several grievances that were widely felt in parts of the Muslim world, including opposition to the presence of U.S. forces in the Middle East and U.S. support for Israel. Those grievances were combined with an extremist religious ideology and turned into a strategy of terrorism. (9/11 Commission⁠)  Understanding those grievances does not excuse terrorism. But it does explain why prevention of terrorism requires more than military retaliation.

After 9/11, the US war in Afghanistan, and two years later, the invasion of Iraq led to enormous human and financial consequences. Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that the US appropriated or obligated approximately $8 trillion for the post-9/11 wars through fiscal year 2022, including military operations, homeland security, interest on war borrowing and veterans’ care. Its estimate for the Afghanistan war alone is approximately $2.3 trillion. (Watson Institute⁠)

And the costs were not merely financial. Millions of people were killed directly or indirectly, and tens of millions were displaced across the broader post-9/11 war zones. (Costs of War⁠)

Then came Iraq.  That experience has forced us to understand that we are not preventing violence.  But in fact repeatedly creating the conditions for the next rounds of it. 

And now, Iran.  Another war of choice involving the US, Israel and Iran. Now metalizing into other Middle East nations makes US and the world’s addiction to oil even costlier and self-evident.  The stated issues include Iran’s nuclear capabilities and regional security. But disrupted oil supplies have demonstrated again how tight security, energy, economics and geopolitics are interconnected. (Reuters⁠)

This doesn’t prove oil is the reason for the war. It does demonstrate something we should have learned long ago:  Energy security, national security, human security, food security, economic/religious/political extremist ideology, and environmental security cannot be separated.  When we treat these as separate problems, we repeatedly discover our global interdependence and our flawed national and global governance systems

What we keep missing is the October 7 Lesson is we do NOT need to become better at war.  Given the evolution of war, weapons, and WMD we must rapidly become better at prevention. 

When people live under occupation, repression, extreme poverty, environmental destruction, political exclusion, or chronic insecurity, those conditions become fertile ground for radicalization, violence and despair.

It doesn’t mean everyone experiencing injustice becomes violent. Luckily, most don’t. But some will.  And weapons can be created from every technology.  From bio, chem, nano, cyber, airplanes, cars, truck, shipping containers, and even drones.   

If we are serios about reducing violence, we must address the conditions in which violence becomes more likely.  That requires protecting human rights, protecting nature’s systems upon which human life depends, reducing poverty and extreme inequality.  It requires functioning governments and accountable institutions. It requires diplomacy before bombs.

And it requires something many have always talked about but those in power have never adequately built: a genuinely effective global legal system capable of investigating and prosecuting mass murder, terrorism, crimes against humanity and other grave violations of international law or environmental sustainability.

This is the only alternative to endless retaliation.  There is a profound difference between justice and vengeance. Justice seeks accountability through law.  Vengeance seeks security through punishment.

Justice asks:  Who committed the crime?  What evidence establishes responsibility?

How can the perpetrators be brought before a legitimate court?

How can the conditions that make the next crime more likely be changed?

War too often asks a different question: How much force can we bring to bear?

Twenty-five years after 9/11, and three years after October 7, perhaps it is time to ask whether humanity has been heading in the right direction with the right questions.

The US and its allies possess extraordinary military power.  But military power and walls cannot eliminate hatred that originates in the mind.  It cannot bomb poverty out of existence or destroy an ideology by destroying its adherents.  It cannot make a damaged ecosystem healthy or create lasting security without addressing the human conditions that produce insecurity.

This is why I keep coming back to the same idea: Everything is connected, interdependent, and vulnerable.  With no exceptions. l

Health and Human rights are connected to security.  Security is connected to healthy economics. Healthy economics is connected to the environment.  A healthy environment is connected to public health.  Public health is connected to mental health.  Mental health is connected to social and community stability. And all of these translate into sustainability maximizing humankind’s freedoms and security from most threats we are now confronting today. .

That is why the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals matter. They were not designed as 17 separate projects. They are an attempt to recognize that humanity has a system of interdependent problems requiring an equally interdependent response.

October 7 should therefore be more than a day of remembering victims.  It should be a day of remembering connections.  The Israeli victims of October 7 deserve to be remembered. The Palestinian civilians killed and displaced in the wars that followed deserve to be remembered.  The Americans who died on September 11 deserve to be remembered. The Afghans, Iraqis, Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians and countless others caught in decades of conflict deserve to be remembered.  And the soldiers and families who have borne the physical and psychological costs of these wars deserve to be remembered. But remembrance without learning is not enough.

The question we must answer this anniversary is not ‘how do we defeat the next enemy?’  It’s ‘How do we prevent the next enemy from being created?’   That sounds like mission impossible.  But it is impossible for any civilization to survive, thrive and flourish civilization if we don’t start soon - building a healthier, safer world. 
In just ten words, Keep people and nature healthy. Don’t believe everything you think.

Above all, prevention is not weakness. Prevention is security.