These days, people come to me expressing disillusion with the United States and Israel. They are sad and frustrated, having donated, boycotted and protested to end Palestinian mistreatment, only to reap too-slow progress and further disappointment.
As helpless as we begin to feel, don’t give up, I say, reminding them that the world’s children and their families are ours too. How can we look away when they are being humiliated, tortured and murdered? Continue spreading truth in any way you can. Write a book, give a talk, make a film, hand out flyers. Read books by El Akkad, Baltzer and Khalidi. Follow Jewish Voices For Peace and Middle East Eye. Get the word out about Israel’s founding and apartheid. Be visible. Don’t let hasbarists dictate a false historical record.
And though it won’t stop today’s bleeding, we also need a new long game: something revolutionary and ridiculously more effective that expedites, beyond the pace of a snail, the dismantling of all supremacism and injustice. Oh, to rearrange a difficult world!
I think the bang for the buck begins with education … but I mean a bigger education than we know, a more ambitious concept that evokes universal oneness based on science and history and organically brings people together by cultivating greater numbers of self-motivated people who act antithetically to a way of life that is hyper-selfish. This would be humans cranking it up, a moonshot.
This bigger education would be more comprehensive: involving a broader base of subjects (think liberal arts). Unfortunately, America currently favors a more utilitarian education imparting specific skills to fit individual needs while neglecting wider knowledge.
This education would have greater inclusivity and total objectivity (so blemishes, like slavery and its long-reaching aftermath, are not obscured). Meanwhile, America dabbles with censorship.
This education would be continually mindful of history’s timeline, to imbue an appreciation of how human collective knowledge is acquired, organized and used to facilitate progress so we are less likely to repeat history’s mistakes or have to reinvent wheels.
This education would emphasize consolidation, which means bringing together the entire body of knowledge, to be used in everything we do, in every aspect of life. Science textbooks kept in the attic, philosophy treatises in the basement and art notebooks under the couch would all be brought into one room so an engineer would make decisions not just based on geometry, science and math but also in concert with ethics, art, sociology and business. Sadly, we tend to compartmentalize instead.
This education would have a common core curriculum (vigorously opposed by many in the U.S.) presented to every child and young adult. All students would be given the identical minimum package of knowledge, so future doctors, scientists, car mechanics and cashiers would each know equivalent basics, putting us all on the same page with a shared language.
This education would receive total support from society. It would be cherished, appreciated, celebrated, equally funded, prioritized like never before and not dumbed-down, ridiculed or neglected. Pop culture would not scoff at it. Serious students would not be looked down on as being uncool.
This education would foster intellectual curiosity lasting a lifetime, inspiring graduates to never cease learning.
When you experience this bigger education, you can’t help but become aware of a universal oneness that connects you and me to everyone and everything else that ever existed. For one thing, we are tied together physically — every animal, plant and human is made from the same particles that interact with and influence each other, creating continual waves of influences that move across the universe to touch everything else. All had a role to play to get us from the beginning, 13 billion years ago, to where we are now. All made history, and this unites us in a historical oneness. We share this history. Everything is linked, interconnected.
The awareness of this oneness would bring you closer across the globe to people and creatures and ideas different from your own experience, with deeper empathy, intellectual curiosity, compassion and respect. You would care very much about them, even feel a responsibility toward them. There’d be less hyper-selfishness, injustice and oppression obstructing progress. You would develop a sense that everybody and everything is involved, essential, valuable and significant.
I see this as going even beyond education—like a larger understanding, a cultural change involving every aspect of life. I’m not blindly idealistic, nor delusional, and understand how high the wall is; it just gets to the point where you must do things differently or else keep getting the same inadequate results.
William Trently is an author, Nvay veteran and dentist based in Stratham.