Desire, Discernment, Discipline: Moral Imagination and the Costs of Peace
by Mark C. Johnson
The motivating intention of this issue of Fellowship is to explore a broadening of the discourse on peace, especially in the sense of the way out of the morass of the moment. The moment of course is a non-temporal term for an ongoing age of militarism, materialism, and moral depravity.
Peace is a soft concept if war is a hard reality. One of the most quoted of FOR’s past leaders is A. J. Muste, who said, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.” But soft concepts are receiving growing respect in both analytic contexts and in practice.
Gandhian in its tenor — and perhaps in its origin as Muste internalized it — “the way” is a spiritual and moral frame in many religions and philosophical traditions which suggest that wisdom dictates that a journey must be taken to reach a goal of peace. What preparations must be made for the journey down this path? What are the steps or stages of the journey? What are the costs of peace?
The last question was the one posed to the contributors to this issue. What are the costs of peace? The answers demonstrate that the question was understood at a metaphorical level but also as an invitation to speak concretely to the issue. They might be characterized collectively as examples of moral imagination, the exercise of which is the key component to estimating the costs of peace, or the way which is peace.
Moral imagination, for purposes of this discussion, might be comprised of three parts: desire, discernment, and discipline.
While desire can be an obsessive, destructive root of evil and abuse, it is still a requirement for effecting change. We must want and will a difference in the world to begin to work toward an alternative future. Certainly the current political campaign in the United States offers rhetorical evidence of this argument. There appears to be abroad a supportive sentiment of discontent with present conditions and a willingness to engage the moral imagination in search of the alternative world.
A.J. Muste’s reflections on the role of intentional community in the 1920s are echoed again today by peace fellowships and even practitioners in organizational development. Shakespearean formulations of critique and alternative visions set Ken Butigan thinking about scripts for a new discourse. Bernie Meyer lifts up eastern spiritual ideas and practices which are increasingly familiar in the west. Frida Berrigan employs a poem by Martin Espada to set the stage of her observations and arguments.
The first of two obstacles to achieving desires for a different future is the failure to be able to discern the truth, to recognize and react to deceit, to sort through by logic and by learning, the errors perpetuated by the pathologies of power (greed, privilege, deceit). Ian Mitroff and Abraham Silver explore both the naïve and the purposeful disorientations of “type three and type four” errors which lead us to solve exactly the wrong problems precisely.
The second obstacle is the absence of discipline, both a daily ritual or pattern of behaviors that will contribute, incrementally, to the desired and discerned changes, and longanimity, the perseverance, the long view required over extended periods of time to reach a different outcome.
Herein the greatest urgency lies. While we have been able to continually sacrifice millions of lives to stupidity and evil — and still propagate, promise, and even enjoy an abundance of well-being; we now live with growing trepidation if not absolute certainty that the way we are headed is toward species extinction, or at least the loss of all promise for a civilized future. The rising angst can be heard in teenager Emily Thomas’s award-winning essay, the strident alarm in Bernie Meyer’s contribution to the Pune Round Table in August in India.
The call to exercise and act on the lessons of a moral imagination is no longer the pop-rock mantra of single generation; it is the rising echo of the prophetic voice which has longed warned that the end times will either be the reward of hubris or the final acceptance of humility in the face of true power and life force.
Mark C. Johnson is executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and guest co-editor of this issue of Fellowship.
