What if all children everywhere were taught by their parents, their school teachers, and their religious leaders that all human beings everywhere – regardless of their seeming differences – deserve recognition and respect?

What if those children learned in a class called World History about the many accomplishments of and gifts from all peoples everywhere — on every continent – over the centuries. How, to give just a few small examples, the Arab world gave us mathematics and astronomy, Africans gave us architecture and metallurgy, and Mesoamericans gave us science, technology, and the calendar. We are the beneficiaries of those gifts. We’re wise to acknowledge those accomplishments and appreciate them.

If we don’t learn these things in grade school – as I never did – it may take decades, a lot of serious reading, much higher education, as well as wide-world travels and cross-cultural connections to become enlightened to such truths.

Yes, I’m hearing John Lennon in my head singing “Imagine.”

I’m reading a terrific book right now, which I highly recommend, titled The Vulnerables, a new novel by Sigrid Nunez about one writer’s life in New York during the pandemic. I highlighted this passage from it last night because it spoke to me:

“For the writer, obsessive rumination is a must. Imagination must follow dark thoughts to dark places; you can’t ever just say, Stop, don’t go there. And isn’t that the job, to imagine the lives of others and what they are going through?”

I ruminate a lot. And I ask a lot of “Why?” and “What if?” questions. I can’t seem to help myself. I have baskets full of questions for which I have no answers. Yet I continue to dig for those answers, like a dog for buried beef bones. I’ve got to go there.

(When I was a kid my mom always used to tell me that I asked too many questions. “I don’t have the answers, honey,” she’d say, exhausted and exasperated, “go ask your teachers.” [My teachers didn’t seem to know either.] Then once, when I was twenty-seven, she said to me, “If you keep beating men at tennis, you’re going to wind up alone.” Sometimes my mom was right.)

But getting back to cross-cultural enlightenment, I’ll continue to ruminate:

One of the ultimate dangers of such un-enlightenment, in my view, is war. When young military recruits are indoctrinated into believing that the enemy they’re assigned to slaughter is subhuman – “vermin” or “animals” out to do us all in – war becomes possible, perhaps inevitable. In the twistedness of this mentality, killing becomes honorable, even praiseworthy. Would a soldier who’d been raised to respect all others think this way and willingly participate?

Perhaps that’s why such respect is not generally taught in public schools in the U.S.: because the U.S. has proven itself to be a bellicose country (war is big business, and, as they say, “The business of America is business”), a country that prides itself on its military might?

I dated a fellow once who wiggled out of the draft during the Viet Nam war, claiming he was a Quaker (which he wasn’t). What he was, was a privileged, white, straight, well-educated young man with powerful family connections. But what if we all could become Quakers when it came to war?

And what if we all had the same shade of colorful skin? I’ve never understood why so many of my fellow white people consider themselves superior to other groups simply because of this thin, pale tissue paper that I too am wrapped in. Ridiculous, in my view.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here, at least for now. Essays are meant to provoke thought, not necessarily provide answers. And the beginning of the year is a good time, I think, to think about the What ifs and to imagine a better world. There was a time, during my lifetime, when the thought of so many cigarette-addicted smokers quitting altogether was unthinkable. But that happened. Miracles do happen.

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• You might like to read a previous WOW post in which I wrote a bit about Quakers and comparative religions: www.blog.bonnieleeblack.com/friends/ .
• Yesterday, on a walk in San Miguel de Allende’s beautiful Parque Juarez, I took this photo of the Peace Pole that was unveiled here six years ago. Each side of it is inscribed in a different language, “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” (For more background on this Peace Pole, go to:  www.blog.bonnieleeblack.com/the-unveiling/ .