I am experiencing sadness. I am experiencing extreme sadness.
There is something that needs to be happening and it is not happening. Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to be treated like a fellow human being.
If you or I telephoned Moscow and left a message for him, would he return our call? Definitely not. However, he would return the call of Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson, and Xi Jinping. They are his peers.
If one of our family members becomes an alcoholic, we organize an intervention. It is a human problem, not a lions, tigers, or bears problem. We treat our troubled family member as a human being who can mature. As unlikely as we may judge it to be, we give it a loving try because we care about him or her and know maturation is possible.
Biden, Macron, Johnson and Jinping needed to declare, before this war in Ukraine started, they wanted to have a meeting with Putin. In this situation, we know one-on-one doesn’t work. Then they needed to declare they are not going to leave until they have found a solution that does not kill thousands of people and destroy the structures of a nation. They needed to have the wisdom to do a human intervention then. To end this war, they can do it now.
All the meetings and negotiations are a waste of time relative to this. There is one man who has all the power here and he needs to be related lovingly with as a fellow human being to end this.
I know, many of you reading this will consider this naïve. However, humanity has been maturing.
In the 1970s, an elderly man introduced me to the idea of “socially responsible investing.” He said it is investing only in companies that are making the world a better place instead of those that are making it a worse place. He and I brought 15 leaders in social change and finance together, and I guided the group into writing one of the first “set of social screens for investing.”
In 1982, we launched the Calvert Family of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds, the first family of such funds in the world. Nearly everyone said we were crazy. Today caring about the employees, the community, and the environment has become part of mainstream investing. Even the Labor Department has declared caring about them is no longer “alternative investing” but important “financial factors” when investing.
Maturation occurs. It cannot be escaped or stopped. Humanity is far more mature than we were in the 1940s or 1970s. We need to act like it.
The idea of Putin’s peers orchestrating an intervention is a maturation of human relating to choose agreements instead of wars.
Do you think Adolph Hitler would have used nuclear weapons if he had them? If you have any doubts about your answer to that question, remember there is only one nation that has used them in war. It is the USA. President Harry Truman even used them when the inventors of them implored him to only demonstrate their power to Japanese leadership. We need to not kid ourselves. Putin will use nuclear weapons if that is what is necessary for him to get his way.
This is a human problem. It needs a human solution. It needs an intervention by his peers who love him as a fellow human being, love the Russian and Ukrainian people, and believe they can talk with him to the point where he discovers another way to get what he wants.
What does he fundamentally want? It is to be a hero in the eyes of the Russian people. In their conversations they could identify another way he could become a hero. The group could even conclude they will assist Russia to have communism in control of the capitalism economic system the way China has succeeded in doing.
They could be mature enough to observe that the Russian people may not want our form of democracy but prefer communism. It is a step in the right direction and that is what is most important, not that they embrace what we embrace. They could conclude they will assist Russia to have positive relationships with all their neighboring nations the way Germany now has with all its neighbors.
Just as an intervention often convinces an alcoholic that being a good father or mother is more important than being drunk, an intervention could have Putin discover being the leader who brings Russia into being valued as a member of the world community is more important to him, especially now that nearly the entire world is committed to not allowing him to win this war.
Can you come up with a better idea? I can’t. Like socially responsible investing, saying it has never been done before does not mean we should not give it a try.
In my recent guest column, entitled “Agreements not wars starts with a walk,” I failed to include a way for people to recognize others also walking in support of agreements not wars. More than one person was walking between 6 and 6:30 p.m. each night on the Amherst Common and didn’t know who the others were. What I should have included in that column was for walkers to wear an armband (a scarf, handkerchief, or other piece of cloth).
The primary reason we are walking at that time, and talking to each other, is to enjoy the safety and conviviality we do not want all of humanity to lose as the result of a now possible World War III. Secondly, the few of us now walking each evening without placards or speeches are modeling for leaders everywhere a way they can invite their citizens to vote with their feet in a democratic referendum for agreements not wars to resolve differences. They know now it is the time in human history for a direct democracy vote like this, ultimately of all on Earth, to have wars only in history books.
The leaders of towns, states, or nations could invite their citizens to walk in the central section of their towns between 6 and 6:30 p.m. on a particular night as their statement to the world they want agreements not wars. As more towns, states, or nations do it, accumulatively it could make a statement that we hold our leaders accountable to accomplishing. This could become a strong movement.
Mature humanness is agreementness.
Remember to wear a cloth armband so we can find each other! Lucy, friends, and I are walking each evening from 6-6:30 pm on the Shutesbury Common. If you live near us, join us. If you live somewhere else, walk in your downtown commons, park, or main streets at that time for the health, conviviality, and joy of it. With an armband on, it will also be a statement you want agreements not wars everywhere.
Terry Mollner is chair of Stakeholders Capital in Amherst and a retired co-founder and board member of the Calvert Funds and Calvert Impact Capital and a retired board member of Ben & Jerry’s.