I'm sitting in the dreaded middle seat on my way back from a rainy weekend in usually sunny southern Florida, and the pilot asks us to introduce ourselves before taking off to the people on our right and left. Now that, I thought, is the single most effective airplane security measure I've encountered, and it didn't cost a cent. In the six degrees of separation game, it also turns out that the man on my right was my father's boss for the last few years of his working life. It's a small planet.

The man on my left was in the thoroughbred horse game, from Lexington, Kentucky. We didn't find anyone we knew in common, but I did learn that a good stallion brings up to $400,000 per "visit" with a mare and can handle two to three visits a day during the mating season. Not that quality mares don't have their own value. This guy was recently at an auction in which a mare from his farm sold for $4 million.

It's good for me to fly away on occasion and get a different perspective on life, and not just the one from above the clouds. Just a week before I'd gone through the process of sponsoring a child from an Egyptian village where more than a third of the children get a potentially fatal disease. My $24 dollars a month, or $248 a year, I have been told, will increase Othman's chances of survival and improve conditions for all the children of his village. This amount would be greens' fees for my dad's ex-boss at one of the three country clubs to which he belongs. I don't even want to do the math for how many seconds with a stud horse this would equal.

We all have our own individual priorities, no doubt about that. In a capitalist society such as ours, no one can tell you what to do with the money you earn, except of course, the part that the government demands, purportedly for the common good. In a democracy like ours, however, I think we should all have a say in setting the priorities for that part of our national capital.

Here's a thought-provoking anecdote: At the end of a talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, "Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese?" The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us, and said with a gentle smile, "Well, war is obsolete, you know." Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, "Of course, the mind can rationalize fighting back . . . but the heart, the heart, would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you."

After reading this, I found myself wondering how the idea that war is obsolete hadn't yet reached our government, since we could have saved so much money -- more than $40 billion in the war on terrorism -- and that was before the Olympics. The more I read, though, the more it's clear that this idea has been around for some time, so I guess it has more to do with ignoring the idea than not being aware of it. That seems to be the definition of true ignorance -- when you know the truth of a matter, in your heart if not in tour mind, but ignore it.

Never has there been a good war or a bad peace.
--Benjamin Franklin

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing: that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

-- Agatha Christie

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

There's a thought, and from a warrior no less. But John Kennedy isn't the only president or warrior who decried war.

There was never a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.
-- Ulysses S. Grant

I hate it when they say, `he gave his life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.
-- Admiral Gene LaRocque

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

How I've been yearning for words of understanding like those to come from the mouth of our current commander-in-chief. Finally got my chance when a friend sent along an e-mail from Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, now a leader of the Priorities Campaign. It included a link to his Contract with the Planet Web site (www.contractwiththeplanet.org) and a short video of, let's say, an alternative state of the union address. The Web site lists 10 priorities for our government to adopt in funding considerations:

1) Attack world hunger and poverty as if our lives depend on it. It does.

2) Champion the rights of every child, woman, and man.

3) Pay our United Nations dues ungrudgingly and end our obstructionism to the world's treaties.

4) Reduce our dependence on oil and lead the world to an age of renewable energy.

5) Close the book on the cold war and end the nuclear nightmare forever.

6) Renounce Star Wars and the militarization of space.

7) Make globalization work for, not against, working people.

8) Ensure equal treatment under law for all.

9) Get money out of politics.

10) Close the gap between rich and poor at home.

How do we get there? All we need is love. Seems too simple, doesn't it?

But love is far from simple, and it takes much care and nurturing, as does hate. The man of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, explains the choices we have: "Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred. I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate . . . [People] should continue to fight, but they should fight for things worthwhile, not imaginary geographical lines, racial prejudices, and private greed draped in the colors of patriotism. Their arms should be weapons of the spirit, not shrapnel and tanks."

Psychologist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross agrees: "If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear."

Eleanor Roosevelt was more to the point: "We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk."

I'd suggest you start with the people to the left and the right of you.

Issue Date: February 15 - 21, 2002