More on "Non-Violence": Calculations for Oneness...

Let’s say we believe “this is mine” and “that is yours” and there’s an argument, we get into a fight and come to blows. If we are strangers, it’s one thing, we say. But if we were in the same family, we would think that actually coming to blows wouldn’t be right. After all, we are family, and family should stick together, right?

But if we were one tribe in the jungle, and the situation was with another tribe in the jungle, we would see it as “natural” for one tribe to become pugnacious with another.

And the same thing can happen with one nation when another nation threatens it or attacks it. And even a group or league of nations. We think fighting (and even killing in some circumstances) is OK.

But we should see that this can only happen if we are identified with the same “group”: the same family, clan, tribe, nation, religion, state or union, and our so-called “opponents” belong to another “group”.

We should also see that the mental process behind this is called “identification”, meaning our picture of ourselves and our self-worth becomes of paramount importance as opposed to the picture we have of and the worth we give to the “others”, the “outsiders”. What is “us” and not “them” is the only thing that matters when we are identified. And identification is a belief in a specific group-worth that our egos must protect at all costs.

So one simple exercise to first become aware of this and then perhaps come to a realisation about it and change our behaviour is to use a few numbers about human beings and see what the reality behind our beliefs really is.

Family is a good enough concept. You wouldn’t go to war with one faction of family against another faction of your same family, would you? Alright, now extend the borders of your immediate family to include siblings, parents and grandparents – and all their offspring. Then go one generation further and include great-grandparents and all their offspring. Now go one more step back in time to embrace your 2nd great-grandparents and all their progeny. Apart from the progeny, at the 2nd great-grandparent generation we have 16 relatives in the same family. That’s around the year 1850.

If you do the maths, each generation doubles as it goes back, so it’s 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1K, 2K, 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K, 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K and 1 million at your 18th great-grandparents, 20 generations back, or around the year 1400 only.

Please continue the sequence and you’ll find that, only around the turn of the millennium, 1000 AD, your direct ancestors, including your 30th great-grandparents, 32 generations back, number some 4.2 billion. Double that one generation further (to 8.4 billion) and you have more than the whole world’s population today of 7.4 billion. And you’ve only got to the year 970 of our historic period. Take it back to the time when the Moors first invaded Spain (711) and you have well over 1 trillion people! That’s a one with 12 zeros. And it is of course more than “all the humans who have ever lived on this planet”! And that includes all “races”, all “colours” of human beings and all humans believing whatever they believe in. 

Graph of the global human population from 10,000 BCE to 2000 CE, from the US Census Bureau. 

This graph shows the exponential growth in human population since the 18th century. In ancient times, 4000 BCE, there were only 7 million human beings on the planet (2 million less than the current population of Chicago, IL). Now we have over 7 billion.

So basically, using numbers and reason, we can see that we are all related, we are all “recycled” from past human beings along traceable or untraceable blood-lines, which is why any “identification” with one group and the use of any violent means to harm another group is really a stupid thing for a (modern) human being to do, because when we do this, we are actually fighting against our own family, because we are all mathematically and so genetically related (all ancestors have contributed to our DNA).

For those who are Christians, the Saviour summed it up in four words: “Thou shalt not kill”. Now, two thousand sixteen years later, you can simply do the maths to see why.

This is the explanation why the use of reason instead of brute force is more civilised. The realisation of this connectedness of human beings liberates the mind, enabling it to see that we are simply one big family living on one small planet. And that violent strife, hatred, anger and cruel criticism of others is not the way for humans to become more “civilised”. Warring and fighting and killing other humans should now be declared an “outdated mode of human relationships”. Let us hope this will come naturally as people see and understand it. Are you willing to do so?