Conflict is costly. Every hour opposing others is an hour neglecting our interdependent vitality, not building shelter, not educating, not feeding, not caring for each other’s health. This cost analysis is not a moral observation. It is an arithmetic one. And the arithmetic is not going well. Just look up from your screens and outside your front door. Look at our cities and towns.
The solution is not agreement. Agreement on everything is not possible. Nor is it necessary. People change. Information changes. What I believed with certainty last decade I have revised by now, and will likely revise again.
We vitally need the capacity to work together across disagreement. Humanity could not have structured itself to face the hardships of Nature without compromise and working together. We need to be, in practical terms, functionally interdependent. We need each other’s differences more than we need each other’s conformity.
Navigating differences is less like overpowering a current and more like angling my boat into it so the current pushes me where I want to go. Fight the river directly and it carries me into the rocks. Facing the current, angling into it, using its force rather than fighting it, I am carried to the other side … often without of any work except of holding the proper angle.
The force and direction of the stream is not constant. Holding the angle requires corrections. It requires my open attention to others.
Someone whose life took a different path arrived at their worldview by a different road. That road is information. Understanding how they got there — what they saw, what they survived, what they were taught — can expand my picture of the world even when it does not change my position. At minimum, an encounter with another view can reinforce what I already bear in my heart and mind by showing me where it stands and where it bends. At most, my differences with you hand me something I did not know I was missing.
I love the saying: “If everyone knew everyone’s story, everyone would love everyone.”
Nature is dependent on diversity.
The path toward inner peace began for me by a willingness to be myself — and without apology. Yes, this invited rejection. Still does. But that rejection is useful. It sorts out the people who can accept me as I am from those who cannot. What remains after that sorting is space for new others to accept me as I am. A space where I, too, still must do unto others as I want done unto me. To be accepted as I really am, I accept others as they really are. Without judgement.
From that foundation, it becomes possible to build outward. When I encounter a view that troubles or offends me, there is a useful question: Is correcting this my reason-to-be? Is it my main battle? If my war is to fight for peace, then not letting differences harden into permanent estrangement is my own worthwhile, internal battle to win.
One of the quickest ways I know to close a door is to tell someone how to think, feel, or be. Even if I am right, my instruction lands as label and as verdict.
What seems to work better is speaking from my own experience — what I have tried, what I have learned, what has helped me. Others can hear what is useful to them and set aside the rest. That is all I ask of anyone reading my thoughts and about my life and work.
While engaging with others, take what we need, leave the rest.
There is also a practical relief in this. No one has the time or energy to build more than a handful of truly meaningful relationships in a lifetime. I have heard that after 7 or 8 close relationships, we are spread too thinly for any more.
So it is impossible for me to fully embrace everyone, although I might grandly claim this as my ideal. At the same time, few, if any, doors need to be permanently closed.
I have learned to refuse fear of difference. I have learned to steer away from gathering only with those who already agree. While such gathering feels like safety, it functions like a self-fulfilling trap.
Purges of difference concentrate people into factions. Then factions accelerate conflicts draining us of the resources we need to build a decent world with one another. At worst, we isolate. In isolation, nothing gets built with anyone.
This is not a peaceful world yet. Sacrifices happen. Some people will not meet us where we are trying to go. Sadly, some are even martyred. Most of us hope that won’t be us. That is the reality now, but it doesn’t have to be our horizon. Our horizon can be a world in which more of us have agreed — however imperfectly, however provisionally — to remain in one another’s orbit despite our differences. To stay at the table. To keep building. Peacefully.
The Human Peace Project carries its name to reflect my own life’s work. But the work of peace belongs to everyone. One intention of this platform, as it grows, is to invite others to bring their own work for peace where they are in the world — not filtered through others’ voices, but spoken in their own. This platform is for people and groups doing real work in real communities, who may not have the time or resources for an independent platform, and who need a place to show what they are building and to say why. Not commentary on events. Commentary culture is hardly getting us anywhere. It may be pulling us back. What the world needs is for us to get into real action. Actual work. Actual lives.
Our business and political leaders will not fix this world. More to the point, they cannot. They will fix their worlds. That is what concentrated power does — it optimizes for its own survival. The rest is left to us.
If something cannot be agreed with, that disagreement has a home somewhere. It may even have a project. Go find it. Build it. Come back and tell me about it. If you need a place to post it for the world, I might be able to help. Maybe you can help me.