When I was a boy, I remember hearing about this concept of world peace.  I may not have understood it entirely, but I knew it was important.  It was important enough to me that it’s always held a place in my mind as a point of focus that most everything else revolves around.  It isn’t very difficult to understand what it means, as far as an end result, but what baffles us is the “how”.  Surely, with over 7 billion people on the planet, each with their own perspective, how on earth do we get them all to cooperate?

Another great passion of mine is problems solving.  I love it! The bigger the problem the better!  Having tackled quite a few very large problems of my own, it was really only a matter of time before I started trying to massage an answer out of one of the great questions to ever face humanity.  Am I done? Hell no.  Plain and emphatically simple, but I’ve made what I feel to be some substantial progress.

As a bit of a warning, in order to tackle large problems, it is absolutely critical to think outside the box, and I can tell you in advance, #4 is, should we say, controversial, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense, so I’m keeping it in!

Starting with what is definitely not outside the box; the first answer is actually an extremely common suggestion, but it is a critical one.  I’d like to get into the details to help you understand why it’s so important.

#1 – Meditation

I want you to think about your mind right now.  How does it feel?  Is it focused, calm and peaceful? or is it distracted, bored and chaotic?  Are you angry?  Maybe some of you received some bad news this morning and as a result, you’re unable to bring your mind to the present and really haven’t heard a word I’ve said.  That’s ok!  I understand your struggle.  Now I want everyone else to empathize with that person.  Remember your mind in a time of anger.  The most notable characteristic of anger is that your mind is in a state of utter chaos.  Now lets make some fun analogies!

Imagine your mind is a small lake.  The water is clear when the weather is calm.  But the surface of the water represents all of our senses.  As soon as the weather turns, the wind picks up, the rain falls disturbing the surface of your lake.  The disturbance eventually stirs the water enough to start kicking up the silt from the bottom and now the water in your lake is dirty and impossible to see through.  I really enjoy this analogy, because it takes us to an eye opening final question; “are you able to resist the weather for the sake maintaining the clarity of your waters?”

For most of us, the answer is no.  We are mostly trapped by the influence of our senses.  We do not have enough practice controlling our mind to resist the impact the weather of the world has on the clarity of our minds.

Let’s make another analogy.  Imagine a mostly empty fish bowl with a single fly inside.  Every time that fly hits the side of the fish bowl, you have a thought.  Now, just for fun, we are going to pretend that this fly is trained and is able to respond to your direction.  You can tell him to turn left and he will turn to his left. You can tell him to turn up and he will fly up.  Pretty easy situation right!  Feels cooperative and peaceful!  There are 2 problems here, one is that most of us have about 100 flies buzzing around in our fish bowls and the other is that we are so bad at directing these flies that are all flying in different directions, that we’ve just completely given up on controlling most of them, that it has simply become a place of complete chaos.  Some, who are well disciplined, have learned to control certain flies, like the anger fly.  We know that if we let that fly run rampant, that it will end in regret, so we have learned to focus on, and control that fly fairly well, but everything else is just craziness.

Through the practice of meditation, we turn our attention inward.  We learn to pay attention to our thoughts and by simply listening to them, we cannot help but become familiar with their nature and their patterns.  This familiarity always, 100% of the time, results in more control.  One idea that I have always loved is that “the moment we identify the source of a problem, the problem is already solved.”  If you think of chaotic thoughts as the source of every problem, then you understand the mechanism.

The problem with our thoughts is that when they are in control, we are under their spell, and we experience them from their perspective, and every thought we have naturally contains an excuse for it’s own existence.  When we want cake, the thoughts we call “craving” do an impeccable job of tricking us into believing that they are valid.  We find ways to justify obeying that thought.  The thought creates an impulse that we believe we can only resolve through obedience.  When we experience lust “the second hunger”, we experience the same intense impulse that often results in slavish obedience, and that’s because that thought is allowed to monopolize our perspective and we can only see the world in terms of the options that this thought allows.  That’s the box that we need to learn to think outside of.  This box creates an illusion that limits our ability to perceive reality.  Reality is not in the best interest of these inherently selfish impulse thoughts.  They want to be satisfied and they have learned to manipulate our perspective in order to direct our actions toward their satisfaction, and they do a wonderful job with a mind that has not practiced observing them from the stable, disengaged platform of meditation.  After all, when you’re in the maze, all you can see are the walls around you.  If you were to take time before entering the maze to view it from above, you would learn it’s secrets and obviously be able to navigate the maze more effectively once inside.  Our thoughts are no different!  They are a maze, or a puzzle that is almost impossible to solve from the inside.

