Reflections on Nobel Peace Prize for the E.U.

It was announced today that the E.U. is the recipient of this years' Nobel Peace Prize.  As a European living in the U.S., I'm not sure how I can claim my share, but peace in post-war Western Europe is indeed a great achievement.  However, the European project, founded on the idea of the mutual surrender of certain powers to a supranational authority in exchange for peace, is perhaps now more in doubt than ever.  The timing might therefore feel strange, but the Nobel committee likely wishes to remind Europeans of the big picture.  I think the idea of surrendering power to a greater authority that can guarantee peace is a very wise idea.  However, how do we find an authority that all will respect?  Here are some thoughts from an earlier post:

After the Second World War, an attempt was made to bring balance to Europe by establishing a supranational authority, run by Europe’s best and brightest, that would override national and ethnic enmities that had bloodied the continent for millennia. First, France and Germany ceded control over coal and steel production to the European Coal and Steel Community. In the following decades, closer and closer union was pursued, and Brussels was populated by brilliant minds seeking the best for Europe – peace and prosperity.

But, as things stand, national differences threaten to tear the EU asunder. National interests it seems cannot be trumped by bureaucrats in Brussels, however visionary and well-intentioned. Europe is still very much a group of sovereign nation states unwilling to surrender authority to a supranational body.

So, it appears that the European project has failed to produce balance. Moreover, any human authority that tries to settle disputes between nations is likely to be accused of bias by one or more parties to the dispute, and may even become the target of wrath. So, even if we were to find a very wise and virtuous person, who held humanity’s best interests at heart, no one would follow him or her.

We need someone with unquestioned authority to settle the disputes of humanity. This is the picture we find in Isaiah Chapter Two.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob.  He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”  The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.  He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.  They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Isaiah 2:3-5 (New International Version).

Only a supremely wise, just, and unbiased being could convince disputing nations to beat their swords into plowshares. No more wild experimentation. No sincere appeals that it will be different this time. No more claims to have learned the lessons of history, when at the darkest times it becomes painfully clear that the lesson that we always forget is that history repeats itself.

Humanity clings desperately to the hope that one day swords will be beaten into plowshares. However, it seems, that the biblically-inspired hope of perpetual peace and justice cannot be established without the biblical-described source of such peace – God’s kingdom of justice established on earth as it is in heaven.

 You can read the entire post here.

Bankers Into Plowshares?

Listening to the radio the other day I was struck as a reporter described a sign held by an activist at an Occupy Frankfurt rally. Translated from German the sign read “[turn] bankers into plowshares”. The activist was referencing the phrase “swords into plowshares”, the image of swords, as weapons of war, being turned into plowshares, agricultural instruments. This phrase looks forward to a time when we will have no conceivable use for weapons of war. When there is permanent disarmament, and we till the earth in peace.

The activist was trying, I think, to get across the idea that without bankers society would be better – fairer and more just and peaceful. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide their personal position on bankers and the world financial crisis, that’s not what interests me here. What caught my ear was the use of language.

This phrase comes from the Biblical prophet Isaiah, describing the world after God’s kingdom is established on earth and all things are made right. Here is the phrase in context:

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob.  He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”  The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.  He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples.  They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. (1)

I previously wrote a piece on man’s constant urge for a better world for peace and justice, and the inability to achieve it, which you can read here. I don’t want to repeat myself, but the current wave of protests against the financial systems of the world and reference to the swords into plowshares intrigued me.

Sailing to Utopia

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” – Oscar Wilde  [i]

Oscar Wilde wrote that a map that didn’t include utopia was not worth glancing at.  Why do we dream of utopia and strive towards it? 

The dream of a world of peace and harmony has inspired many throughout history.  The communist and socialist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were inspired by this urge.  Many today march in the belief that by joining with others they can effect change - protesting wars, pollution, discrimination.  They believe like Wilde that there must be a better, fairer way of doing things than the way we live today.  But, what is this need in us to remake our world for the better? Why do we spend so much energy struggling for a more equal world instead of focusing purely on our own selfish needs? 

Human dreams of utopia have constantly run aground on the rocks of human greed and ambition.  History has shown that we are incapable of creating a more equal society merely, as George Orwell put it, a society where some people are more equal than other people. [ii]  In the face of our increasing attempts to build international institutions and laws to bring about an end to conflict we stand no nearer, and arguably farther away, from achieving this aim.  But, in spite of the weight of history there are those who still seek the dream of a man-made utopia – heaven on earth. 

Where do these ideas of utopia come from?  Were we born with them?  Did they develop over the course of human history?  Is there some scientific explanation for them?

Utopia

In the late nineteenth century, Karl Marx proposed a theory that claimed to provide a scientific foundation to the dream of a man-made utopia of equality and brotherhood.  Karl Marx, whose ideas are still deeply influential in our world today, asserted that history was driven by observable class conflict. 

