The Fork in the Road

The New York Yankees’ catcher/folk philosopher reportedly advised: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it!” Currently all humanity confronts a ‘fork in the road’ – prospects of a nuclear holocaust or continuation of civilization. We and all plants and animals depend upon which of these paths we collectively choose to travel. Death or life depends upon our wisdom, adaptability, and sense of urgency. The present war-making route is downhill, familiar, and profitable for the military-industrial complex. The other path is a great challenge with many uncertainties. There will be bends in the road, hills and mountains to climb, bogs that might swamp us, woods in which we may become lost. We face the choice of a human- made Armageddon or the promise of a rainbow over a peaceful world.

In earlier epochs of homo sapiens, hunting/ gathering cultures in small bands often practiced exogamy. Persons in one tribe married into adjacent groups, thereby minimizing inter-group strife. Among some Eskimos, intra-group conflicts were resolved with drum dances and singing, with those assembled deciding which group gave the better performance! Among some small tribes, conflicts often ended when first blood was drawn. Weapons were hand-made, and adversaries confronted each other face-to-face. Over time, in ancient cultures (e.g., Persian, Roman, Greek, Mongol) new weapons such as cavalry and catapults were added, and casualties mounted. Our Civil War brought hundreds of thousands of deaths when cannon were added to hand-to-hand combat. Even with airplanes, World Wars I and II still relied heavily on person-to-person combat in the trenches.

Over time, civilian casualties in war have come to far outnumber military deaths and injuries. Ken Burns’ new film, “War,” tells us that 100 million died in WWII. Today, with the development of drone planes, robots that can fire around corners, space- directed weaponry, and an increasing array of means to deliver death, war has become increasingly abominable. As an instrument of national foreign policies, war should be recognized as obsolete. It creatively resolves no problems, only exacerbates them, wastes scarce resources and devastates all life.

Yet we proceed down the ‘war-as-a-solution’ pathway. As land mines, cluster bombs, saturation carpet bombing, and chemical and germ warfare are used indiscriminately, war becomes increasingly technological and impersonal. According to William Safire, current high-tech warfare enables warriors to fly higher, carry more and bigger bombs, and cause more damage below – all with less guilt.

Yale psychiatrist, Jay Robert Lifton, coined the concept of ‘psychic numbness.’ When tragedies reach such magnitude in our psyche that we cannot embrace the horrors in mind and spirit, we understandably tend to shut down. We don’t want to think about it, can’t absorb it, and we despair.

In seeking to follow the peaceful path, we must retain hope. Slowing down global warming and its consequences is possible, giving us time to make the major adjustments in our world economy, politics and international collaborations. That is success. Yet major changes in individual behavior and through state, national and international deliberations will be required. That may seem impossible – like ‘straight-arming’ locomotives! But humanity must turn the switch and derail our war-based economy onto a siding! Failing that, we will not be able to direct full talents, energies, time and wisdom toward facing the vital life implications of global warming. We cannot straddle the alternatives that the ‘fork in the road’ presents us.

In a September 27, 2007 opinion piece in the New York Times, Vaclav Havel put our human dilemma this way: “Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey will be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger for the end of the world…. We need not fear for our planet. It was here before us and most likely will be here after us.” All humanity is in this together. We all live on the same globe swirling in space. None of us can evade the consequences of failure to meet the challenge. As one Minnesota candidate contends, this is the most important decade in human history. Selecting the ‘right’ fork (which may be the ‘left’!), the peace movement has an historic opportunity to make a difference.


Previously published in the North Country Peace Builder, Minnesota Fellowship of Reconciliation, October 2007.