We Need Each Other

There’s a story of a soldier who says to the Buddha, “I was taught that if I die in battle, I’ll go to heaven.” The Buddha says: You’ve been lied to. The only law is that, as we cause suffering, so too shall we suffer. The warrior starts to weep. Then he says, “I’m not crying because of your words, Lord. I’m crying because I’ve been deceived by my own people."

Not everyone believes in heaven. But everyone who beats the drum of war believes in a fantasy. The fantasy is that there is some righteous violence that will put an end to future violence. That is a lie. Even if you grind your enemy to dust, his children will still come for you. Even if you grind whole societies to dust, the violence will still live on in you. Astronomical rates of domestic violence among veterans are just one example of this.

But perhaps the greatest casualty of war is the truth that we are all connected. Governments use words like “precise” and “preemptive” to sound as though they are proposing remote-controlled change. But the truth is that the wrong escalation could cut the world’s food supply chain in a matter of days. Bombing nuclear sites could create fallout in our rivers and skies that push the human-extinction clock forward drastically. Most of all, war destroys the global solidarity we need to solve these very problems.

Interdependence isn’t always pretty. It’s not a self-congratulatory diversity parade. The truth that we need each other highlights our vulnerability and requires us to start with the premise that we have make life work with people we might not like or trust. That’s scary.

And yet, this vulnerability is the key to our survival. People who advocate war tell themselves they need to be strong, that now isn’t the time to feel. That’s how they end up signing on to endless conflict. Now IS the time to feel our fragility, to weep for what has been broken, and to face the truth that, yes, we have been deceived by our own people.

Various artists, "Interdependence & Cooperation" (2025)