I’m trying to find my way back into The Possible Future, the working title of the book I started over a decade ago and eventually lost hold of. Somewhere deep inside me I feel compelled to reclaim it, but almost simultaneously I feel like I’m kidding myself. The topic is beyond me: our evolutionary necessity to transcend war and dehumanization and build humanity around the belief that power is collective.

Yes, I’ve done lots of research – in particular on Restorative Justice, a.k.a., the peace circle process – but . . . what? There’s a sense of doubt in me – a deep hole – that I can’t seem to overcome. Who do I think I am? I’m just an ordinary soul. How can I presume to write a book of such scope that it influences human evolution? By myself?

Well, here’s a piece of it from the likely first chapter, discussing the myth, which I refer to as the “old story,” around which humanity has organized itself:

. . . Walter Wink, in  his book The Powers That Be, calls it “the myth of redemptive violence” – this belief that violence saves us. Indeed, “It doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least,” he writes. “Violence simply appears to be in the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. If a god is what you turn to when all else fails, violence certainly functions as a god.”

The profound danger of the myth of redemptive violence is that it is collective: Humans band together against other humans. Today the world is divided into nation-states – 195 of them at this point in the game – which, with a few exceptions, spend an enormous portion of their wealth and energy preparing for (and/or waging) war. Nation-states do what they want: That’s what “sovereignty” allegedly means. But doing what they want keeps winding up meaning killing, imprisoning and threatening their external and internal enemies. Thanks to this simplistic attitude, humanity is on the brink of committing suicide, either politically, via nukes, or ecologically, by smothering the planet’s life-sustaining environment. Or both.

But the myth starts small. Every problem, whether personal or social, is something to fight. Consider, for instance, that even though the medical profession is all about healing, we “fight” our diseases rather than trying to understand them, just as we fight our social maladies. We wage wars on cancer, on drugs, on crime – on virtually everything that’s problematic. None have been successful. But then again, wars are never successful, even when we “win.”

In the real world, violent “solutions” always cause further harm, even if some temporary good is also accomplished. Violent victories come with repression and eventual backlash. But you wouldn’t know this from the myth, which endlessly portrays violence – well, “good violence” – as consequence-free.

Strike up the orchestra. Here’s how it plays out: John Wayne, the Ringo Kid, has climbed atop the stagecoach and the Apaches are tearing after them as the music swells. In two minutes of the 1939 John Ford classic Stagecoach, I counted 15 Indians dying, each one flying dramatically off his horse. There are hundreds of them, hooting, armed with rifles, but they never hit anyone. They have almost no impact on the valiant stagecoach, on which four white men return fire at the savages with grim precision. One of them actually has a wry smile on his face, relishing his opportunity to do so. They blast away. Eventually the cavalry shows up and the Indians flee.

The myth of redemptive violence is God’s gift to scriptwriters.

Here’s another example, less simple and more deeply offensive: It’s from the 1985 movie Witness, in which Harrison Ford plays a cop living temporarily among the Amish as he investigates a murder case.

In one scene, Ford is riding with them through town when there’s a standoff in the middle of a street between the Amish in their horse-drawn carts and a car trying to get past them. Several aggressive-looking guys get out of the car and approach the Amish, oozing snarky disrespect. An elderly Amish man senses the Ford character’s bubbling anger and says, quietly: “Accept it sometimes. Do nothing.”

Meanwhile, the first punk is standing with his nose an inch from a young Amish man, in clear breach of personal space. “Don’t you speak English? You don’t hear very good.” He’s holding an ice cream cone. In a visceral act of humiliation, he shoves the cone at the guy’s nose, smearing the ice cream on his cheeks and chin. Then he says: “Are you a man or what?” The Amish guy sits quietly, takes the humiliation, says nothing.

Cut to the bearded man in the other cart, who tells the Ford character: “It’s not our way.”

What’s clear here, in the context of the movie, is that the Amish are sitting in quiet, unspoken shame, obeying, because, apparently, they have no choice, some abstract rule. It’s remarkably painful to watch. It’s obviously painful to the Ford character, who finally has had enough and steps resolutely out of the cart, walking up to the smirking punk. The punk exclaims, “Oh, he’s going to hit us with his Bible!”

Ford says coldly: “You’re making a mistake.”

The man, still smirking – still thinking he has total freedom to be an asshole among these nonviolent do-nothings – says: “Boo!”

And Ford swings, sending the punk sprawling, his face covered in blood. Another punk comes at him but Ford throws him off and they cower in astonishment as Ford walks back to the cart. Problem solved.

Two things. First: There were no negative consequences for Ford’s character. It was pure, consequence-free, redemptive violence: doing good with a nice, smooth punch. He didn’t even injure his hand or in any way get seriously challenged by the bad guys.

Second: There was nothing empowering in the Amish show of nonviolence, as portrayed in this scene. And what I’m talking about, let me be clear, is a film script, not real Amish or real nonviolence. The movie Amish endured the disrespect in quiet shame, as though they lived in a moral cage. Their nonviolence was simply a joke to the punks and did nothing but give them freedom to be jerks. And the scene, however false, was convincing – well acted, believably scripted. That’s the problem. It served the myth of redemptive violence full on, turning pacifism into passivism. The fake Amish in this scene had no power. They were the equivalent of department store dummies.

This is the Old Story writ large, no doubt settling into humanity’s collective unconscious: Pacifism equals passivism. This is such an easy verbal twist to make, and why I have pretty much rejected the word “pacifism” from my vocabulary.

There’s no obvious “alternative” plotline to Stagecoach, Witness and the like – at least not without better writing. But “entertainment” has always required simple plotlines. What’s far more disconcerting is that the justice system’s activities – policing, court procedures, imprisonment – are equally simplistic, if not at their core, than in their practice. Reforms do happen, but the Old Story doesn’t simply go away. . . .