A friend asked me to respond to these questions: “What would you have done if you were George Washington when the Brits were trying to take over?” – “What would you have done in 1812, when 1000 U.S. merchant ships were seized? After 10 years of hoping it would stop.” – “What would you have said in your radio address the day after Dec 7th 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed?”
When American Pioneers traveled to explore the west, they could not have done it without knowledge – the accumulated knowledge that had evolved to that time and place. When American astronauts traveled to the moon, it could have not been done without the accumulated knowledge that had evolved to that time and place. To put a spacecraft in orbit, populate it, perform spacewalks, and do all the things we do in space, could not have been done without the accumulated knowledge that had evolved to that time and place. Further exploration with missions into the cosmos cannot be done without an accumulation of knowledge that will have evolved to that future time and place.
And, we will not be able to end war and establish authentic peace without an accumulation of knowledge that will have evolved in our ever evolving time and place -- our forever evolving here and now.
Gaining knowledge is a process. There is no end to that process. It is a process as in Hegel’s dialectic: that of a notion, the formation of a thesis, antithesis, and sublation eventually forming a synthesis, and then the process starts all over again with the new accumulated knowledge, which continues to evolve over time.
The end game is complete knowledge -- the knowledge necessary to achieve “The Theory of Everything.” Of course, we will never in reality achieve it, but we will get closer and closer and closer,” without achieving fruition.
These situations of conflict do not just happen. Simplistically, they do not happen overnight into something you were not aware of the day before. The time frame of these events before a confrontation that from which a nation cannot then ignore evolve over years.
With a passion for peace and not conflict, I believe every conflict can be circumvented.
The process of peaceful confrontation through negotiation is a lengthy, ongoing process. As with dialectic it is an evolving process. In peaceful negotiation, the process always has the probability of a win-win peaceful conclusion. There is always a give and take, but if conducted with probity it can be a win for everyone involved. Of course, both sides of the process must diplomatically manage it. In the process, one must understand the give and take nature of the process.
War is the result of belligerent reaction, because it has immediacy as a result of failure to act proactively.
In war, a nation might lose and they gain nothing, but lose so much: blood and treasure as well as standing, as America has lost with the world in respect to Iraq.
So, my bottom-line response is that in the zeitgeist of the latter part of the 18th century, in the zeitgeist of the first part of the 19th century, and in the zeitgeist of the middle of the 20th century without the benefit of contemporary accumulated knowledge, and my own evolution, as a citizen and not a seer, I may not have responded any differently than another American living in those eras.
As a leader, I would hope I would have felt significantly disappointed, because a war is the result of failure. But, then, of course, I would not have the accumulated knowledge to understand that I had failed.
The causes of the American Revolutionary War or the American War of Independence (1775–1783) contain a series of events dating prior to the French Indian War beginning in 1754 up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence from England in 1776.
During more than 22 years, there were many significant opportunities for negotiation, but none were taken.
The War of 1812 was a failed attempt by the USA to seize Canada while Britain was engaged fighting Napoleon in Europe. It seems to me, as with Iraq that it was a war of choice. It certainly could have been avoided.
The fruition of World War II was a result of a series of events over time prior to World War I. If you look at the history of these two catastrophic events and the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania you would acknowledge they could have been proactively prevented. The root cause of World War II was World War I.
Perhaps the accumulated knowledge to prevent the sequence of events that took place in the causation of these wars just simply had not evolved to an extent where that knowledge was available.
So, if I were George Washington, James Madison or Franklin Delano Roosevelt with contemporary accumulated knowledge and within the scope of my evolution, I would have had as much passion to find ways to circumvent war as they had in their zeitgeist to be belligerent and which consequently lead them to war. These wars had all of the potentiality to have been avoided.
The evidence of what I am talking about is implicit in the way your questions were framed. The questions in and of themselves pose themselves for a reactionary response. The answer I have given is one of proaction.
So, if I had my way and was successful with all of these events there would be nothing for me to do, nor would I have a radio address to give. The events would not have happened, because I have a passion for peace, and I would have acted proactively over the years to prevent them from happening.
