How Reason can bring about Peace.

When people are asked if they could be granted only one wish, they think that the only correct wish to have is “Peace on Earth.” Well, there is peace on Earth, in most places most of the time, already. But of course, the real wish is that there would be peace everywhere on Earth, permanently. The wish for immediate and permanent peace on Earth, is to request that God - if God exists - change human beings, or restrain them supernaturally, to prevent them from inflicting violence on each other. That is, God must take away our free will and freedom of action.

Like all magical granting of wishes, this one is far-fetched, and even more far-fetched than most. Even wishing to win the lottery still requires the wisher to buy a ticket; you can’t wish to win the lottery if you don’t play the game. Likewise, if I wish for peace on Earth,I must, as the song goes, “let it begin with me.” If the beliefs, values, lifestyles, and feelings of others lead them to violence and war, they must be modified. And therefore, if there is anything in my own beliefs, values, lifestyle, and feelings that would lead me to violence and war, these too, must be forsaken. I can’t inflict peace on others if I’m not willing to make changes myself.

But there is good news. Peace isn’t a wish, it is a hope. It is an expectation of something that can be achieved. And this does not mean religious faith, or at least, not religious faith alone. Religion tends to look beyond the grave, and can practically nullify life on earth and make war permissible and admirable. There may be nothing about religion in general, or any particular religion, that promotes violence. But as soon as a religious doctrine, such as obeying the civil magistrate, is made to mean fighting in wars of glory or conquest just because the King or President said so, then religion has a problem.

Peace is an ideal for life on earth, not for life beyond the grave. And two 20th-century secular thinkers point the way, and in the process also point the way to ancient wisdom on the subject. More than any other thinker, the novelist Ayn Rand established a morality that was rooted entirely in reason and the individual pursuit of happiness in this life on earth. Lacking an animal instinct for self-preservation, the human being requires reason to survive, and is able to shape his environment according to his wants and needs, his values. The pursuit of happiness is the human goal, it is necessarily an individual, not collective pursuit. The rule that allows each person to pursue happiness is the prohibition of the initiation of force. If someone kidnaps, harms or kills another, or damages or steals his property, it is reasonable to retaliate against that person. Otherwise, people would be free to live with mutual respect for each other’s rights to life, liberty, and property, to trade and associate freely with each other, and to, yes, live in peace. This is a morality for those who want to live happily on the earth, instead of denying themselves the pleasures of this life in the hope of something better beyond the grave.

Rand’s moral revolution is equaled by economist Ludwig von Mises’ ethical revolution. Mises was an economist, but his economics was grounded not in data collecting but in a theory of human nature. Which is simply this: the individual possesses a feeling of “uneasiness” of some sort; he thinks about how best to remove it, and then he acts. This, in the most general way, is acting according to “rational self-interest.” The reasons for the uneasiness may seem absurd to others, based on wrong beliefs or shallow desires. The thought process for removing the uneasiness may seem wholly unreasonable and illogical. The resulting action may be poorly executed. Nevertheless, this is all people ever do, whatever they do, whatever they believe, and wherever they are. Even sitting around “doing nothing” or “inaction” due to indecision while one is lost in thought, is itself an act that consumes time, an act that is to be preferred at that time to other acts. And since each person’s beliefs, values, reasoning ability, and personalities are different, they are each independent economic actors. Economics is not a sphere of life independent from all of the others. Because it factors not only the use of money and resources, but also time, economics is about trade-offs of resources and relates to all human action. To ethics in general.

Unlike Rand, Mises does not make value judgments. His topic is of means, not of ends. Of economics and of ethics - how to most efficiently and accurately act according to one's values - instead of morality, which defines and weighs those values.

But if we adapt Mises's methodology and Rand's values, a system would develop in which no one's personal beliefs or tastes would be censored or prohibited. In order to receive respect, affection, and business, one would be respectful, kind, committed to quality, and honest - for the very reason that no would would reasonably want to spend time with an unpleasant person or do business with one who has a record of shoddiness or dishonesty. Those who do violence through force, theft, and fraud would be put away - not out of moral outrage or "revenge" but because it is destructive and unreasonable to permit them to live in freedom in civil society. One doesn't need to hate the sinner, or even "hate the sin." One doesn't have to do anything but act out of the self-interest of what best advances personal happiness.

Rand and Mises, while providing refreshing insights for the modern market culture, ultimately point us back to the heart of what is called the "Judeo-Christian ethic" that is at the core of Western Civilization. This is essentially Jewish moral teaching, summed up in the Ten Commandments, with some expanded interpretation by Jesus.

But what are the themes when one reads the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount? The first three commandments suggest, don't corrupt your mind with supersticions about God, don't pretent that images of God have any meaning or power, don't pretend that God wants whatever you want, don't invoke the name of God to manipulate other people. Regardless of anyone's theological opinions, these lessons are valid for anyone who want to live happily and in peace on this earth. Don't corrupt the mind with unreasonable supernatural teachings (astrology, numerology, palm readings, etc.).

The remaining seven commandments similarly have practical meaning. Take a day off every seven days, for your own health if for no other reason. Listen and honor what your parents teach you, not for God's benefit or your parent's benefit, but for your own benefit. And do not violate anyone else's rights, violate the trust of contracts and covenants, lie at the expense of another, or measure your own self-worth by what others have.

Such "commandments" are not the arbitrary rules of a mysterious, paradoxical, yet confoundingly benevolent God, they are common sense staring us right in the face. Combine this with Jesus's teaching to love each other. Not to "do good" to others according to what one thinks is "best" for them, but to treat all with the same respect. To never be angry with another person because of some personal wrong, or because of some "sin" or violation of manners that might normally aggrieve you. Don't judge others, because all that does is occupy your own mind and eat away at your own body and your own time. To preserve a community, putting a stop to wrong ways may be necessary. But nothing needs to be done, or taken, personally.

Rand and Mises take us back to the lessons of Jesus and Moses. To respect individuals, as individuals. To look on the helpless with compassion and generosity freely given, but not teach them that they have a legal "right" to involuntary redistribution of wealth created by others.

Where God instructs us to look out for the helpless, God is teaching us that we, too, might find ourselves in the same boat. God searches the indiviudal mind, the individual soul to see how loving and compassionate it is. This is a challenge for each of us - as individuals.

But if we are to assume that God frowns upon productive wealth, that all achievement is greed, that capitalism is wrong, and that God sometimes calls us to "just wars," then God is truly calling all of us of the "Judeo-Christian tradition" to be aggressors, initiators of force against our own and foreign peoples. We would be people who believe that all good and all morality come from an arbitrary, unfathomable, and bloodthirsty God who nonetheless must be worshipped. How this differs from the Osama bin Laden's version of Allah, or even of the ancient Greek god Zeus, is beyond me.

But Rand and Mises, who were secular in outlook, wrote of the individual that possessed freedom. Moral freedom. And this is the same outlook on individual freedom that Jesus and Moses had, though they both had a religious outlook. Reason is the common element in both, reason being the tool for survival on earth.

And it is to the extent that reason is open to a religious believer, that peace on earth may be possible.