Towards a Culture of Peace: The Energy of “We”

By Kwon Jin Moon

I really enjoy listening to theoretical physicists. They are the rock stars of the physics world. They’re not people who simply conceive of a world, but actually the ones who create the world. We all whip out our smartphones and enjoy the World Wide Web. But they’re the ones that created the Web.

One of my favorite theoretical physicists is Japanese-American bestselling author, Professor Michio Kaku. He divides the world and universe and the billions and billions of stars into three types of civilizations.

The first is a planetary-type civilization. This is one which harnesses planetary powers. It controls earthquakes, volcanoes, and taps the power of the sun. And although utilizing tremendous resources, it lives harmoniously with the planet — the mark of a Type I planetary civilization.

The second is stellar-type civilizations. The United Federation of Planets in Star Trek is an example. This type controls stars. It harnesses the power of stars and as a civilization, is immortal. They can survive comets or asteroids, even supernovas.

Type III civilizations are galactic. They truly wield the power of the universe. Examples would be the Borg in Star Trek or the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.

But there’s a different type of planetary civilization. That civilization is Type Zero. That’s what we are.

Think about it! We still burn fossil fuels. We consume energy from dead plants. To someone in a Type II civilization, we’re still rubbing sticks together.

Yet we live in a unique time and space because we’re actually marching towards a Type I civilization. You may ask, “When is this remarkable thing going to happen? When will we be living in harmony and sustainability with the world?” Theoretical physicists actually believe within a 100 years — maybe not within our lifetime, but definitely in our children’s lifetime — we’ll arrive.

The most crucial time, as I see it, is before we get there. This is because we have the ability to get there but also the ability to blow each other up. That’s a big concern for me and should be a big concern for you.

We live in a world where within probably a decade or two, a teenager will be able to download the genome for the Spanish flu. It was a disease that killed more human beings than World War I. In a couple decades, we’ll be able to build a computer with which one can decode the DNA of most anything and reproduce it. Someone could easily replicate a biochemical bomb. We already have nuclear weapons, and we have global warming.

Unfortunately, we’re faced with the beauty of a planetary-type civilization, but also the reality of human beings. The reality of human beings is we still have the savagery, passions, sectarian violence, and fundamentalisms within us that tear us apart and keep us small. That’s the problem I see.

That’s what’s keeping us from becoming a truly spectacular, stellar, galactic-type people. In the future, I really perceive a world where we can all work in harmony.

You see all the signs of people yearning for the Type I planetary civilization. The Internet, from a planetary point of view, really is the beginning of the world’s first global telephone. We can contact anyone in the world.

Professor Michio Kaku, Henry Semat Chair and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), discusses the three types of civilizations.

We also see the emergence of English, the lingua franca of technology, science, and business. It is the number one second-language in the world. We see the world trying to communicate with a common language. In the future, I see our economies also merging together initially so we can compete with China, but eventually growing to a one world economy.

If you look at culture, wherever you go in the world, what do you hear when you turn on the radio? You hear rock music, you hear hip hop, you hear the sound and song of youth. That’s the energy, and that’s what the music of rock and roll really encompasses. Rock and roll is not about establishment; it’s about angst, anger, frustration, and not being able to fit in but somehow making it work. It’s an expression of this passion.

That’s what we’re feeling as well when we’re growing as a world. I think we’re really experiencing the birth pangs of a Type I civilization where we can finally get to live in harmony and unison, not only with nature but also with our own brothers and sisters.

But now the downside. We also see negative trends. The biggest one facing us — and there are several — is ideological.

What is terrorism? What are they trying to say? If you think about it, it’s a reaction against a Type I world. They’re not reacting against modernization or technology per se. What they’re really reacting against, or what they really don’t want, is what we’re beginning to march toward, which is a multicultural, tolerant, scientific, spiritually unified world. That’s not what they want; in fact, they want the opposite. They want a theocracy. They don’t want multiculturalism — they want monoculturalism.

How are we going to march forward toward the world that is our destiny? Perhaps if we progress and travel in starships to different solar systems, we’ll find a world that’s been irradiated because of nuclear war. Or maybe we’ll find a world that’s experiencing a runaway global warming effect. Maybe the cosmos — if we can travel into deep space with these spaceships — is actually filled with the corpses of Type Zero civilizations that didn’t make it to Type I.

Maybe there are remnants, the horror stories of cultures that didn’t quite make it. Will that be our destiny? I have a big fear that’s a possibility. But I hope we make it.

The point is we can’t do it alone.

I want people to be the masters of presence, the masters of healing, because we’ve all been there.

There’s a deeper level that we’re missing. As we’re progressing in a technological society and get more and more advanced, we’re losing our humanity, our presence. So what is presence?

Presence is the absolute energy and intimacy of you and me. It is the energy of we.

The first circle of energy is me. It’s couples sitting at dinner with nothing to say to each other. You could say, “You know, I love you,” but the words don’t make it. They fall to the ground. The opposite is third circle energy. It’s the energy of business meetings or awful lectures. It’s energized and loud, but people aren’t really talking to you, they’re talking over you.

How wonderful it is if someone was actually present with you, totally focused. That’s second circle energy, the energy of “we,” of you and me. To be intimate with another person, in such a way that your attention is totally focused on another is “living for the sake of others.” Lacking this is the problem that will keep human beings from evolving to a higher level.

Consider the past, because that’s what’s keeping us from progressing toward a brave, new, bold future. And go all the way back to the beginning. Whether you believe in religion or not, the dysfunction of humanity’s first family afflicts us all today.

What drove Cain to murder? If you think about it, Cain had no ability to think in terms of “we;” he just thought in terms of “I” and “you.” “You did this to me. You took this from me. And therefore, I must kill you.”

Cain didn’t have the capacity to understand a higher level, a higher mentality or a higher mindset that said, “You know what? I’ve got to get over my own narcissism, my own greed. I see what Abel is trying to do for the family, and I’ve got to help him make it work.” That element of enlightenment was never present in Cain’s life. He was never able to be in second circle energy or a state of “we.”

The Cain element is in all of us. It is so easy to reproduce all the dysfunctions, divisiveness,, political intrigue, and murder. But it is a higher mindset, an Abel mindset, to forgive what has happened, and then distribute great abundance, enriching everybody. People such as this think at a higher level, a level of enlightenment. They may not be the strongest or the loudest, or the ones with the highest test scores. But they are the ones who see the world for what it is. They are the people who will contribute to the new world

But we lack the wise elder figure. In America especially, we are a neurotic, narcissistic, youth- and puberty-obsessed culture and country. It’s almost as if people who are mature don’t even matter. We’ve lost the tribal elder, we’ve lost the grandfather and grandmother figures. We’ve lost the ones who can remind us and keep us on task — keeping Cain working, keeping Abel working, and maintaining harmony between the two, particularly helping Cain to see the world at a higher level.

What we’re losing in our modern world — with all its progress — is our connection with our higher mind, our Abel mind, or as my father, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, liked to call it, our God-centered mind. We’re losing this, the ability to see people for whom they are, the ability to connect to you and me. We.

We will build a new planetary civilization, but only if the people involved have an Abel-type mentality, if they are not brought down by savagery and the sectarian violence that is within all of us. People who see the world for what it is and then forgive will build it. Those leading through grace will construct it.♦

For the past year, Kwon Jin Moon, the fifth son of Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, led witnessing and Divine Principle teaching activities in Las Vegas. He is currently pursuing university studies. This article is adapted from his remarks given on October 31, 2013 to Nigerian guests of FFWPU and students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Image above: This artist’s concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone — a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet’s surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth. Image credit: NASA/Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech.