by Gerald May

A single sentence has haunted me for over a decade. It is the first line of the Dalai Lama's Foreword to Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Peace is Every Step. This is what he wrote: "Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way."

On the surface the thought seems simple, almost obvious. We all know that changes in individual people affect larger social systems. But it is those last five words that catch me up: "it is the only way." The Dalai Lama's statement is far more than another simple encouragement to love one's neighbor; it is also a critique of all the other ways we human beings have tried to bring peace and justice to the world. It says that they simply do not work.

As I have reflected on the Dalai Lama's words over these past ten years, I find myself sadly in agreement. War, violence, oppression, injustice and countless other forms of human cruelty are endemic on this planet. They have been with us since the beginning of our species and they are no less present now than they were ten thousand years ago. With modern technology, the cruelty we humans wreak upon one another is now more devastating than it ever was.

It's not as if we haven't tried to find better ways. It is impossible to count the vast variety of projects and programs humanity has instituted over the millennia to promote peace and justice. How many communities of peace have been established? How many new world orders have been envisioned? How many social, political and religious systems have been established in the name of peace and justice? One might as well count grains of sand. All have been well-intended and many have encouraged real social change. Some have even created small temporary oases of peace in our troubled world. But the hard fact remains: they have not, individually or collectively, diminished the overall virulence of human cruelty. They have not saved us from ourselves. In this sense, they have not worked.

I am now convinced that our many programs and projects have not worked because they are all systemic remedies. Whether great utopian visions for society at large or simple moral and ethical principles for individuals, they consistently address our corporate ways of living together. But human cruelty is not, at its core, a systemic problem. Political, social, economic, religious and other collective systems can worsen or minimize cruelty, but they do not contain its roots. Instead, the capacity for cruelty is innate in every human person. It is part of our individual human nature. Thus the fault lies not in our collective systems, but within ourselves. And if there ever can be a remedy, a depth-change from cruelty towards compassion, it too must arise within the nature of the individual human being.

I did not come to this conclusion easily. In a quarter-century of practicing psychiatry, I tried to understand people's proclivity to cruelty as the combination of cultural influences and early childhood experiences. My assumption was that aside from certain genetic abnormalities, human beings are born pure, loving, innocent and just. After birth, a child is subjected to extremely strong cultural conditioning and is formed also by his or her early experiences of trust, care, security and the like. I assumed that if this early formation occurred in a peaceable and harmonious fashion, the child would grow into a just, compassionate adult. Conversely, cruel and unjust behavior should be traceable to some disorder, some abnormality of nurture.

Looking back, I wonder how I could have been so naive. The evidence of real people in real life in no way supports such assumptions. The undeniable truth is that all children, no matter how well cared for, and all adults, no matter how well adjusted, are capable of terrible cruelty. To be sure, specific patterns of violence (e.g. child abuse, rape and murderous compulsions) are clearly molded by abnormal early experiences. But the violent potential behind such extremes, the primitive capability of and readiness for cruelty are not abnormal at all. They exist within all of us, all the time. They exhibit themselves daily, from small vendettas in workplaces to road rage on the highways, from family feuds to racial prejudice, from terrorism to national warfare. In truth, violence, cruelty and injustice are horrifyingly normal.

To put it another way, childhood and social conditioning may shape how we express or restrain our capacities for violence, injustice and other forms of cruelty, but the capacities themselves are inborn, "hard-wired" in our brains.

Most psychological understandings have assumed that in the raising of children and the maturing of adults, it is important that tendencies toward aggression, regardless of cause, be restrained and overlaid by enhanced tendencies toward altruism. Normally this happens by instilling moral and ethical principles, but at a deeper level Freud saw it as an ongoing competition between eros and thanatos, the life and death instincts. Harry Stack Sullivan characterized healthy adult maturity as a state in which tenderness prevails.

Although it is logical to think that compassion needs to counteract aggression, two fundamental problems arise with how this takes place. It generally happens through conditioning, the negative reinforcement of violent behaviors and positive reinforcement of altruism. The first problem is that such conditionings are culture-specific. They conform to local ethics and mores, which determine the behaviors that are to be suppressed and those that are supported. Thus it may be wrong to attack someone who has simply insulted you, but right to defend yourself against a bully. It may be wrong to attack a family member, but right to brutalize an outsider. It may be wrong to wage war as an aggressor, but right to do so in defense against aggression. Thus arise the endless conflicts in our neighborhoods and our world, in which each of the warring factions feels it is "right."

The second problem with supporting altruism over aggression is more basic--it has to do with what happens in the individual. Effective conditioning usually produces people who function well in their cultures, but it does not actually change their basic perceptions or responses. Instead, we simply wind up with conditioned habits and ideas of what is right and wrong. For example, I am certain that it is wrong to lash out at another driver who cuts in front of me on the highway. I also know that to do so is likely to get me into trouble. But when the event actually occurs, my first reaction is hostility, my first impulse is vengeful. It takes at least a second or two to gather my wits and decide to act in a civilized fashion.

What, I wonder, would be the situation if something happened to actually transform my initial responses? What if my immediate reaction was one of sincere concern for the other driver's welfare? What if I felt, right then and there, the desperation or confusion that the other driver must be experiencing? In this example, my outward behavior might not be very different, but it would arise in a completely different way and come from an entirely different place. Here there would be no suppression of aggression, no sublimation or redirecting of violent impulses, no defense mechanisms at all. This, I think, would be an experience of true transformation.

For some, such a prospect raises fear. How would we survive if we did not use aggressive defense? And would not such a realization alienate us from our own culture? For others, the prospect is filled with hope, but it seems simply too idealistic, too good to be true. From my own experience, I can say that the fears engendered by this possibility occur more from thinking about it than from actual encounters with it. It is very similar to the way an alcoholic might panic at the thought of never taking another drink--which is why AA so strongly advocates the "one day at a time" attitude. Compassion is not as weak as it might sound. And yes, I think such an inner transformation does require a relinquishment of one's social and cultural bonds, as well as countless other attachments. But it does not necessarily lead to a sense of alienation. If the detachment occurs in the service of true compassion, the resulting feelings are far more tender than that.

Nor do I think it is too good to be true. I believe I have seen the inner transformation from selfishness to compassion happening to many people, and I believe I have tasted it within myself. I am convinced that although it is difficult as the Dalai Lama said, it is a very real and practical possibility. And I am ready to agree that it is the only way, our only hope.

This is an excerpt from Jerry's longer article of the same name which was prepared for the Fetzer Institute "Deepening the American Dream" Project, April 2002.