what if non-violence suddenly became the religion of the world? what if ordinary people could stop the war?

***
thomas merton said, "we rely on the sane people of the world 
to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. and now it begins to dawn on us 
that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. 
those who invented and developed atomic bombs, thermonuclear bombs, missiles; 
who have planned the strategy of the next war; 
who have evaluated the various possibilities of using bacterial and chemical agents: 
these are not the crazy people, they are the sane people. 
the ones who coolly estimate how many millions of victims can be considered expendable 
in a nuclear war..."

most people of faith in america seemed content to acquiesce 
in a culture defined by military and industrial and racial violence.
this conformity appalled merton: 
"the worst error is to imagine that a christian must try to be 'sane' like everybody else,
that we belong in our kind of society.

"we are in the world and part of it, and we are destroying everything because we are destroying ourselves spiritually, morally, and in every way. it is all part of the same sickness, it all hangs together." 
...merton traced this sickness to our false sense of separation from nature and our unchecked appetite for power and possessions.
we abuse and exploit earth for the same reason we abuse and exploit one another: because we have lost a sense of kinship with our fellow human beings, with other species, and with our planetary home. 

from
conscience and resistance
on reading thomas merton in the rain
by scott russell sanders