This post is dedicated to Mohammad Memarian, who rightfully questions whether it is possible to discern a universally shared ideology based on notions of common sense, which would find widespread agreement throughout humanity at large.

 

As some of you may already know, I believe that the answer to world peace is Selling a Vision of Hope, which consists of five parts, like the five fingers of a hand:

 

The thumb is for Ideology: Use an Ideology of Common Sense to speak to one another with Common Sense and with a sense of personal dignity.

 

The index finger is for Investment: Invest in one another with projects that resonate with hope, that create jobs, and that protect the environment.

 

The middle finger is for Hope: Use Ideology and Investment to Sell a Vision of Hope-a Vision of Peace, Prosperity, and Freedom-on the Arab street, in the Muslim world, and in the world as a whole.

 

The ring finger if for Diplomacy: Sustain the Hope with Public Diplomacy Programs which are specifically designed to bolster a Vision of Hope, and to carry it forward, such as: Empowering Women, Student and Cultural Exchanges, Media Campaigns, Expanding the Peace Corps, and International Conferences.

 

The pinky is for the Fight: When absolutely necessary, fight, and fight hard, but position the fight within a Vision of Hope. Raise the fight on the ground to a higher moral plain, by giving the fight a moral clarity of purpose.

 

As you can see, Selling a Vision of Hope has many aspects to it, but it begins with a new ideological perspective, a new framework for rational discourse, a new way of thinking and speaking called an Ideology of Common Sense. So what exactly is this new ideology all about, and is it something that people the world over are likely to buy into?

 

Let's start with a few questions. Do you believe that a lot of what we believe just doesn't make any sense? And do you believe that the world is moving to a place where we have to begin making sense of our lives, if we are to survive as a species? Do you believe that some of the ideological nonsense we hold on to so tightly is holding us back from taking the steps that are needed to solve the problems we face? And if so, is there an ideological framework which is better suited to the requirements of our current realities? And is it just possible that this new ideological framework is not new at all, but was given to us as a gift, in the very beginning of our stay here on this good earth?

 

What is Common Sense? We use it every day of the week; except when we're drunk. But what exactly is it? Try defining "common sense" in one sentence. Not that easy, is it?

 

For me, Common Sense is the intuitive wisdom to conform our thoughts and actions to universally shared truths and values. Don't blow a circuit; it's not all that complicated. The "intuitive wisdom" is the wisdom that comes from within. It's inside you. "Thoughts and actions" because it's not enough to think straight; you have to act on what you know to be true. "Truths and values:" Truths are the realities we perceive. Values are the realities we aspire to. And why are these truths and values "universal?" Certain truths and values are so logical, so fundamental, and so self-evident, that they are universally perceived as true, and therefore universally accepted.

 

Let me suggest, with your kind indulgence, three such universal principles: The Golden Rule, The Golden Mean, and The Greatest Good. I call them the 3-G's for short.

 

The Golden Rule: "Treat others as you would have them treat you," is found in every major religion on earth. Why? Because it makes sense. That's why. You don't kill me, and I don't kill you, and we can both continue on our merry way. It's that simple, and therefore, true. What if The Golden Rule would have us treat each other well, by Investing in one another, especially as part and parcel of a truly Global Economy?

 

The Golden Mean: "The truth is usually somewhere in the middle between two extremes." In other words, truth is not an extremist position, but is rather sitting somewhere in the middle. Aristotle first introduced the idea, but the Prophet Muhammad and the Jewish scholar Maimonides subscribed to it as well. What if the Golden Mean would have us moderate our views by using notions of Common Sense as our Ideology?

 

The Greatest Good: "Do what brings the greatest happiness to the greatest numbers." First enunciated by Jeremy Bentham as part of his philosophy of Utilitarianism, this principle is reminiscent of the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya, a Muslim scholar. What if The Greatest Good would have us maximize justice by organizing ourselves around a vision of Hope?

 

Putting it all together, the formula for world peace is not all that complicated. As Thomas Jefferson might have put it: "We find this truth to be self-evident: Ideology plus Investment equals Hope." And with Hope, all things are possible, even the impossible dream of peace.

