Sometimes I wonder: What is harder, waging war, or making peace?

 

Waging war is not all that easy. In war we kill, and die, and suffer the devastation of wartime injuries, both physical and psychological, not to mention the loss of national treasure. But to my mind, as hard as war is, making peace is that much harder. Why? In war, we fight for what we believe. And we all feel good about fighting for our beliefs. It gives us goose bumps just thinking about it.

 

But for peace to happen we often have to give up some of our deeply held beliefs, in a search for something we can believe in even more, like peace. And it's hard to let go of our beliefs. It's like letting go of a part of ourselves, because to a great extent, especially in modern times, we are what we believe. Not that it had to be that way, and not that it was that way for most of our existence as a species, but it is that way today.

 

And so it seems that our beliefs are at the heart of issues of war and peace. What we choose to believe will very much determine whether we head toward war, or toward peace. The question arises, therefore: What are the legitimate grounds for belief? Or put another way: How do we know that what we believe is true?

 

Would it be too much to suggest that most of us come to most of our beliefs by sheer chance? Let's take religion as an example, since religious beliefs are often a cause of violence and war. Isn't it the case that most of us adopt our religious beliefs due mostly to the families we happen to be born into? For the most part, we are Jews, or Christians, or Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists because our families are. A Jew could have been a Muslim if only he were born into a different family. Once in a while people convert, but for the most part, that is the exception, not the rule.

 

Does it make sense that the accident of birth confers legitimacy to our beliefs? And what kind of legitimacy are we talking about? We're talking about the legitimacy that would have us kill one another in God's name, no less, because somebody else's beliefs are different from our own. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture?

 

Maybe we can point to other sources of legitimacy for our beliefs, sources which can truly confirm the validity of our beliefs. Maybe we can point to Holy Scripture as the confirmation of God's truth. The trouble is, however, that all religions contain scriptural passages which are not palatable to the modern mind. In Judaism, for example, the book of Deuteronomy tells us that if a man marries a woman, and she turns out not to be a virgin, he is supposed to kill her on her father's doorstep. I think it's safe to say that Jews, throughout the ages, chose to ignore this passage. Why? Because it makes no sense. That's why. And take a look at the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. That's a trip if ever I took one. And what about the "72 virgins" in Islam? If I'm not mistaken it's a mistake in translation. It's really "72 white raisins."

 

Why do I bring into question the legitimacy of religious belief? Am I against religion? No. I consider religion as a legitimate pathway to God. But as with all other pathways; we need to stick to the path to get to where we're going. And when we sense that we're heading in the wrong direction, we check our compass to get back on track. And to my mind, the best and only compass we have, when it really comes down to it, is the universal moral compass of Common Sense.

 

Because so much is on the line, we may no longer be able to afford the luxury of false belief, whether religious, or any other belief, for that matter. False belief will embolden us to go to war for the wrong reasons. We may have been able to get away with it in the past, but only at the expense of scores of millions of corpses left behind in the wake of false ideologies. But the potential devastation of modern weaponry makes the consequences of false belief too costly to bear.

 

And so, I submit to you, for your consideration, the possibility that there is only one source for legitimate belief, and that is our shared notion of Common Sense. If an idea makes sense to you, then believe in it. If it doesn't, then let it go. We can no longer afford to let the accident of birth, or the content of scripture, or the persuasiveness of religious leaders, to convince us of the truth, when deep down we know that the truth is to be found elsewhere.

 

As between reason and faith, I prefer to believe in what makes sense. And I have come to believe that only through the language of Common Sense does God actually talk to us. The rest is pretense. And pretense will give us only the semblance of truth, but never the real thing.

As some of you may already know, I believe that the world is ripe for a new ideological framework; what I call An Ideology of Common Sense. Instead of believing what we want to believe, it may well be time to begin believing in what makes sense.

 

If the world is already coming together technologically and economically, it makes sense to come together ideologically as well, in order to pave the way for the unprecedented level of cooperation that a world economy will require. And so, I would like to devote a few posts to the idea of An Ideology of Common Sense, and with your kind indulgence, I begin with God.

 

It may not be politically correct to talk so openly about God. Who am I, after all, to even begin to explain the mystery that is God? And yet, we may have no choice but to begin talking about such things, because in the absence of common sense talk, people tend to grab hold of notions which make no sense, and which can easily threaten our very existence on this good earth. Some may say, "Let's blow ourselves up in God's name." I say, "Let God speak for Himself, and when He does, I suspect He'll use the language of Common Sense, as has been His custom since the beginning of time."

