It's Christmastime, and that makes me think about a lot of important things. Mostly those are happy things - memories of wonderful and fun Christmasses, thankfulness for how blessed I am, happiness that we're celebrating the birth of Christ.
Yesterday I read an article about Jimmy Carter receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and read excerpts of his acceptance speech. Admittedly, I'm politically a very liberal person, but I've never known much about Carter. The story about his speech made me cry several times while reading it. Today I read the full text and cried some more. Not because I'm a fan of Carter or because of my personal politics, but because of my basic humanity. I'll explain in a minute.
Today on my tea break I read a story in the newspaper about the famine and human conditions (inhuman, really) in Ethiopia. I remembered being a little kid and there being a terrible famine even then. The article discussed the many, overlapping problems that are quickly contributing to the country's downfall. It's a human tragedy of famine, drought, starvation, disease and abuse of power. The people are mostly subsistence farmers barely able to survive. Now deforestation (due mostly to fires, some natural and others caused by developers) and drought have caused the water to dry up and the land to be almost useless for farming. The situation there is really, really terrible.
I think about the people in Africa who are literally starving to death and then I think about people in the United States. Not just the super-rich who have 80-room houses and 10 cars, but the "regular Joe" who has just a little more than enough and thinks he's scraping by. And maybe, in a way, he is just scraping by. But could he - could WE - do without the second television and the monthly subscription to HBO?
I'm not saying I'm not just as guilty as everyone else of being selfish and materialistic. Believe me, I am very guilty of pampering myself. Shamefully so. But I think that if that starving person came up to us and we had to see their face as they said, "Would you please cancel your subscription to HBO and instead spend a little on food for me, a little time helping your community, and write letters to your leaders to ask them to help me?" we'd have a hard time watching "Sex in the City."
It's not that easy, of course. An awful lot of hard-working people do deserve more than they earn and certainly deserve to be able to relax and spend their time money the way they want to. Yet, I think if the richest parts of the world (almost all Americans are in this category) were a little more generous and active things could get a lot better for the poorest parts of the world. It's just hard to remember those poor people when we're worn out after a long week at work and just want to go out for a nice dinner or relax in front of the TV.
Sometimes the world is a sad and scary place. What I want for it is real peace and for everyone to have enough - enough to eat, enough heat, enough freedom to live their lives. I think that it's possible to achieve, but not the way people might think. Most of the world's citizens - particularly Americans and British and other rich nations' citizens - assume that "someone" needs to step in and "fix" the world's problems.
But what really needs to happen is much more complicated and more simple. Each individual needs to stand up and be counted. Tell your leaders what you want. Donate your time, ideas, resources and money to charitable causes. Educate yourself about the issues in the world. Because one day it could be YOU who is under attack, oppressed, poor, starving or threatened. And wouldn't you want a REAL person, not a non-existent "someone" to help?
Here is most of Mr. Carter's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. I hope it moves you as much as it did me:
But instead of entering a millennium of peace, the world is now, in many ways, a more dangerous place. The greater ease of travel and communication has not been matched by equal understanding and mutual respect. There is a plethora of civil wars, unrestrained by rules of the Geneva Convention, within which an overwhelming portion of the casualties are unarmed civilians who have no ability to defend themselves. And recent appalling acts of terrorism have reminded us that no nations, even superpowers, are invulnerable.
It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus. Imperfect as it may be, there is no doubt that this can best be done through the United Nations, which Ralph Bunche described here in this same forum as exhibiting a "fortunate flexibility" -- not merely to preserve peace but also to make change, even radical change, without violence.
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It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus. Imperfect as it may be, there is no doubt that this can best be done through the United Nations, which Ralph Bunche described here in this same forum as exhibiting a "fortunate flexibility" -- not merely to preserve peace but also to make change, even radical change, without violence.
He went on to say: "To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war."
We must remember that today there are at least eight nuclear powers on Earth and three of them are threatening to their neighbors in areas of great international tension. For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences.
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I thought often during my years in the White House of an admonition that we received in our small school in Plains, Ga., from a beloved teacher, Miss Julia Coleman. She often said, "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles."
When I was a young boy, this same teacher also introduced me to Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace." She interpreted that powerful narrative as a reminder that the simple human attributes of goodness and truth can overcome great power. She also taught us that an individual is not swept along on a tide of inevitability but can influence even the greatest human events.
These premises have been proven by the lives of many heroes, some of whose names were little known outside their own regions until they became Nobel laureates: Albert John Lutuli, Norman Borlaug, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Aung San Suu Kyi, Jody Williams and even Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa. All of these and others have proven that even without government power -- and often in opposition to it -- individuals can enhance human rights and wage peace, actively and effectively.
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Despite theological differences, all great religions share common commitments that define our ideal secular relationships. I am convinced that Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and others can embrace each other in a common effort to alleviate human suffering and to espouse peace.
But the present era is a challenging and disturbing time for those whose lives are shaped by religious faith based on kindness toward each other. We have been reminded that cruel and inhuman acts can be derived from distorted theological beliefs, as suicide bombers take the lives of innocent human beings, draped falsely in the cloak of God's will. With horrible brutality, neighbors have massacred neighbors in Europe, Asia and Africa.
In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility when we plant landmines and, days or years later, a stranger to us -- often a child -- is crippled or killed. From a great distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total impunity and never want to know the number or identity of the victims.
At the beginning of this new millennium I was asked to discuss, here in Oslo, the greatest challenge that the world faces. Among all the possible choices, I decided that the most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on Earth. Citizens of the 10 wealthiest countries are now 75 times richer than those who live in the 10 poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year, not only between nations but also within them. The results of this disparity are root causes of most of the world's unresolved problems, including starvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict and unnecessary illnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.
Most work of The Carter Center is in remote villages in the poorest nations of Africa and there I have witnessed the capacity of destitute people to persevere under heartbreaking conditions. I have come to admire their judgment and wisdom, their courage and faith and their awesome accomplishments when given a chance to use their innate abilities.
But tragically, in the industrialized world there is a terrible absence of understanding or concern about those who are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness. We have not yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable part of our excessive wealth. This is a potentially rewarding burden that we should all be willing to assume.
Ladies and gentlemen:
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes -- and we must.
Thank you.