Never Ending War? A Reflection for Remembrance Day
Rev. Diane Rollert
Unitarian Church of Montreal, 13 November 2022
I am not a student of military history, but I am a dreamer for peace.
Back in 2013, I preached a Remembrance Day sermon that ended with words of hope from Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, he argued that we may perceive the world as exceptionally violent, but a broader perspective on human history shows that we’ve been on a trajectory of becoming less violent over thousands of years. He based his theory on data that showed that over the centuries we have continued to live longer and better, with less violence and war.
(Warning: Pinker and his theories have their share of critics. But hey! He’s one of our own, having been born and raised right here in Montreal. He graduated from Dawson and McGill.)
Yes, Pinker said, human nature has been inclined toward violence, but it has also been inclined toward “self-control, empathy, fairness and reason — what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’ Violence,” Pinker insisted, “has declined because historical circumstances have increasingly favored our better angels.”
Eleven years later, after I first shared these thoughts from Steven Pinker, the West is witnessing the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, while often ignoring ongoing wars in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Mali and elsewhere — this is not an exhaustive list. In our most anxiety-ridden hours, we fear the possibility of a nuclear strike and worry that we could be on the verge of a third world war.
Given all that is happening in the world right now, I wouldn’t blame anyone for being skeptical about Pinker’s findings. Can we really believe that the better angels of our nature are still moving us toward peace?
And what is Steven Pinker saying now? Is he back-tracking on his own words?
In October, he told a journalist that “Putin’s invasion won’t lead to a return to the age of warring civilizations.” Humans, he says, are still very capable of being rational. We’ve invented vaccines, we’ve gone to the moon, we’ve built mechanisms for peace and democracy. He says, “Putin is anachronistic. He’s pushing against an enormous current.”
Pinker remains optimistic (if a bit cautious) that history is still bending toward reason. He says that the forces that reduced war are still in operation, even if they weren’t strong enough to deter Putin.
What about those forces that reduced war? Think of the generation that are now 94 years old or older, who have been called the Greatest Generation. They lived and served during the Second World War. They rose out of the ashes of devastation and destruction, out of the horrors of the Holocaust, to say, “Never more.”
In 1945, fifty countries, including Canada, came together to create the United Nations to prevent future wars and to build international peace. Three years later, in 1948, they ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in a challenging process that was led by a Canadian, John Peters Humphrey. The final result was an enduring document which begins by recognizing the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights “of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Is the UN a perfect institution? No. Has it been facing increasing challenges from the day it was conceived? Yes. But I want you to imagine the act of hope and courage it took to dream that it was possible for the whole world to come together to work toward peace, and to lay down the foundation for a worldwide understanding of human rights. The survivors of the Second World War recognized a need for one place in the world where all nations could come together to settle disputes and to work toward peace and better conditions for all of humanity.
These are the kinds of big dreams that you or I may have, but consider what it took to actually realize this dream, to create something out of a desire to leave behind the atrocities of the past, to create something that had never existed before, a common place and a common understanding. For a moment, set aside all the noise that may be in your head about where the failures have been since. Imagine a world where no United Nations existed, or where there was no shared starting point for human rights.
We do have the capacity to be rational. Consider Quebec’s own drafting and ratification of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. It was actually created and signed in 1975, seven years before the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was ratified and made part of our federal constitution. The Quebec Charter of Human Rights has guaranteed basic rights that we have long taken for granted. But in the last three years, we have been watching the erosion of some of these rights, particularly through unconstitutional changes to the charter that take away once guaranteed rights of conscience and religious expression. Still, the impulse to protect the rights of all citizens remains. In fact, some of us are in court right now, fighting for the restoration of those rights.
On this Remembrance Day, may we give thanks for all that the Greatest Generation did. But may we also remember that every generation has the capacity to be great. We are seeing sparks of hope igniting the future’s horizon. We are watching young people of Gen Z, 24 years old and younger, rise up in concern for the environment, rise up against violence, rise up against racial and gender discrimination of all kinds, rise up in support of reproductive rights, rise up in support of diversity and democracy. I see many of us rising up alongside them. Despite what cynics may tell you, the struggle for peace and human rights remains a concern for people of every age.
Steven Pinker says that “history is never cyclical, but it can be chaotic.” His message is that we have to keep faith that things have been getting better over thousands of years, and that we can continue to make them better, despite the current crises. We have to believe greater peace is possible; otherwise we risk falling into fatalism.
Pinker may not have said it, but I will. Fatalism is our greatest enemy. It is the seed that gets planted in our hearts, that can grow into fascism and tyranny. I thank the generations that built the UN and wrote the first modern charters of human rights. Instead of falling into fatalism, they brought us hope. They showed the rational capabilities of the human mind and the spirit of the human heart to work towards the end of war.
This is the example we need to remember and guard for generations to come.