With meditation, we are studying our thoughts as a puzzle.  We sit, and we first calm the mind.  We have to calm the mind first.  Let’s connect a couple dots here.  Let’s imagine that the maze is drawn on the back of one of the flies in our fish bowl.  When we sit, we have to first learn to slow the flies down; we slow the mind so that we can clearly see and focus on one thought, one problem, one maze.  We look at our hunger or our lust and from the stable platform of the calm mind, we are able view these thoughts in the context of a complete perspective, uninfluenced by their impulses and we can learn the secrets of how to control each of them.  Over enough time, we are able to control the flies enough to keep them contained in a calmly swirling ball at the center of the fish bowl.  Then any time our senses are stimulated, we are able to seize control of the thought before it seizes control of our mind, and find ourselves stuck in the maze.

In all, this concept of meditation is based on an idea that we’ve heard suggested by all the great leaders of our eastern spiritual traditions.  If you want world peace, we must first all make peace with ourselves.  Meditation is the first step.

Step #2 – Vegetation

Now, the title of step 2 is a bit loose, because I wanted it to follow that “ation” suffix scheme I’ve got going to make this system catchy!  But this one is much more simple than number one, but slightly less common.  This is actually building substantially off of number one.  It could honestly just be called step 1.5, but then we end up at 3.5 total and no one wants to hear about 3.5 steps toward world peace.

We need to think about our food!  What we eat and drink.  Everything we bring into our bodies.  Once you begin a consistent practice of meditation, as I’ve just totally convinced you to do, you might start to notice some things.  One thing I hope you notice is which substances you might ingest that make meditation more difficult.

One thing that I can tell you with a very high degree of certainty, stimulants ruin peoples’ lives.  I mean that with all seriousness.  Let’s take our fly analogy, and let’s give each of those flies a red bull; or maybe we can hit even closer to home.  Anyone in here have kids?  Anyone with kids have an idea of what it’s like when your kids drink caffeinated beverages or have too much sugar?  That’s it! That is how the mind behaves in response to dietary stimulants.  It’s not good!  I understand that occasionally, it might be beneficial to pick you up, but knowing that sugar and caffeine are clinically addictive substances, there is a strong likelihood that you might be addicted to them.  Why do you think you crave sugar the way you do?  Why do you need a coke? Why do you need coffee?  You’re hooked!  But these things have been so normalized that we don’t think twice about these addictions.  On top of that, we have never been taught to engage and familiarize with our own minds, it’s not a part of our culture so it makes sense that we continue, unaware of these relationships.

Step #3 – Education

This section is probably the largest because we need to learn so much in order to truly discipline our minds in a way that is conducive to interpersonal peace, and this is where that starts!  Number one and two were about making peace with ourselves.  Number three, we need to start getting into fostering peace with others.

First we need to talk about therapy.  Honestly, I don’t know a lot of people that have never been through any type of therapeutic program that could probably give you a great definition for it.  Honestly, this also builds on meditation; if we give therapy the definition that it is the study of how to effectively manage our emotions, as well as how to effectively communicate those emotions and our needs to those involved.  Do you define anger as an emotion? If so, you’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re doing and you need to go to therapy!  Seriously though, anger is a great example because it helps people understand that there is a lot of room to learn here.  We have a tendency to think that we are just naturally competent in any arena dictated by our instincts.  We think we are good lovers, we think we are good spouses, and friends.  When ever anyone questions our believe in our competency here, we tend to get a bit defensive, but there are a set of skills here, and unless you’ve taken the time to proactively learn those skills, odds are, you’re probably not doing as well as you should.

You may be thinking about the exceptions here.  Maybe you’ve always been told how nice you are, but even that can be a problem.  I have seen countless cases in which people are generally thought of as nice, but only because they are intensely passive aggressive people.  They never show their emotions, they never assert themselves, they always just go with the flow, so naturally people think that they are really kind, but under the surface, as it turns out, the are an absolute mess of repressed emotions and poor communication strategies that is essentially just waiting for one bad day; one major event that lights that fuse and they completely melt down.

