Seek Disharmony
Does peace require a sincere acceptance of the challenges entailed in our metaphysical and ethical differences?
“All your anxiety is because of your desire for harmony. Seek disharmony, then you will gain peace.” - Rumi
If I were to suggest to you that the question of peace could solely be achieved by attention to the religious, I would come inevitably against all the opposition that the intellect could muster. For it is a truth nearly universally acknowledged that religion is the chief barrier to peace - indeed, the popularity of John Lennon’s supposedly uplifting song Imagine is tied up in the sanctimonious belief that the abandonment of nations and religions would surely bring about world peace. Alas, while this might successfully avoid achieving peace over “the great graveyard of humanity” that Immanuel Kant warned about, Lennon’s ‘utopia’ can also sound worryingly akin to the grim enslavement foreshadowed by George Orwell’s 1984.
These days the word ‘religion’ chiefly refers to those terrible aspects of human nature now inescapably associated with this term. It is no coincidence that so many Christians and Hindus say that theirs is not a religion but ‘a way of life’. And yes, of course this is so - but that is no excuse for letting the word ‘religion’ act as a surrogate for all the negativity wrought by human arrogance. Likewise, you will find no shortage of those who can point to contemporary ideologies and denounce them as ‘cults’. The unimagined truth is that these young religions are not yet worthy of that name since they do not sustain the good of the community fostered by their practice. This is the necessary quality of an authentic religion, without which it cannot last a century, much less millennia. There are even secular ways of life with modestly long histories that might express the potentiality of a religion if only our adamant prejudice against the ‘R word’ could be punctured.
The way that religion blocks peace, therefore, is the way that human nature blocks peace - and in large part by wilfully ignoring the uncountable teachings of the wisdom traditions counselling us in our striving for peace. Instead, there is endless indulgence in that maddening self-certainty that finds all fault in others and never in ourselves. Christianity, perhaps inevitably once it was swept up in the politics of empire, simply could not hold onto the wisdom of Jesus’ warning in the Gospel of Matthew concerning what we fail to notice when we are obsessed with the speck of sawdust in the eyes of every other religion or apparent absence of religion. Thus, as difficult as it is for so many to accept, Raimon Pannikar’s genuinely Christian capacity to see the spirit of Christ within other faiths is far closer to that unorthodox rabbi’s teachings than all those who take the Gospel of John as instructing that Jesus’ followers should not love their neighbour unless they are the correct kind of Christian, ‘Good Samaritan’ be damned!
Neither is it solely the Christians for whom this wisdom has been passed down yet ignored. The poet Rumi, the most influential composer of verse in Muslim history, was by no means the only mystic to point out that all the singing in all the religions was one song: peace be with you. Yet peace, as Rumi and so many others touched by divine mysteries understood, was a path that was never easy to walk, or even to wish to walk. As the opening quote makes clear, to search for peace is paradoxically to seek disharmony. The anxiety upon which all-too-many calls to war prey is our intense and distorting desire to enforce our own vision of earthly harmony, which as the Buddhist and Hindu mystics understood could only ever lead to further conflict. Whenever we try to compel others into the concordant phantasm we have fooled ourselves into deeming absolutely essential, we unleash greater strife.
To bring about peace therefore requires surrendering our foolish certainty about how it is to be attained - for it is not up to us to impose peace, and we never shall as long as we insist upon pursuing it solely in the manner we imagine is necessary. Rather, we must stand at the crossroads together, and find that path forward from which each may still clearly hear their own melody within the sacred cacophony of existence. Wisely then does Rumi advise that we must seek disharmony if we are to discover peace. One day, I hope and pray, we shall write that discordant symphony together.
Hear! Hear! But we don’t need to seek disharmony. It is, I submit, the natural state of any society larger than a hunter-gatherer band. It’s essential that we let the pot boil, but not overflow!
My concept of a “religious view” is one that is strongly held without regard to any objective reality evidence. If one takes the view that a “peace civilization” is one that has outlawed state-sponsored violence across all states[1], then a realistic view of human nature[2] requires that some religious views be strongly held by most of the population. I suggested two such views in a comment on “The Great Graveyard of Humanity”. In his 1838 Lyceum Address Abraham Lincoln claimed that an essential “political religion” view was reverence for the laws.[3]
Our civilization appears to be heading into a dark age in which, like “1984”, war may become a permanent state. How can it’s trajectory be bent toward peace? Chris proposes “surrendering our foolish certainty about how it is to be attained”, that peace cannot be imposed, that we must “find that path forward from which each may still clearly hear their own melody.” I beg to differ. Peace can be imposed. Rome did it. In fact, I think that the only way we can get to a “peace civilization” from here is via some degree of imposition. It’s the degree and type of imposition that’s critical for preserving “the sacred cacophony of existence.”
Notes
[1] I take it that however any future civilization is structured, something akin to “states” will exist.
[2] It appears that in any sizable group of humans (say 40 or more) there will be at least a few with a strong drive to control others. A group’s “religion” can be a powerful constraint on the expression of this drive.
[3] https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-27-2024
Happy to see you take "Imagine" to task. I occasionally get into trouble for critiquing that song. As you know, this issue regarding "religion" is a subject of mine. The problem isn't religion, but what I call the will to incorporation followed by administration of the established corporation. The idea that a final revelation has finally arrived leads to the arrogance you're talking about. Then it is decided that we must lock in the new way of seeing and doing things, and those who will not be free (in the prescribed way) will be forced to be free (if I may borrow from Rousseau's Social Contract). Before you know it, a hierarchy is put in place and the whole apparatus is set to automatic with a few folk at the top, who mistake their positions for true superiority, and the whole social order becomes irredeemably oppressive and lorded over by the most obnoxious. My sole objection is your insistence on avoidance of the word "cult." Having had some experience with a cult as a child, I can say that much of what we are witnessing today very much resembles a cult and to miss that analogy is to our detriment. To me it is obvious that we are facing a cult-like fervour that "others" (forgive the term) those who do not conform to their views as it seeks to establish the sort of order I just described.