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Who Is My Neighbour?
By John Scales Avery*
3 March 2016
Are we losing the human solidarity that will be needed if our global society is to solve the pressing problems that are facing us today?
**Donald Trump speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland | Author: Gage Skidmore | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
Among the symptoms of loss of solidarity is the drift towards violence, racism and aggressive foreign policy that can be seen in the United States.
Another warning symptom is the inhospitable reception that refugees have received in Europe and elsewhere.
Tribalism
Human emotional nature evolved over the long prehistory of our species, when our remote ancestors lived small tribes, competing for territory on the grasslands of Africa.
Since marriage within a tribe was much more frequent than marriage outside it, each tribe was genetically homogeneous, and the tribe itself, rather than the individual, acted as the unit upon which the forces of natural selection acted.
Those tribes that exhibited internal solidarity, combined with aggression towards competing tribes, survived best. Over a long period of time, tribalism became a hard-wired part of human nature. We can see tribalism today in the emotions involved in football matches, in nationalism, and in war.
The birth of ethics
When humans began to live in larger and more cosmopolitan groups, it was necessary to overwrite some elements of raw human emotional nature.
Tribalism became especially inappropriate, unless the scope of the perceived tribe could be extended to include everyone in the enlarged societies.
Thus ethical principles were born. It is not just a coincidence that the greatest ethical teachers of history lived at a time when the size of cooperating human societies was being enlarged.
All of the major religions of humanity contain some form of the Golden Rule.
Christianity contains an especially clear statement of this central ethical principle: According to the Gospel of Luke, after being told that he must love his neighbour as much as he loves himself, a man asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?”
Jesus then replies with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which we are told that our neighbour need not be a member of our own tribe, but can live far away and can belong to a completely different nation or ethnic group. Nevertheless, that person is still our neighbor, and deserves our love and care.
The central ethical principle which is stated so clearly in the Parable of the Good Samaritan is exactly what we need today to avoid disaster.
We must enlarge our loyalties to include the whole of humanity. We must develop a global ethic of comprehensive human solidarity, or else perish from a combination of advanced technology combined with primitive tribalism.
Space-age science is exceedingly dangerous when it is combined with stone-age politics.
The need for global solidarity comes from the instantaneous worldwide communication and economic interdependence that has resulted from advanced science and technology. But advanced technology, our almost miraculous ability to communicate through the Internet, Skype and smartphones, could weld the world into a single peaceful and cooperative unit. But we must learn to use global communication as a tool for developing worldwide human solidarity.
Each week, all over the world, congregations assemble and are addressed by their leaders on ethical issues. But all too often there is no mention of the astonishing and shameful contradiction between the institution of war (especially the doctrine of “massive retaliation”), and the principle of universal human brotherhood, loving and forgiving one’s enemies, and returning good for evil.
At a moment of history, when the continued survival of civilization is in doubt because of the incompatibility of war with the existence of thermonuclear weapons, our religious leaders ought to use their enormous influence to help to solve the problem of war, which is after all an ethical problem.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/johansen_jorgen
http://www.learndev.org/dl/SpaceAgeScienceStoneAgePolitics-Avery.pdf
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35053-an-open-letter-to-evangelical-trump-voters
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/donald-trump-us-election-2016-demagogue
http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/2/
http://www.countercurrents.org/boyle020316.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/01/dont-cry-me-america
https://www.washingtonpost.com/2016-election-results/super-tuesday/
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/01/yemen-humanitarian-pause-urgently-needed
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*John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London.
He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent book is Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century http://www.learndev.org/dl/Crisis21-Avery.pdf.
Don’t miss these articles by John Scales Avery in Human Wrongs Watch:
John Scales Avery – Collected Essays
The Urgent Need for Complete Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
Culture, Education and Human Solidarity
The United States Drifts Towards Political Irresponsibilty
Paris and the Long-Term Future
We Must Stop the Madness of Brinkmanship
Paris: A Sense of Proportions Is Urgently Needed
Book Review: Aurelio Peccei and Daisako Ikeda, “Before It Is Too Late”
The Need for a New Economic System – PART IX: a New Society, a New Social Contract, a New Way Life
The Need for a New Economic System – PART VIII: The Cooperative Movement
The Need for a New Economic System – PART VII: The Global Food Crisis
The Need for a New Economic System – PART VI: Adverse Effects of Globalization
The Need for a New Economic System – PART V: The Threats and Costs of War
The Need for a New Economic System – PART IV: Neocolonialism and Resource Wars
The Need for a New Economic System – PART II: Entropy and Economics
The Need for a New Economic System – PART I : Limits to Growth
Israel, Iran and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Will the Real Issues Be Discussed in 2016?
New Hope for Avoiding Catastrophic Climate Change
Albert Einstein, Scientist and Pacifist
“The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers”, by Richard Falk and David Krieger
Millay’s “Epitaph for the Race of Man”
The Future of International Law (Part I)
The Future of International Law (Part II)
The Future of International Law (Part III)
Europe Must Not Be Forced Into a Nuclear War with Russia
Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe – The Dangers Are Very Great Today
Why Is the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons So Urgent?
Why Is the Military-Industrial Complex Sometimes Called “The Devil’s Dynamo”?
Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand Is at Our Throats
Does It Make Sense to Saw Off the Branch on Which You Are Sitting?
Blood for Oil – The Close Relationship Between Petroleum and War
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Photo:
**Donald Trump speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland | Author: Gage Skidmore | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons
2016 Human Wrongs Watch
Source: http://human-wrongs-watch.net/2016/03/03/who-is-my-neighbour/
