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The Reality of Interdependence
Our Common Home, Our Mutual Survival
There Is No Just War in the Nuclear Age
Individual Is Responsible for Everything
Life is at the crossroads. At the end of one road lies survival, at the end of the other is extinction. Our history and experience tell us that we have the capacity to change. Our evolution as a species demonstrates that we have repeatedly done so. No past change was ever bigger than the one we are called upon to make now, which is to move consciously from a limited self-identification to identification with all of life. This generation must reestablish the correct relation between the individual and the whole, between unity and diversity. To make that relationship right is the central demand of our time. We will come to collective or societal change as the result of individual change. The individual is the starting place for transformation of the mentality of the species as a whole. ("Beyond War: A New Way of Thinking," edited for the Beyond War Foundation by Richard Roney)
A transnational, global perspective is more than an intuition or an imagination of things to come. Interdependence is the reality of today and can be measured, evaluated, and tested in computer models. Since the 1970s, these calculations have produced results which previously have been confined to literary or religious exhortation: The world is a single system; decisions which are made with the whole system in mind are more likely to lead to human survival. Cooperative approaches are more beneficial in the long run than competitive approaches. The system can be exploited, or it can be sustained. If we choose to sustain the global system, the greatest leverage will come from working in the area of values, goals, and the political will to develop understanding of human interdependence. ("Messages from Global Models about an Interdependent World," John M. Richardson, Jr.)
That the Earth is our home is now common knowledge. But do we always remember that it is home for more than just two, or several, of the largest nations? Genuine security can only be universal, international. Therefore, no matter how much we differ or disagree over what is just and unjust, we will have to learn to express our opinions in ways that do not excite fear and hatred of those who think differently. In a nuclear world, the use of force to resolve conflicts is no longer possible even in small regional disputes. The long-term existence of both capitalism and socialism is now a given. We must now begin to explore what mutual survival means. ("Security for All in the Nuclear Age," Anatoly A. Gromyko)
We like to think that there could be some kind of "just war." But no more. All wars, including just wars, are a thing of the past. Now, our literature must express this new reality and the urgency of change. Who are better equipped for this task than literary figures who in the past have always led the way? Do we remember Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy? We must write with a passion about the obsolescence of war and a love for life and our fellow man in a way that is so fiery, so full of conviction, so relentless that we once again wake the world up to the overwhelming reality of our time. We must write as if our lives depended upon it, as if we had no time at all, as if these were the last words we ever might utter. We can no longer do anything less. ("Problems with the New Way of Thinking," Ales Adamovich)
It is not realistic to follow dogmas of the past. New times shed a whole new light on what is real or realistic. And as Einstein's physics was not merely an extension of Newton's, neither can a new global view be merely an extension of something past. It must be a whole quantum leap up. Something at a new level. What was good yesterday may be totally useless today. If one were to think new, there could be enormous, until-now-undiscovered economic relationships between the East and West. There is no necessary structural limitation. Similarly, there is no logical extension of the old balance of power diplomacy to the new world. War, acceptable before, romanticized, is no longer working. Is someone else responsible to make this change in thinking? No. Morality, unlike law, is always the result of individual action. And the imperative of this age is that everyone see that he or she is responsible for everything. ("Realism and Morality in Politics," Andrei V. Kortunov)
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