Do not do yourself the disservice of believing that you are just naturally gifted here.  Unless you had some incredibly healthy and well adjusted parents who themselves learned these skills and effectively passed them on to you, you’re probably fooling yourself, just like the rest of us.

Therapy is incredible.  Through therapy, we build a relationship with our emotions.  We learn that our feeling are valid and that we have a right to express them in a healthy way.  So I kind of left that anger nugget dangling a bit.  Why is anger not an emotion?  Anger is what the therapeutic community refers to as a secondary emotion.  It’s a response to another emotion, usually something much more vulnerable, like hurt, or powerlessness.  When someone causes us emotional hurt, it is unfortunately uncommon for people to commit to that emotion.  We don’t want to feel hurt.  Hurt is always associated with weakness and we’ve been taught not to show weakness so what do we do?  We mask the hurt, we feel compelled to counter the impression of weakness with strength, we need to show power and that need is what manifests as anger.  Anger is a defense mechanism that we use to hide the weakness that allowed us to be hurt.  Same thing with feeling powerless.  When someone makes a change we don’t like and we have no authority to change it back to what may be more comfortable for us, we feel that lack of power acutely.  Naturally our reaction is the same, we feel the need to feel that empty hole where our power used to be with surrogate power, so we lash out in a fit of madness meant to intimidate onlookers into submission.  You see, anger is never alone.  It’s never a solitary, independent feeling.  It’s only there to hide the suggestion of our weakness.

The reality is, however, we are weak.  Our power is incomplete.  Our hearts are fragile, and as soon as we own that, we can start to have real conversations about real emotions and real perceptions and expectations.  When we are actually engaged in discussing our real selves, we remove anger, and for that matter, all the other toxic, maladaptive behaviors we “use” as an involuntary, and often hurtful reaction to the softer reality of our humanness.

Another very important aspect of the education towards self regulation, motivated by universal peace,  is intellectual discipline.  For myself, there have been to areas of interest that have gone a particularly long way to making me a better, more peaceful person: the studies of cognitive bias, logical fallacy and evolutionary psychology.

Starting with cognitive bias, we ought to give it some definition to make sure we’re all on the same page.  You see, we have a few, built in tendencies that, when it comes to how we think and what we believe, tend to result in some extremely bad habits.  One of these tendencies is referred to as the “Anchoring Bias”.  What this bias describes is the human tendency to favor the first information you’re presented with as fact.  For example, if someone tells you that the average human swallows 40 spiders a year in their sleep, and you take the bait and commit that information as a belief, you will tend to favor that information over anything that may be presented in the future.  It is much harder to let go of, than it is to attach.  Turns out it takes a bit of work to explain that this is simply an urban myth that has absolutely no roots in any actual scientific study ever conducted.

Another one of these biases, that somewhat follows from the first, is the so called “Confirmation Bias”.  This describes a scenario where, when confronted with multiple pieces of information, we will tend to gravitate toward the piece of information that best supports our currently held beliefs.  Say you see multiple, conflicting reports, one that says people will die if they eat bugs, another that says you wont die, but you will get sick, and a third that says eating bugs has no effect on our health.  Because you believe that you eat 40 spiders a year in your sleep, and you haven’t died, the first one is false and the second is likely false, the third must be true.  I know it seems like straight forward logic, but we have yet to remind everyone that the basis for this belief decision was completely false.

So, the study of cognitive bias is essentially the study of our built in habits that often trick us into adopting incorrect beliefs or maintaining false beliefs even in the face of hard, factual proof that we are wrong.  If we can learn these tricks, we can identify them in ourselves and take their power over us away, in the process becoming more disciplined and factual individuals.

Next up is logical fallacy.  This is an entirely different set of tricks with the same purpose; they trick us into thinking we’re right when we’re not and that others are wrong when they’re not.  You may have heard the term “ad hominem attack”. This is defined as the act of leveraging a personal attack, often completely irrelevant to the point, in order to invalidate a person’s argument.  My favorite of these is the accusation of hypocrisy.  Imagine a scenario where an active heroine addict tells you not to do drugs, you call them a hypocrite, and then, what?? Stick a needle in your arm?  No!  Their personal conflict does not have any bearing on the validity of the information they provide.  Most often hypocrites do have good advice to offer, and just because we don’t follow it ourselves doesn’t mean that the advice is bad.

