May-June 2004
To Whose Authority Do We Give Our Allegiance?
The foundation of my forthcoming book, A RADICAL PEACE:CREATING LIFE ANEW, rests on this question: "To Whose Authority Do We Each Owe Our Allegiance?"
It is a question that can be, though it is not actually yet, being pondered regarding the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces. The echoes are there preparing the groundwork:
--Parents and friends of soldiers say the soldiers were just following orders and "that's what you are supposed to do in the military - follow orders."
--Administration officials continue to attest that it was all an isolated incident despite mounting evidence that it was a wide-spread and condoned practice.
--Some individuals continue to state that in war "these things happen" or that "you gotta do what you gotta do to get the information you need."
None of the horrors that are coming to light can truly be a surprise, though, because this is indeed the type of thing that happens when cultures and individuals choose to "not see" and accept the precepts and authority of a government and "superiors" over their own better judgement, over their spiritual instructions received from the time of youth, or, indeed, the simplicity of the golden rule's "common decency standard" that we do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Of all the soldiers within eye and earshot of act or photographs passed around from hand to hand why is it only one soldier said "This doesn't look right" and reported the situation. In a moment of such challenging choice, asking "what would God have me do?" levels the playing field. International organizations spoke out and were ignored by an administration chain that believed it was the sole authority.
While the media and leadership begin searching for whom to blame, and finding out "what did people know," surely we know we knew better. So, instead, a different question needs to be asked of everyone from soldier to general to politician to you and I: "No matter the directive (so far there has not yet been anyone attesting to being "ordered" to do any such thing) received, did it not at any moment strike you that what was being perpetuated in that jail or what you were specifically being asked to do was simply not decent or right?" It was in that haloed momentous space between directive and action that awareness and choice existed so strikingly. It was then that our points of allegiance were drawn. Do we follow what God would have us do or an insititutionalized "boss?"
The what and why of rationales matter little after that instantaneous moment of recognition of what we knew better than to do. We come face to face in the brief silence of that space between directive and act in which we knew "I know better than to do this."
A RADICAL PEACE hastens our attunement and level of service to humanity, as these statements attest:
"We are mistaken when we believe that peace is exemplified by a lack of action, or, perhaps, by a personal calm that blithely ignores "reality." Peace is, actually, an energy of creation ..."*1
"Peace is in fact feared by those running those institutions because peace undercuts the foundation of their control and profit motivation. So, nothing within our cultural structures motivates us to study peace much less achieve it! Instead we've inherited fears, judgements, assumptions, and attitudes...about the very basics of society and what constitutes order...*2
"However, what we focus on expands. When we stand against something, we are focusing our energies upon it, lending our energies to the continuance of the battles, and we are being decidedly ineffective in attempting to live peacefully and create peace. We are also, as is typically the case, pointing a finger at others instead of considering our own culpability for any existing situation as well as our own responsibility for its continuance - and for its solution."*3
We each matter. Our every choice creates the form that the world's "reality" takes on. Choose higher!
Wishing you peace,
Claire Krulikowski
(*1, All asteriked quotations are copyrighted from the manuscript for the book, A RADICAL PEACE: CREATING LIFE ANEW,Copyright 2003, by Claire Krulikowski. All Rights Reserved.)