 

So we begin with first principles. Does God exist? I think He does. How do I know this? Well, scientists theorize that some 13.7 billion years ago there was a great explosion, appropriately named The Big Bang, which brought the universe into existence. Before The Big Bang there was nothing. And after, there was everything.

 

So to my mind; whoever or whatever caused that explosion to happen is certainly "godlike," in every sense of the word, and is therefore God. Call it The Big Bang, or a force of nature, or a random confluence of events...call it what you will, but whoever or whatever caused the universe to come into being is God.

 

This mode of analysis is reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas' five proofs for the existence of God. I thought up of this proof myself, I want you to know, only to find out that Aquinas beat me to the punch some 700 years ago. Must have been quite an ambitious little fellow, God bless his soul.

 

What else do we know about God? Um...pretty much nothing. That's right folks, you heard it here first. We really don't know anything about God other than the fact that He created the universe. Listening to us talk, you'd think that we knew everything there was to know about God. But if we are true to ourselves, we really don't. And in that vacuum of knowledge, since we know nothing about God, we proceed to create Him in our own image.

 

Here's how this craziness works:

• God created the universe.
• As part of His creation, God created us in His image.
• Therefore, we are creators as well.
• As part of our creation, we choose to create God, in our image.
• Since we are imperfect, we taint God with our imperfections, and fashion Him to suit our needs.

So what's wrong with this picture? By tainting God with human frailties, we can easily delude and manipulate ourselves into believing that God would have us do all sorts of crazy things, in the same way that we convince ourselves to act loony with respect to one another. And once we come to believe that we are acting in God's name, no less, how difficult it becomes to curb our enthusiasm for the nasty things we choose to do.

 

And so, I got to thinking: What concept of God would make more sense? In answering the question: Who is God; I would say, with all due respect for other opinions and beliefs, that I think of God as the sum total of all the creative energy in the universe.

 

In other words, since all we really know about God is that He created the universe, then it would make sense to associate Him with that creation, and with the various forms of energy that it took to bring that creation about, including: radiation, heat, electricity, kinetic energy, and of course, the energy of intelligence.

 

Does it help us to make sense of things to say that God is the sum total of all the creative energy in the universe? I think it does.

 

For example, if someone asks, "Do you have a personal relationship with God?" you could say, "I certainly do. His creative energy flows through me, and mine flows through Him."

 

If someone asks, "Why is there evil in the world?" You could say, "God is the Creator of all things. If He wanted to create good, He had no choice but to create the possibility of evil, because we could not know what is good without also knowing evil, good defining itself by its juxtaposition to evil."

 

If somebody says, "Let's kill one another in God's name," you could say, "Since God created each and every one of us in His image, when we choose to kill one another, aren't we, in effect, spitting at God's face?"

 

It is time to make sense of things. Don't you think? And the one thing we were given to bring about a semblance of order to this world is the notion and the language of Common Sense. 

I just shook hands with the third wealthiest man in the U.S., who is also the sixth wealthiest man in the world. I'm not kidding. I was tempted never to wash my hands again; but my wife nixed that idea, and quick. He seemed like a nice enough guy; someone you'd invite over for coffee and cake. But he's a nice guy who just happens to be sitting on over 30 billion dollars.

 

There is a lot of money out there. My dad says that in the United States alone, we have some 3 ½ trillion dollars sitting in charitable foundations. That's "trillion" as in "one thousand billion."

 

So the question is: Why can't we use some of that money to solve some of our big ticket problems like: the Middle East, Global Warming, our Inner Cities, World Hunger and Disease, etc.? Well, the truth is that some charitable money is going to those worthwhile causes; but not in any sort of a concerted way. Right now, each charity, and each foundation, has to decide how to invest its money. It is difficult at times to coordinate all these various charitable entitles to move in one direction. Each organization does its own thing; as it has a right to do. So what is the problem?

 

It doesn't take a genius to see that the world is coming together; or becoming "flat" as Tom Friedman suggests. For good or for bad, the world, by the process we call "globalization," is coming together technologically and economically. What does this mean? It means, among other things, that as the world comes together globally, global problems will emerge, problems which will require global solutions, solutions which will entail global funding. And so, the solitary efforts of charitable foundations and institutions, noble as they may be in and of themselves, may not suffice to handle the global challenges which lie at our doorstep.