 

This gives you a feel, all be it incomplete at best, for how an Ideology of Common Sense could help to bring us together, and to give us the language to be used in solving some of the big ticket problems we face, like: Global Warming, Poverty, Disease, Ideological Extremism, Nuclear Proliferation, Violence, and the like.

 

In a better world, Common Sense, as opposed to ideological extremism, will inspire our thinking, and inform our speech. The collective wisdom of humanity-wisdom borne of years of hard won experience-will help repair this fractured world, and will focus our collective energies with common purpose. In our fractured world, Common Sense is the Common Denominator!

 

Just as mathematics and music share a recognized universality, so too can our ability to decipher what is right from what is wrong be conferred a certain sense of universality, by viewing such issues through the prism of what makes sense. Only then will we be truly ready for the next stage of human development. Only then will the potential for peace, prosperity, and freedom, be truly realized. Only then will we come to know the true destiny we were meant to share.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto filled me with sadness, and reminded me of the sense of hopelessness that permeates much of the world.

 

I am not a student of Pakistan's history. And I have been made to understand, of late, that in the past, Mrs. Bhutto represented a mixed bag with respect to the aspirations of her people. Yes, there are persistent charges of corruption, and accusations that she supported the Taliban. But I can't believe that her legacy will be defined only by her negatives.

 

There are several things to consider when we seek to judge her. She was a woman who defied the odds and was twice elected to lead a country that was not predisposed to elect her. Yes, she was driven out on charges of corruption, but, and this should not be underestimated, she chose to come back home. She was not naïve. She knew she faced a grave threat to her personal safety, a point that was driven home when she just arrived. And yet she chose to come back to compete in the political arena. Could blind ambition, alone, explain that? I think not. There must have been some noble aspiration on her part that compelled her to take the risk. Perhaps she learned from past mistakes and wanted to set things right? We can only guess.

 

In addition, how do we explain the immense popular support she enjoyed among her people? Are people totally blind? If she was so corrupt, and so indifferent to their aspirations, how then would they continue to support her so enthusiastically? They must have seen in her some hope for their country, and decided collectively to forgive her at least some of her past sins, for the sake of the hope she inspired in them. Aren't people entitled to decide accordingly? Isn't that the essence of democratic rule?

 

Was she a saint? Probably not. But then again, we've all been complicit in creating a world where saintliness doesn't cut it. The weak are crushed by the strong. And even goodness itself has to find a way to maneuver in the midst of evil.

 

The world is filled with moral vagaries. If a political system is corrupt, are you morally right, as a leader, to play the game, if doing so will give you the political power to do some good? Can we afford the luxury of a clean conscience, at the expense of not delving into the dirt; for fear that our hands may become dirty as well? How do we orchestrate the interplay between good and evil and still be able to look ourselves in the mirror every day?

 

Whatever else may be said of her, Benazir Bhutto was one hell of a fighter. She may or may not have had dirt on her hands; a clouded past, and a mixed bag of intentions, but she came back, sleeves rolled up, ready to fight. And at the very least, she said the right things, the things that inspired a sense of hope in her people. For that, she should be remembered well, even as we hold her accountable for past sins.

 

There are lessons here, but it is difficult to muddle through them, much as the truth is hard to decipher in the midst of all the nonsense which surrounds it. A political system which is corrupt will produce corrupt leaders. But leaders who wish to do good may have to play the game if they wish to make a difference. It is not enough to know that your hands are clean. It is sometimes necessary to get them dirty for the sake of the greater good. And in the final analysis, it may well be up to women of courage to save the world. Men may have become too full of themselves. It may well be up to women to use their God-given common sense to dispel some of the myths which hold us all back, and to really protect their babies by making the world safe once and for all.

 

We have allowed the sad state of affairs in today's world to cloud our thinking, and to taint the purity of innocence. It is hard to see things clearly, and to imagine the possibility that our leaders can be true to their most noble aspirations. We live in a cynical world, where the very possibility of goodness is held hostage by the reality of evil. And yet we have no choice but to hope that things can get better, and that it is our destiny to make it so.

 

What we see in the life and death of Benazir Bhutto is the playing out of many aspects of the human condition. We look at her, not quite sure of what conclusions to draw, and not at all confident in any judgments we choose to make. And yet we see in her a life that came and went, a life that made a difference, and a life that was cut short before realizing its full potential. What that potential would have been we will never know.

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.