What can we do?

Countering terror

Our time on Earth is one of pitting the old against the new, believers against nonbelievers, haves against have-nots, moderns against the ancients, evicted peoples against new settlers, race against race, society against society, and terror against people of all nations.

Our modern era is not that different from any other; only the names, means, and magnitudes have changed. Once again, religions are in bitter conflict.

Yet there are many reasons for optimism. The United Nations is at last emerging as a moral conscience respected by most nations. The UN charter is not to dominate, but rather to harmonize where each society plays its own notes in the orchestra of nations. Each society has responsibilities toward each of the others.

By our values we earn respect. Our values reflect what we are and they govern our behavior. By our collective behavior as a society, we become known to others.

Our individual behaviors are reflected in that of the organizations to which we belong and in the nations in which we live.

With E. M. Forster, we believe in aristocracy:

"Not the aristocracy of power, based on rank and influence, but the aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members... are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure.... To be sensitive with one's self and for the benefit of others-that is an aristocrat. To consider others in a genuine sense...that too is an aristocrat. To be plucky in the sense of neither swagger nor in the dress of Hamlet's black (dark obsession) but with self-assured forthrightness-that also is an aristocrat."

Above after Rosenblatt (Time, April 27, 1998) quoting Forster.

We would add thoughtful and insightful to the traits of an aristocrat.

Is all this not what we expect of one another? Cannot nations and those leading nations conduct themselves likewise? We think so. Nations neither succeed nor fail-their leaders do.

See also Varshney for the roots of ethnic conflict.

What works between people, works between communities and so on up the ladder to the world. Of course nuclear terror is the ultimate. See: Nuclear Counter Terror.