 

Think about the links of a chain. Each link, by itself, is of limited utility. But connect the links together, and now you have a chain that can be used to pull a heavy object in any given direction. It's like that with charitable giving. If every charity and every foundation invests privately, as it sees fit, then the good that is done is spread around randomly, but not necessarily in a common direction. And so, big global problems, which cry out for massive funding, like Global Warming or the Middle East, remain unattended. The money that is available is being spread too thin to make a difference where it really counts. This doesn't mean that no good is being done. It just means that some major global problems are being left by the wayside.

 

How do we get wealthy people to invest globally? It's not easy, but there is hope. The problem is that making money is not easy. It often takes one hell of an ego to amass one hell of a fortune. Some people who are very wealthy have such big egos, that it is often difficult to fit more than one of them into a single room. So how would you get them to coordinate their charitable efforts so as to tackle some of the big ticket problems like the Middle East, Global Warming, Hunger, and Disease?

 

You guessed it: If you could somehow sell the wealthy of the world on a Vision of Hope, easier said than done, then you may be able to convince them to prioritize differently, to concentrate their efforts, and to subsume some of their personal pet projects into the realm of the greater good.

 

There are a few shining examples which stand out in this regard. Bill Gates, a computer genius and business titan, gets married, and decides, all of a sudden, to change the face of healthcare in Africa, and the face of education, in America. And he and Melinda have enough money, enough compassion, and enough vision, to actually make a difference. Then Warren Buffett comes along, an investment icon, and looks for a legacy that is worthy of his good name. He is taken in by Bill and Melinda, and guess what; he turns over his money to them, to further their lofty goals for the betterment of mankind.

 

There is hope in the world, with people like Bill, Melinda, and Warren. It is up to us to give substance to that hope, by spreading the word, and spreading the wealth within the broader context of a Vision of Hope. That way we can connect our various links together, and begin pulling in the same direction.

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel is fascinating to me, in part because I sense that the story is replaying itself as we speak. Here are several passages from chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis:

 

The whole earth was of one language and of common purpose...

...They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them in the fire." ...And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed across the whole earth."

God descended to look at the city and tower which the sons of man built, and God said, "Behold, they are one people with one language for all, and this they begin to do! And now, should it not be withheld from them all they propose to do? Come, let us descend and there confuse their language, that they should not understand one another's language."

And God dispersed them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because it was there that God confused the language of the whole earth, and from there God scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

 

Let me ask you this: Do you think we've somehow gone back to building a Tower of Babel? For some 2,000,000 years, our prehistoric ancestors lived as cavemen, hunting and gathering, and eking out an existence any way they could. It was a short, brutish life they had, but it was a life, nonetheless. It could easily be said of that period in history that: "The whole earth was of one language and of common purpose."

 

To survive yet another day, no small accomplishment at that time, we had no choice but to use our common sense, and to help each other out. And indeed, anthropologic research bears out the fact that for the most part, cavemen were good to one another, as depicted in the film The Rise of Man on the Discovery Channel.

 

And then, some 10,000 years ago, we decided to become "civilized," and in the last 200 years, with the advent of the industrial age, to become truly modern. True, we're not exactly building "...a tower with its top in the heavens...," although we do have some tall buildings out there, but in many other ways, we are taking God on, in an all out attempt to create our world as we see fit.

 

Let's face it; we do seek to "...make a name for ourselves..." No? Look at what we've wrought as part and parcel of our creation: towering cities, cutting edge technologies, scientific discoveries, top notch universities, thriving multinational companies, and the laundry list goes on and on, ad infinitum. Our many accomplishments, in this, the modern age, do not amount to a "Tower of Babel," in the strict sense, but they do constitute an edifice of sorts, an edifice which, in many ways, reaches for the heavens.

 

If God is indeed a Creator, and if He created us in His image, then we too are creators, and we have chosen to create a world in our image. Our prehistoric ancestors were of "...one language and of common purpose." Can we say the same of ourselves? Or is it rather the case that with all our maneuverings toward modernity, and in our attempt "...to make a name for ourselves...," we may have lost our "common purpose," and no longer "...understand one another's language?"

 

A small example, if you allow me. We have used our ingenuity to create the internet, a remarkable tool for which I am personally grateful, which enables the free flow of information, and which allows each of us to talk to whomever we wish. And so, now that we are technologically able to talk to one another in such a state of the art manner, and with virtually no interference of any kind, the question arises: What do we really have to say to each other?

