After a century of wars and violence, and five thousand years of the pervasive belief that the personal and societal safety can only be achieved through domination of others, it's time for a change. Considering the world wars of the 20th century, the Vietnam War, and the current Iraq war, the Network of Spiritual Progressives is calling for a fundamentally new approach. This approach emphasizes that generosity and genuine caring for others is a far more effective and morally coherent approach to human security, peace and development.

The Old Approach

What happens when people feel they can't trust others, or suspect that everyone else is only looking out for themselves? They are often drawn to paranoid pseudo-communities offered through extremes of nationalism or through right-wing religious communities. When people no longer believe in the shared humanity and decency of others, they become vulnerable to fundamentalist reactionaries and their campaign to instill "Fear of The Other."

But it's not just reactionaries who use this approach-it's embedded in the fundamental thinking of both the Democratic and Republican political parties. The language of "negotiation" and "sanctions," used by both Democratic and Republican administrations, are code words for less extreme forms of using power to get our way.

Likewise, "sovereign defense" and "national security" are linguistic devices used by both parties to divert resources away from social spending and toward the military budget. Why? To get our way, both at home and abroad. And "our way" usually means protecting the economic and political interests of the most powerful corporations and their allies in government, economic institutions, universities, and the media.

That's why the NSP calls for a new paradigm, a new way of doing foreign policy. We're not only concerned about the full-scale psychopathology manifested in wars and mass killings, but we're also concerned about the "softer" versions of pushing the world around to achieve our own ends without concern for the well-being of others.

Even the most courageous liberal elected officials often justify their policies as less violent ways to achieve "our" goal. And what goal is this? The goal of getting the world to do what the most powerful forces in the U.S. want them to do.

The key to our alternative method, the Strategy of Generosity, is our commitment to re-establishing trust and hope among the peoples of the world. By doing so we might begin to reflect. And in reflecting, we might act coherently to end world poverty in our lifetime and save the global environment from destruction by giving highest priority to protecting the earth. Instead of asking, "What best serves the interests of American economic and political geo-power?" we want a foreign policy that asks "What best serves ALL the people on this planet and best serves the survival of the planet itself?"

That is a question that very few people in politics today are willing to raise. Why? Because they fear they will not be elected or re-elected on the grounds that they are not patriotic enough. But is it unpatriotic to see the interconnectedness of all people? Is it unpatriotic to recognize that the best interests of America, our children, and grandchildren are served by considering the best interests of everyone on the planet ... and the planet itself? Of course not! It is only old views of patriotism that frame things in terms that reinforce the nationalist fervors of the past and lead us toward selfishness and inability to think globally!

A world divided by nationalist struggles and vain fantasies of dominating the earth's resources is a world that grows increasingly insane and self-destructive. Yet many decent and moral people accept the current construction of politics as a " given." They end up participating in this insanity and calling it "realistic."

Today, what people call realistic or common sense, is nothing more than "inside-the-beltway" assumptions created and maintained by corporate-dominated media. Only by throwing off those assumptions and thinking outside the box, can people see the Strategy of Generosity for what it is - a method to stop insane people who have power from continuing their disastrous path of destruction.

It is a delusion to imagine that only one political party or set of candidates frames our foreign policy in terms of narrowly conceived American interests. Instead, we must realize that this behavior is a shared insanity that must be challenged in every part of our political thinking.  It is just as likely to be articulated by people with whom we agree, as by people who are overtly reactionary or ultra-nationalistic.

The task of challenging these assumptions is huge, and the Strategy of Generosity and the Global Marshall Plan give us a useful vehicle for opening this conversation.

Building the Strategy of Generosity requires us to reconnect with the human capacity to recognize the "other" as an embodiment of the sacred. In other words, we need to recognize that others are fundamentally valuable because of WHO they are, not because of WHAT they can do for us. This pre-reflective, pre-nationalist connection between people must become the center of our campaign for peace and environmental sanity. Our policies must foster the bonds of caring among human beings.

It is in our own best interests as human beings to recognize that our individual and societal wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of everyone else on the planet. The Global Marshall Plan advocates this principle of global wellbeing. However, our commitment to the Global Marshall Plan is not only because it could save the planet from nuclear and conventional wars and jump-start global environmental planning. It is also because the Plan reflects our deepest truth: the Unity of All Being and our commitment to care for each other as momentary embodiments of the God energy.

What this means in secular terms is that we recognize the goodness, love and generosity of the Universe at its current stage of evolutionary development. We want to foster a spirit of caring and love for others because it is ethically and spiritually right to do so, as well as the only sane policy for saving the planet and saving the human race.

We reject any approach to the Global Marshall Plan that lies outside the ethical and spiritual framework we have described. The Plan will not work if it is perceived by others as a newer, cleverer attempt to dominate the world through "aid" or a way for Western corporate interests to penetrate other societies. The Plan will only work if it is perceived as a genuine attempt to change the terms of global interaction based on our ethical vision of a world where generosity and caring for others is valued because it is right ... not because it is smart and a savvy way to protect the United States.

To our friends in Congress and various political parties, to those who want to work with us on this project, and to the media, we offer the following caution: Do not take these ideas and try to "win" people over by abandoning the core vision and only achieving support for some of the details. Global issues must be discussed and supported in an interdependent fashion, reflecting our human and spiritual interdependence. This is a plan that will only work if it is supported for the right reasons, with the global common good as the primary goal.

In summary, The Strategy of Generosity is the new belief system that forms the foundation of the Global Marshall Plan, which is simply one particular way to actualize this new belief system. The Strategy of Generosity is a new approach to human relations that uses ideas that our religious, spiritual, and secular ethical traditions have been teaching for many millennia.

In Part 2, we'll look at the plan itself. 

-- Written by Rabbi Michael Lerner, edited by Martha Roden