You know, there's a lot going on these days. To say we're distracted is kind of an understatement. But every now and then we must pause and force ourselves to breathe and see these moments for what they are. I'm referring to this announcement: 

In Oslo this morning, a hundred countries - including Switzerland - affixed their signature to a Convention that prohibits cluster munitions. A major landmark for humanitarian law.

This was the result of an extraordinary mobilization of state and non-state actors. In Oslo's City Hall this morning, at 10 o'clock on the dot, over 100 countries signed the Cluster Munitions Convention. Notably absent were producers, such as the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan and even Israel.

While I might still have a knee-jerk reaction to the absence of the US, the world's largest arms producer, I'm holding on to the more positive aspect of this news -- the unprecedented shift towards disarmament and peace occurring in the world today.

Cynicism would have us focus on the abundant evidence to the contrary. This is why its so important to take a deep breath and realize... this treaty and others of its kind are unparalleled in the history of human affairs. It instantly forces recall of an ancient prophecy:

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)

I've always been fascinated by the last part of that passage -- "neither shall they learn war any more." This phrase has SO many implications, most obviously the notion that the study of war LEADS to war. The institutionalized habit of studying history through the assumption that we are essentially war-like in nature has fostered permanent perceptions in the minds of many that there simply is no alternative. The "war as nature" premise teaches us to view history as a series of inevitable struggles. An eternally evolving shift of conflicts from which there is no escape and at best only painful mediation.

However, if we adjust the definition of our essential nature towards a view that we are a historically young species who is in the process of evolving to higher levels of order (the signs of which are even more abundant than the specific news of progress towards peace) then we begin to see war as a regrettable and tragic result of an immature humanity's addiction to resolve conflict through violence.

The idea that the human race evolves over time as a collective in relation to the similar stages of an individual (infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity) was first introduced by Baha'u'llah in the late 1800s and has recently been mentioned, albeit in another context, by biologists Paul Ehrlich and Robert Pringle:

"Homo sapiens, is about 200,000 years old." If one considers that mammalian species - of which we are one - last a million years on average, that places Homo sapiens in the middle of adolescence.

And what do teenagers do? They grow up.

Taking this view of our essential nature into context we can see our potential fate with a new hope. Not that we're doomed to endlessly fight meaningless wars but that we're in the process of evolving to a higher level of consciousness, an inevitable result of which is we will sign meaningful treaties, develop potent international defenses against armed conflict and injustice, and eventually reach a stage of maturity where the various battles in our bloody history are brushed aside for a larger, more lasting study of our true, essential nature -- that of peaceful beings who went through a turbulent stage of development and eventually... learned war no more.