something that was portrayed in very primordial form in 2001:A
Space Odyssey and something that is very much a major issue in the
modern world. The ability to create and deploy powerful weapons, a
result of our sophisticated intelligence and ability to understand the
world through physical and mathematical reasoning, has formed a
deadly marriage with our primal capacity for fear and violence.
Fortunately, we also have other capacities, notably a tremendous
capability for kindness, trust, love, and compassion. The consistency
of the European Paleolithic cave paintings over a period of more than
twenty thousand years (from thirty thousand to ten thousand years
ago), suggests that stable, perhaps relatively peaceful cultures existed
for thousands of years. Martin Luther King (1929-1968), in receiving
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, said in his acceptance speech: “I refuse
to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down
a militaristic stairway. ...I believe that unarmed truth and uncon-
ditional love will have the final word in reality.” John Lennon (1940-
1980) and The Beatles put it simply: “All you need is love.” We honor
at least some individuals who speak this way. And contemporary
research in the biology and psychology of emotion demonstrates that
the human capacity for compassion and kindness is strong—perhaps
the strongest and most natural of our behavioral tendencies.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the ancient protohuman has
accomplished the deed of killing another ancient protohuman and
thus secured the dominance of that particular tribe at that particu-
lar moment, he (or she) yells in victory and throws the femur-bone
weapon high into the air. The camera catches it turning end over end,
flying upward against a blue sky. When it reaches the top of its arc and
begins to fall back down to Earth again, the spiraling bone becomes a
spiraling space station, in orbit around planet Earth millions of years