 

Doesn't it seem, at times, as with the story of Babel, that while we are certainly talking to each other, very few of us actually connect? Our technology seems to have taken us to a place where there is a disconnect between the tools at our disposal, and our ability to put them to good use.

 

In the story of Babel; before man tried to reach for the heavens: "The whole earth was of one language and of common purpose." Is it just me, or do you also sense that we must somehow find a way to come back to that-"one language and of common purpose." Only then, it seems, will we have a chance to reclaim our rightful place in the infinite vastness of God's creation.

Sometimes, as I write about Selling a Vision of Hope, I think to myself, "How are you ever going to sell this stuff?" At a certain point, people are naturally going to wonder, "What's in it for us?"

 

In the past several blog entries, I've tried to show that Selling a Vision of Hope could be a useful framework not only for the Middle East, but for solving other problems as well, such as Global Warming, Globalization, and our Inner Cities. The basic idea is simple enough: think straight and believe in what makes sense, make common sense your ideology, use common sense and some well placed investment dollars to inspire people with a Vision of Hope, sustain the hope with programs which prop the vision up and carry it forward, and when necessary, fight, and fight hard, but position the fight within a Vision of Hope. That's it, in a nutshell.

 

Our development as a species has led to a lot of good things. Some of us are lucky enough to enjoy the full bounty of modern life: incredible technological innovations, state of the art healthcare, outstanding academic and cultural institutions, a cornucopia of material wealth, political systems which protect our personal freedoms, and so forth. The list of human achievements goes on and on.

 

But unfortunately, alongside each and every achievement, there still remain problems to be solved; big scary problems, some of which threaten our very existence. It is not a coincidence that man's technological advances have brought with them a whole host of seemingly insolvable problems. Each discovery seems to bring its flip side of disaster.

 

We're choosing to play God, and we may not be winning the game. We have plenty of smarts, but do we have the wisdom? We can create all the various pieces of modernity, but can we figure out how to put all the pieces together, and make them whole? God is a hard act to follow.

 

Sometimes it seems as if each innovation we come up with opens yet another compartment in Pandora's Box. We design and build beautiful cars for transportation, but end up with global warming. We build nuclear weapons for defense, but end up with nuclear proliferation. We enjoy tinkering with the genes a bit, but end up with the potential for human clones. We inspire ourselves with our deeply held religious beliefs, but end up with religious strife. We celebrate the material wealth at our disposal, but end up with an emptiness of spirit. We build towering cities that reach for the sky, but can't quite find a way to hide the desolation of our poorest slums. At every turn, man's reach for the stars comes up a tad short, and leaves yet another problem in its wake.

 

Selling a Vision of Hope will help us solve some of our big-ticket problems. It will inspire us to think straight, to reconfigure our priorities, and to invest accordingly. But just as important as restoring order in places like the Middle East, is the need to restore who we are as a nation. By investing in others, we will be investing in ourselves.

 

The United States is not only the greatest country on earth, but probably the greatest country that ever was. We have much to be thankful for: a vibrant democracy which protects our personal freedoms, a high standard of living, the hallmark of scientific research, outstanding academic and cultural institutions, abundant wealth and material resources, unparalleled military power, and the laundry list of our blessings goes on and on.

 

Yet, in our pursuit of progress, we have lost something as well. If we are honest with ourselves, we have lost our spirit as a people, a spirit which we must recapture, if there is to be hope for setting things straight in the years to come. Big problems require big solutions. For the sake of our children, and our children's children, and the countless generations of children yet to come, we have no choice but to rise to the challenge, as did our forebears, and to grow our hearts and minds to the task that lies ahead.

 

Along with America's wealth and power there remains a question to be answered: To what purpose will America put her wealth, and to what end will she use her power? The answer is simple enough-Sell a Vision of Hope. With hope, all things are possible. Yes we will solve some of the seemingly intractable problems which lay waiting at our doorstep. But even more so, we will restore, within ourselves, our sense of idealism, our can-do spirit, our sense of compassion, and our belief in who we are as a people, and who we can become if we merely choose to make it so.

 

We need to rekindle that sense of awakening. Like the rest of humanity, we need hope like air to breathe. We will bring back to life our rightful sense of destiny, a sense that has been lulled to sleep by the passage of time, and the fullness of our bellies.