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20220415 Peacemakers Way

The Peacemaker's Way: Come to Your Senses, Love Your Enemy, Befriend Evil

I am writing this essay as a personal experiment in peacemaking. I will present it in two venues with opposing views on current events. One is the conference at the Lithuanian Cultural Studies Institute on "Civilizational Imagination and Contemporary Geopolitical Shifts". The other is an online venue such as Geopolitica.Ru edited by Leonid Savin, which presents Eurasianism as well as Alexandr Dugin's "The Fourth Political Theory", and which is now inaccessible from Lithuania.

At the outset, I pray God that my words heal and not hurt the victims, the heroes and the villains of the conflict in Ukraine. I want to be heard by both sides, but especially, the opposing side.

I wish to share my understanding of Jesus's command, "Love your enemy". In practice, this means "Look at everything from your enemy's point of view." Specifically: Be straightforward; Act step-by-step; Be vulnerable; Let them win; Let them teach you; Stick to your principles; Have something to share."

As my thought experiment, I accept that I am absolutely evil. My American upbringing, my pro-Lithuanian, anti-Nazi, anti-Soviet prejudices make me a product of the dominant, unipolar, liberal hegemony, the kingdom of the Antichrist, in Dugin's words. How could I possibly overcome my prejudices?

I expose my own personal, liberal, extremist depravity, much like Raskolnikov in "Crime and Punishment". I radicalized myself by applying Jesus's command, "Love your enemy." I engaged gangs in Chicago, I taught Palestinians to fight peacefully, I organized Kenyan peacemakers, I sided with Jews in Lithuania. I aspired to ever more dubious challenges, as with our epochal current events, where to embrace my enemy's point of view, by my own perverse logic, I must identify with evil! I must befriend evil! I think of Jesus, who let the demons invade the pigs, who let the weeds grow along with the grain, and who exchanged Scriptural passages with his Temptor, "for man does not live by bread alone".

I suggest that by befriending evil, by not backing our enemies into a corner, by allowing them to disentangle themselves honorably, by helping them think through what they really want, by giving them freedom and letting them choose their future, we would learn to fight peacefully another day, and avoid violent stalemates, which do not advance the cosmic ambitions of true evil, which is neither violent death nor earthly suffering nor personal humiliation but ever cleansing the world with eternal damnation. As Jesus says, we are the salt.

I recall how US President Abraham Lincoln told the orchestra to play "Dixie", the beloved song of the Confederacy, the day after their surrender in a brotherly conflict which was thirty times longer and more brutal than our own brotherly conflict. I provide examples how Pope Francis or US President Joe Biden or Russian President Vladimir Putin could imaginatively end this conflict and heal all sides.

We do not know who truly leads the unipolar world, but all the world sees the leadership of the Russian Federation in exposing contradictions on behalf of a multipolar world. A loving conclusion to this conflict would energize the Global Periphery for multipolar dialogue about the moral selectivity of the Moral Caste System, by which the unipolar Global Center deems itself morally superior to the multipolar Global Periphery.

We could all work now to promote such worldwide dialogue. First, we need to approach our own Foreign Ministries so that they would publicly register us as patriotic citizens who love our enemies. Next, with their permission, we could engage each other in the classics of evil, as found in the First, Second, Third and Fourth Political Theories, by thinkers such as Jesus, Lincoln, Tolstoy, Lenin, Hitler, Dugin and Kulikauskas. Finally, we can propose a myriad of imaginative solutions which show that peacemakers can be truly evil, in the cosmic sense, as the salt of the earth, the children of God. Thus I end my thought experiment.