From the sublime to the ridiculous in that title (I couldn't put enough quotes in, actually). I am re-reading Alan Watts' The Book, and came to a paragraph which is much needed in the dialogue for the now so-called Overseas Contingency Operation.
His excerpt from page 112:
The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and assistance to the starving of the earth-- urgent as they are-- will destroy rather than help if made in the present spirit*. For, as things stand, we have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else.... But peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love only shown by those who love. No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
*Those words from 1966, and yet still very relevant-- if not somewhat forgotten.
Watts goes on to further clarify that the double bind fallacies of the ego make it so that the games we play ("I am more penitent than you") by definition are played within a fallacy.
So really it is for the "West" to shine like a beacon of fair play, joy, pursuit of happiness, and unfettered liberty to overcome those radical forces to which we might be "contingent" for some years to come.