Another of my favorite fallacies is the false dichotomy, or “false dilemma” fallacy.  This is a logical misstep in which a person lodges an argument that presents a black and white, this or that argument as though you are obligated to choose, when there is, in fact, a number of other options that can be accepted and pursued.  “You’re either a patriot or a terrorist!” Um. No?  Turns out it’s totally rational to adopt a globalist perspective where I place no inherent value in being an American or treating all things American with some worshipful adoration.  No I place Humanness above Americanness on my value scale.  Although I do love and appreciate the privilege I’ve been afforded by the country I was born in, I am strongly compelled to criticize the missteps of our government, and endeavor to correct the flaws in our culture.  In summation, my inability to satisfy your definition of what makes someone a patriot does not mean that I am in fact, a terrorist.

And now for the big one! Evolutionary psychology!  This one is huge!  The more I read on this topic the more blown away I am by it’s implications and how productive it is in helping me to resolve my own personal conflict through a deep understanding of the behaviors of mine and others.

So first question: why are you attracted to jerks?  Serious question.  You may think that this is just some salacious question, but it’s a great question and it’s answer is to be found in the great teaching of evolutionary psychology.  I’ll take a step back, let’s define the term for the unfamiliar.  Evolutionary psychology is a relatively new field, in which we are attempting to understand human thought and behavior through the lens of evolutionary influence.  If we can explain a behavior, though, or instinct in terms of what evolutionary advantages it may stand to offer, we can gain a very clear picture as to why certain behaviors exist and what they mean; and as with all other problems, the deeper we understand their origin, the more control we gain over them.

So why are you so attracted to people who don’t treat you well?  Again, this is a serious question with a serious answer.  So as you think about this, I really want you to connect with how irrational it is.  Seriously, I promise, come down the well with me and you will be healed before we bottom out.  Think about those toxic relationships you stayed in too long.  The obsession you maintained for that person that just didn’t want you.  Looking back, we know the person wasn’t worth it, but that impulse, that attraction was simply too strong to listen to good, realistic judgement.  There’s another analogy for meditation here.  That toxic relationship is your impulsive hunger, and now is your meditation, when you can look at it with full perspective and understand the problem and maybe even see a way out. I digress.

So now I want you to pretend that you, yourself are the guiding force of evolution.  You have two subjects.  You have a list of objectives for these subjects to fulfill, say there are 20 objectives.  Subject A checks 17 of these boxes.  Highly qualified, evolutionarily fit specimen.  The other only checks 13 boxes.  Still a strong subject, but there is some disparity there.  Now we need to consider the topic of mating.

We know our mating impulse is dictated by evolutionary fitness.  We can take all the things that make us find others attractive and map them back to the implications each trait has in regard to evolutionary advantage.  The last thing we need to consider as that the most basic guiding principle of evolution is the endeavor to “breed up”.  We always want to breed with the highest number we can. That’s the end of it.  We can’t even try give that a reason like, “so our offspring will have a better advantage.”  This is true, but we need to understand that that is evolution’s reason not ours.  No one out there reproducing is thinking “oh man, our kids are going to be so evolutionarily advantaged!” No! That’s not how it works!  In the history of evolution, we assume that all impulses were applied and let the natural arena sort them.  Those that had the impulse to “breed up” had more successful offspring than those that had the “anything that moves” impulse.  We have been refined to be selective and that’s important.

So.  All this in mind, how do you think subject A, feels about subject B? Now how do you think B feels about A?  This is a super simple example, but A probably isn’t that into B, while B is definitely in to A.  This division, where B is more attracted to A that A is to B creates a division.  B is going to pursue A.  B might be super excited about A, but what happens if A accepts?  They get together and that division we established earlier is dissolved.  Simply the act of coming together modifies the perception of both so that, psychologically now, they like perceive themselves as being closer together in terms of the evolutionary boxes they check.  Eventually, B may even lose their attraction to A.

Now let’s flip the scenario entirely.  B pursues A, but A completely rejects B.  Where, earlier, the acceptance resulted in the closing of the evolutionary divide, rejection does just the opposite.  By rejecting B, A only reinforces that division and that enhance division will almost always lead to enhanced attraction.

