A Code to Live By

A news analysis recently included an inappropriate metaphor. The “analyzer” wondered if in future we would be able to “shelter under the USA's nuclear umbrella.” The pressure is on to raise Canada's defence capability, to buy jet fighters, submarines, warships and to recruit more young people to join the military, and possibly to have our own “nuclear umbrella” to make us safe?? It's hardly appropriate for us to call President Trump “stupid” when his blinkered megalomania is simply a logical product of our collective lack of intelligent thinking about war and peace, our screwed up "codes to live by."

            I live in a multi-unit condo. How can I be sure that one of my fellow residents won't rob me or kill me in my bed? Maybe if I had a gun, I'd be safer from such an eventuality. But if others found out that I had a gun, wouldn't they feel that they ought to have one too? Probably I should then add an assault rifle, just in case! Then I'd be able to shelter under a surefire, lethal umbrella and no one would dare to so much as look at me cross-eyed!

            We don't live under “a nuclear umbrella;” we live under a toxic cloud because we're sandwiched between two nuclear superpowers with delusions of grandeur. The most effective deterrents against aggression are justice, truth, and cooperation when every fiber in our minds sees competition and danger. Tanks, warplanes and missiles can't make friends out of enemies. 

            Canada has nothing to fear from Norway, Liechtenstein, Ecuador or Denmark; and I have nothing to fear from my condo community; we get along famously. No guns required to keep the peace.

            Our children are in some sense shaped by the paranoia and anguish of their parents and teachers who lived through world wars, the nuclear bomb scares and myriad atrocities of school massacres and riots and screaming violence. The result is the passing on of a “code to live by” that is weighted toward being safe in a dangerous world, a lonely world where someone is always out to get you, and your number one tenet is not “to love your neighbour as yourself,” but to assume a need to be suspicious of others and to take a defensive posture at all costs.

            Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young said it all so poignantly in “Teach Your Children Well.” I often play this for its captivating sound … but the lyrics are also immeasurably thought provoking.

The video is on Facebook at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQOaUnSmJr8