“The poor have to labor in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Anatole France

Compassion is the key for the planet’s survival. The threats posed by poverty, with 21,000 nuclear weapons and contamination are greater than those posed by the Axis Powers in 1942. Terrorists only reflect the underlying conditions. In fact, current military operations only help terrorist recruitment.

A change in heart is necessary to change the path to destruction. The chambers of commerce, the political parties, the churches, the schools and everyone else has to reject sociopathic behavior and realize that all humans, plants and animals are all in the same boat. We will flourish together or we will sink together.

Projects and statements by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin during the Second World War deepened the feeling that war must be abolished if humans were to survive. They took steps to reduce conflict and prevent another great depression that brought the Nazis to power by establishing the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the treaties on trade and tariffs.

The Second World War did bring a determination that war abolition was not optional. See the Atlantic Charter’s eighth point:

“Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.”

History shows that violence only generates more violence. There was widespread indignation in the United States and England when the Nazis bombed Guernica, Warsaw and Rotterdam. Later in the war, British and American air forces routinely bombed civilian targets (area bombing) without batting an eye.

Following these thoughts, Henry Stimson, US War Department Secretary, 1940-1945, offered this recommendation:

“We must never forget, that under modern conditions of life, science, and technology. All war has been greatly brutalized, and that no one who joins in it, even in self-defense, can escape becoming also in a measure brutalized. Modern war cannot be limited in its destructive method and the inevitable debasement of all participants… A fair scrutiny of the last two World Wars makes clear the steady intensification of the weapons and methods employed by both, the aggressors and the victors. In order to defeat the Japanese aggression, we were forced, as Admiral Nimitz has stated, to employ a technique of unrestricted warfare, not unlike that which 25 years ago was the proximate cause of our entry into World War I. In the use of strategic air power the Allies took the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Germany and Japan…. We as well as our enemies have contributed to the proof that the central moral problem is war and not its methods, and that a continuance of war will in all probability end with the destruction of our civilization.”

Increased church attendance alone is not enough to change the destructive path. Religious institutions will have to adopt a wider attitude to show that love extends to everyone, not just to our friends because religious people can kill with abandon. In the First Crusade, Catholic soldiers killed every Jewish or Muslim man, women and child in Jerusalem. In the Second World War, Germans killed millions in the Holocaust and perpetrated war crimes, especially in Eastern Europe. In both cases, there were few criminals or psychopaths. These men did not see themselves as war criminals but as soldiers performing a stressful necessary duty. While the Nazi Party adopted paganism, most war criminals were church-going Catholics or Protestants. Again, a change in heart is more basic than church attendance.

How will the proposed change occur? One step would for humans and entities to govern their major decisions by the Rotary Club four-way test:

• Is it the truth?
• Is it fair to all concerned?
• Will it build good will and better friendships?
• Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

I add a fifth way: Is it environmentally sustainable?

I ask religious institutions, self-help gurus and philosophers to consider the world beyond our immediate circle, not just our family, friends, neighbors and colleagues but what happens to the poor and the environment resulting from our life style and decisions. The Golden Rule applies to everybody.

Twelve Step programs will add Step 13: “We renounced violence and developed an environmental and social consciousness.”

As we transform ourselves, we will in Winston Churchill’s terms, begin to walk in broad sunlit uplands.

Formerly a Houston resident, Ed O’Rourke is a certified public accountant, now living in Medellin, Colombia.