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Quote:If we are to end our intra-species combat with one another in time to avoid becoming the first known species to engineer its own extinction, we must identify the causes of our aggression. My first book, Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival focused on the conflict and violence that arises from our willingness to identify ourselves with collective abstractions. Whether we find our identity in our nationality, race, gender, religion, lifestyle, social class, ideology, geography, or any other groupings, our attachment to one category separates us, by definition, from those who do not share our identity. These categories are what Frederick Perls described as “ego boundaries.†This does not mean that being a member of one race rather than another; or a male instead of a female; or a resident of America rather than Brazil, China, or Spain, necessarily creates conflict. It is only when it becomes existentially important to be associated with any group; when one’s sense of being and direction are tied to one or more abstractions, that mutually-exclusive divisions arise. The source of our societal difficulties is to be found within our thinking, the place to which we must repair if we are to avoid our collective suicide. This is an undertaking that most of us find discomforting to take. We have become so conditioned to looking beyond ourselves – whether to gods, philosopher-kings, political leaders, or state systems – that we ignore our personal responsibility for what we, as a species, have become. Those who manage the political machinery have encouraged – even insisted upon – our entwining ourselves with mutually exclusive, clashing abstractions with such fervor as to render it difficult to become disentangled from their seductive imagery. Whether the abstraction with which we identify ourselves is endangered or benefited; experienced as an embarrassment or an achievement, becomes a reflection upon our sense of being. To illustrate just how inseparable these personal and institutional identities can be, try describing yourself without making reference to “ego boundary†abstractions. You begin to experience the difficulties provided by the caterpillar’s persistent question in Alice in Wonderland: “who are you
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