Who Is My Neighbour?

Human Wrongs Watch

By John Scales Avery*

3 March 2016

Are we losing the human solidarity that will be needed if our global society is to solve the pressing problems that are facing us today?

Among the symptoms of loss of solidarity is the drift towards violence, racism and aggressive foreign policy that can be seen in the United States.

Another warning symptom is the inhospitable reception that refugees have received in Europe and elsewhere.

Tribalism

Human emotional nature evolved over the long prehistory of our species, when our remote ancestors lived small tribes, competing for territory on the grasslands of Africa.

Since marriage within a tribe was much more frequent than marriage outside it, each tribe was genetically homogeneous, and the tribe itself, rather than the individual, acted as the unit upon which the forces of natural selection acted.

Those tribes that exhibited internal solidarity, combined with aggression towards competing tribes, survived best. Over a long period of time, tribalism became a hard-wired part of human nature. We can see tribalism today in the emotions involved in football matches, in nationalism, and in war.

The birth of ethics

When humans began to live in larger and more cosmopolitan groups, it was necessary to overwrite some elements of raw human emotional nature.

Tribalism became especially inappropriate, unless the scope of the perceived tribe could be extended to include everyone in the enlarged societies.

Thus ethical principles were born. It is not just a coincidence that the greatest ethical teachers of history lived at a time when the size of cooperating human societies was being enlarged.

All of the major religions of humanity contain some form of the Golden Rule.

Christianity contains an especially clear statement of this central ethical principle: According to the Gospel of Luke, after being told that he must love his neighbour as much as he loves himself, a man asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?”

Jesus then replies with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which we are told that our neighbour need not be a member of our own tribe, but can live far away and can belong to a completely different nation or ethnic group. Nevertheless, that person is still our neighbor, and deserves our love and care.

The central ethical principle which is stated so clearly in the Parable of the Good Samaritan is exactly what we need today to avoid disaster.

We must enlarge our loyalties to include the whole of humanity. We must develop a global ethic of comprehensive human solidarity, or else perish from a combination of advanced technology combined with primitive tribalism.

Space-age science is exceedingly dangerous when it is combined with stone-age politics.

The need for global solidarity comes from the instantaneous worldwide communication and economic interdependence that has resulted from advanced science and technology. But advanced technology, our almost miraculous ability to communicate through the Internet, Skype and smartphones, could weld the world into a single peaceful and cooperative unit. But we must learn to use global communication as a tool for developing worldwide human solidarity.

Each week, all over the world, congregations assemble and are addressed by their leaders on ethical issues. But all too often there is no mention of the astonishing and shameful contradiction between the institution of war (especially the doctrine of “massive retaliation”), and the principle of universal human brotherhood, loving and forgiving one’s enemies, and returning good for evil.

At a moment of history, when the continued survival of civilization is in doubt because of the incompatibility of war with the existence of thermonuclear weapons, our religious leaders ought to use their enormous influence to help to solve the problem of war, which is after all an ethical problem.

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/johansen_jorgen

http://www.learndev.org/dl/SpaceAgeScienceStoneAgePolitics-Avery.pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/01/new-low-europe-police-bulldoze-camps-tear-gas-asylum-seekers-and-shutter-borders

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/01/after-latest-display-bigotry-trump-again-faces-charges-racism

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35053-an-open-letter-to-evangelical-trump-voters

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/donald-trump-us-election-2016-demagogue

http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/2/

http://www.countercurrents.org/boyle020316.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/01/dont-cry-me-america

https://www.washingtonpost.com/2016-election-results/super-tuesday/

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/01/yemen-humanitarian-pause-urgently-needed

—

*John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London.

He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent book is Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century http://www.learndev.org/dl/Crisis21-Avery.pdf.

Don’t miss these articles by John Scales Avery in Human Wrongs Watch:

A Scientist Presses for Action on Many Fronts: A Review of The Need for a New Economic System by John Scales Avery

John Scales Avery – Collected Essays

The Urgent Need for Complete Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

Pharming

Culture, Education and Human Solidarity

The United States Drifts Towards Political Irresponsibilty

Paris: We Need System Change!

Paris and the Long-Term Future

We Must Stop the Madness of Brinkmanship

Paris, India, and Coal

Paris: A Sense of Proportions Is Urgently Needed

Debt Slavery

Book Review: Aurelio Peccei and Daisako Ikeda, “Before It Is Too Late”

The Need for a New Economic System – PART IX: a New Society, a New Social Contract, a New Way Life

The Need for a New Economic System – PART VIII: The Cooperative Movement

The Need for a New Economic System – PART VII: The Global Food Crisis

The Need for a New Economic System – PART VI: Adverse Effects of Globalization

The Need for a New Economic System – PART V: The Threats and Costs of War

The Need for a New Economic System – PART IV: Neocolonialism and Resource Wars

The Need for a New Economic System – Part III: Climate Change and the Urgent Need for Renewable Energy

The Need for a New Economic System – PART II: Entropy and Economics

The Need for a New Economic System – PART I : Limits to Growth

Israel, Iran and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Debt Slavery

Will the Real Issues Be Discussed in 2016?

Militarism’s Hostages

New Hope for Avoiding Catastrophic Climate Change

Exponential Growth

Albert Einstein, Scientist and Pacifist

“The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers”, by Richard Falk and David Krieger

Millay’s “Epitaph for the Race of Man” 

The Future of International Law (Part I)

The Future of International Law (Part II)

The Future of International Law (Part III)

Europe Must Not Be Forced Into a Nuclear War with Russia

Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe – The Dangers Are Very Great Today

Why Is the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons So Urgent?

Why Is the Military-Industrial Complex Sometimes Called “The Devil’s Dynamo”?

Of Reciprocity and Karma

Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand Is at Our Throats

Perpetual War

Kill or Be Killed… Or Both!

Does It Make Sense to Saw Off the Branch on Which You Are Sitting?

Blood for Oil – The Close Relationship Between Petroleum and War

—

Photo:

**Donald Trump speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland | Author: Gage Skidmore | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons

2016 Human Wrongs Watch

Source: http://human-wrongs-watch.net/2016/03/03/who-is-my-neighbour/