So what does this mean? When people treat you like crap, they create the perception that they don’t need you.  By creating this perception, they trick your mind into believing that they are, in fact, evolutionarily superior to you, and our natural reaction to anyone we identify as being evolutionarily superior is to become sexually attracted to them, sometimes to the point of obsession.  B becomes obsessed with A, and the more they show that impulsive need, the more they drive A away.  No one is going to be attracted to someone who is desperate for them.  It’s not evolutionarily productive.  If they are desperate for us, it indicates inferiority and that inferiority indicates bad breeding.

That’s why we like to date assholes.  Sociopathic, arrogant, selfish people are “sexy”.  It’s absolutely awful, but awfully true.

So, with that one example I hope it has become clear how understanding evolutionary directives offers a crystal clear window into understanding our behavior in a way that gives us real power over it.  For the sake of time, I’ll stop there, but if you want another incredible example, or 30, you can read either this one article, discussing the evolutionary implications of depression as being a method of increasing problem solving capacity in the brain as opposed to a disease, or the book, The Moral Animal by Dr. Robert Wright.  I recommend both.  They will blow your mind into a whole new realm of how you perceive both your and others’ behaviors.

Alright on to #4.

Step #4 – modification

This is where we get controversial.  This step involves genetic manipulation and that is a topic that always makes people uncomfortable.  I want to state at the beginning that this should absolutely not be done until we understand genetics in enough detail to be perfectly selective in the genes we edit, with no potential for undue or dangerous side effects.

Now, we have started to look at psychology through an evolutionary framework and we’ve started to see some concerning information.  Yes, we are hard wired to adore people that treat us like shit.  There is also this implication that evolution invented depression to make us more powerful thinkers, and that’s probably true. We are starting to paint the picture that there is a possibility that evolution does not want us to be happy.  Actually there’s a bit of bad news there.  Evolution, as it turns out forbids us from being happy.  That earlier hypothetical, where the 13 gets the 17, then after a few months, the inferior being doesn’t even want the superior one anymore.  This is the disease of complacence.  It is real and occurs with all things.  Actually, it is the based on our evolutionary drive to hoard resources.  Let’s go back to thinking we are evolution.

Do you favor animals that are content or constantly striving for individual gain?  Do you favor animals that are predisposed to be happy with what they have, or animals that can never get enough?  If you’re really tuned in, you may have guessed what I’m talking about.  Yes. Greed is an evolutionary built in.  It used to be a great feature!  For most of our history we have taken those that demonstrated a unique capacity to acquire and hoard resources and we called them kings and put them in charge of everything and let them reproduce with whoever they want!  On the other hand, we have this huge evolutionary cripple in the form of contentment, happiness, or peace.

That’s the bad news.  The reason we don’t have peace, isn’t because we’re evil.  There isn’t some malevolent spiritual force that is making us prone destroying one another.  The most destructive people who have ever lived are generally not inherently destructive, they’re greedy; and they simply allow their greed to justify their destructive behaviors.  This green is an evolutionary built in, along with some others.  The fact of the matter is, that evolution has driven the development of a number of impulses that are in fact, diametrically opposed to what we need to achieve world peace.

From here the implication is fairly simple, I believe that, when we can, we should attempt to edit these evolutionary impulses out of our code.  After all we are not doing a good job of selecting them out of our genes through our sexual selection.  The vast majority of us, myself included are still slaves to them.  Only a fraction of the population are even aware that these impulses exist and where they originate.  But I cannot help but wonder how happy my life would be if I could circumvent this habit I have of always needing more; of comparing my resource aggregation to everyone else’s and for goodness sake, I hate to take it there, but how peaceful my life would be if I was constantly compelled by this infernal male impulse to procreate, ALL… THE… TIME!

After learning these things, about the evolutionary roots of our behaviors, our inherent wildness becomes so much more clear.  We have this thing we call civilization, but in reality, we are still just a bunch of animals, just sort of… pretending.  In my estimation, ridding ourselves of the natural impulses we observe to be holding our species back from a truly, deeply sincere, civilized demeanor, will be the day we take the next step toward our destiny as the compassionate and truly civilized beings we were meant to be.

I want to close by bringing this back to my opening qualifier.  This isn’t a recipe for a cure.  I’m not qualified for that; not even close.  This is what three and a half decades of insatiable curiosity has led me to believe would be a great few steps toward that loftiest of goals.  I’m sure none of this will strike anyone as revolutionary or life-alteringly profound, but if something clicked… anything; enough to inspire a new way of thinking or maybe just a little change, I think it’s a step in the right direction, and I hope you’re life’s a little bit better for it.