The appeal of Marxism lay in its presentation as a scientific theory.  Marxism is a materialist theory.  That is to say it explains itself in economic terms based on observable factors like conflict between workers and factory owners without resort to metaphysical (or supernatural) terms or entities.  Karl Marx propounded a theory called historical materialism that explained human history as a series of class conflicts between two opposing groups – one in control the other not in control.  Slaves and masters, serfs and landowners, factory workers and factory owners.  At each stage class conflict arises when the group out of control realizes that there is a better way to do things and fights to achieve that new arrangement.  For example, in this way Marx contended that the slave/master society gave way to a feudal society and feudal society to capitalism.  He asserted that the nineteenth century conflict between factory workers and owners would inevitably lead to the final stage – communism in which resources would be equally shared among everyone.  The communist stage would usher in an utopian world of peace and plenty for all.

However, communism did not inevitably follow capitalism as capitalism followed feudalism.  True, various political movements around inspired by Marx tried to bring about the communist era by force.  As we now know, they failed and in doing so caused human suffering on an epic scale.

Communism promised a utopia of equality and brotherhood that turned into the greed and graft of the elite and the oppression of dissidents by secret police of the Soviet Union. The world reacted in horror to the brutal inhumanity of the Soviet Union and rejoiced when the Iron Curtain fell. So the theory of historical materialism failed in the laboratory of history.

But the utopian dream lives on.  The motivation behind many post-modern political movements is to achieve a Marxist utopia without the theoretical Marxism that has proved to be such heavy baggage.  The appeal of Marxism and historical materialism was that it showed a path to heaven on earth without any religious or spiritual mumbo-jumbo.  But now that the sheen of scientific credibility has melted away under the tide of history, belief in a man-made utopia has the distinct air of religious belief about it.

Heaven

The Christian answer to the question of where the dream of utopia comes from is that we are born with a sense that there is a supernatural dimension to this world.  The Christian concept of heaven is based on absolute, immutable ideas.  The Christian idea of a future of absolute peace assumes the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing God that guarantees this future.  However, the Christian heaven of perpetual peace is only open to those who acknowledge this all-powerful God and pledge their allegiance to Him.

Many people have a problem with the idea that one must surrender to God to enter heaven and that humankind cannot by themselves build such a heaven on earth.  For these and other reasons, the Christian worldview as it relates to a heavenly utopia is rejected.  However, the biblical imagery of turning swords into plowshares and loving your enemies is retained.  The lingering notion that there must be something more, that humanity is not always destined to drown in enmity, is kept alive.  The project then becomes to build a ladder to heaven using earthly materials.  Hence, the appeal of Marxism and historical materialism.

 But, as we have seen the idea that Karl Marx’s historical materialism provided a scientific foundation on which to build our dreams of heaven on earth no longer holds water.  Marxism without its scientific backup involves just as much faith as anything else.  That is to say, there is no objective reason to believe that humanity will achieve a world of peace, love and brotherhood.  It seems that the harder we try the farther it slips from our grasp.

I do not imagine there are many well-intentioned people who would reject the biblical picture of endless peace.  What they do object to is the idea that this peace is God-given and not man made.  However, if they object to the involvement of God in the process because they think this to be without any objective scientific basis, they should be aware that belief in a man-made utopia is no different. 

Of course Wilde was quite right that life would not be worth living if there is no chance of a better world than this one.  So what can one do?  Continue to dream, ignoring the evidence to the contrary, of a man-made utopia?  Embrace the despair that comes from the acceptance that we can never reach utopia and that it’s better not to try?  Accept the longing for perfection as a sign that there is more to our world than we see everyday?

Whatever the origin of the utopian dream, I think one is hard pressed to deny the existence and universality of such longings.  This urge for utopia persists.  Next, one must admit these longings have been misused to inspire great evil.  Human efforts to leave our world of petty jealousies and mass murder and sail to a better place have failed.  History has shown us there is no place on the map called utopia and that many attempts to reach that fabled shore have in fact led to hell on earth. 

So, considering purely material earthly factors such as history show us that utopia is an impossible dream, if one wishes to be truly scientific about it – there is no quantifiable evidence that utopia is achievable.  Even what we consider to have been great civilizations were built on cruelty and inhumanity and exclusion.  As a result, it is insanity to look at our world and dream utopia is possible.  

Perhaps it is time to let the dream of utopia die.  But we know that if we lose hope we lose everything.  If we deny the possibility of a better world we will lose our essential humanity and so guarantee inhumanity.  So for many of us ditching the dream of peace and plenty for all is not an option.  Therefore, if we want to keep believing in the possibility of utopia, we perhaps need to consider that the utopian urge is not explainable in material, physical terms, but is a sign that there is more to human life.  To save ourselves from the perpetual disappointment that results from the mismatch between our dreams of perfection and the realities of human nature, maybe it is time to look to heaven.

[i]  The Soul of Man Under Socialism.  Oscar Wilde.

[ii] Animal Farm.  George Orwell.