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    Marc Gopin is the Director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (CRDC), the James H. Laue Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, USA. Gopin has pioneered projects at CRDC in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Israel. Gopin directs a unique series of overseas educational and practice experiences ranging from conflict and peace intervention in Palestine and Israel, to support for Syrian activists and refugees in Turkey and Jordan.

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Recent Posts

  • When Safety Is Felt: Building Cultural Traditions of Community Guardianship

     

     

    Most Americans would agree that happiness depends on safety. But science shows something surprising: it is not actual safety—measured by crime rates or accident statistics—that most strongly predicts well-being. It is the perception of safety.

    A growing body of research finds that when people feel unsafe, their health, mood, and life satisfaction decline—even if objective risks are relatively low. In the MIDUS (Midlife in the United States) study, adults who perceived their neighborhoods as unsafe reported higher daily stress and more negative emotions, regardless of actual crime levels (Robinette et al., 2016). In fact, perceptions of safety often matter more than crime statistics themselves. A Vanderbilt study found that living in a high-crime county had only a modest effect on happiness, but believing one’s own neighborhood was unsafe significantly reduced life satisfaction (Bratton, 2008).

    Why does felt safety matter so much? The human brain is wired to detect and avoid …

  • Compassionate Reasoning and Ethical Decision-Making: An Integrative Method

     

    For centuries, philosophers have wrestled with the question of how human beings ought to act. Should we maximize happiness? Should we obey universal duties? Should we cultivate virtues? Or should we trust our moral sentiments? Each of these schools of ethics—utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and moral sense theory—offers important insights, but each on its own leaves gaps.

    The method of Compassionate Reasoning begins with the conviction that no single ethical school is sufficient for the complex challenges of modern life. A framework is needed that can integrate the strengths of each tradition without being paralyzed by their rivalries. That framework is compassion, understood not simply as a fleeting feeling, but as a disciplined practice of reasoning, imagination, and action. Compassion functions as the universal constant, the ethical north star, while reasoning supplies the tools of analysis, judgment, and foresight.

    Compassionate Reasoning thus draws upon the wisdom of the great traditions, …

  • All young men need radically new educational programs to reduce mass violence

     

    Mass shootings and mass killings in the United States have become a central subject of public debate, not only because of their horror and visibility, but also because they raise profound questions about who commits them, why, and how society might best respond. One of the most contentious aspects of this debate has been the role of race and gender, particularly the figure of the white male shooter. Media narratives often focus heavily on this profile, sometimes suggesting that white males overwhelmingly dominate mass killings. A closer look at the evidence from reputable databases shows a more complex picture. White men are overrepresented in certain kinds of mass shootings, particularly the public rampage shootings that dominate headlines, but they are not the sole or even majority perpetrators across all categories of mass killings. Understanding these distinctions is crucial if any educational or policy response is to be effective.

    The first …

  • Straightness & Curvature: Pi & the Majestic Mystery of Ratio

    For most of us, π is little more than a Greek letter encountered in school. We are told that it equals 3.14159… and that it is “the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.” But this definition, repeated in classrooms for centuries, risks leaving the phenomenon itself untouched. It does not ask the deeper question: What does this ratio mean? Why should it matter that this relationship holds true for every circle, large or small? And why did thinkers like Pythagoras and his followers find such truths worthy of reverence, even worship?

    Straightness and Curvature

    At its heart, π is not about Greek letters or obscure formulas. It is about the relationship between straightness and curvature.

    Draw a straight line across a circle, its diameter. Then trace the curved path around the circle, its circumference. When you compare the two, you find that the curved path is …

  • Compassion as the Only Reliable Moral Force in History: A Historical Critique of both World Religions and Reason Versus the Record of Compassionate Service

     

     

    Abstract

     

    This essay argues that compassion, more than religious obligation or rational ethics, has been the most consistently reliable force in reducing cruelty and promoting moral progress throughout history. Religious and logical frameworks have each changed vast numbers of minds and built the foundations of law, culture, and governance—but they have also repeatedly rationalized or sanctified violence. In contrast, compassion—especially when expressed as joyful, ethical service to others—has most consistently reversed cruelty and expanded moral inclusion. Drawing on historical patterns and recent neuroscience, the essay posits that sustainable moral action arises not from guilt or tribal empathy but from determined, positive compassion.¹

    1. Introduction: What Persuades Us to Be Good?

     

    Across civilizations, moral leaders and philosophers have turned to three primary sources to cultivate goodness: religious obligation, rational-ethical reasoning, and compassionate concern. Each framework has shaped human history—but not all with equal ethical consistency. This essay asks: Which of these has …

  • A Completely Different Approach to the Future of Palestinian-Israeli States, Security, and Permanent Peace

     
    The only way to envision the future is to draw from historical precedents that have actually worked, even in the face of the most outrageous acts of violence and the most bitter distrust. There is a way, and that is to look to history and build the future not as a carbon copy but inspired by possibility and possible futures. 
    The end of centuries of conflict between France and Germany, culminating in a stable and lasting peace after World War II, represents one of the most remarkable cases of reconciliation in modern history. This transformation was not accidental but the result of deliberate choices in economics, politics, education, and symbolic diplomacy that gradually reshaped national interests and collective memory. One of the most foundational steps was the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, designed by Jean Monnet and supported by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman.
    …

  • The Impact of Compassion on Human Existence Reflected in Light’s Nature

     

    Light emission fascinates me as a metaphor for the impact of our actions, teachings, and expressions of compassion in the world. Light, whether emitting in all directions from a point source or focused into a coherent beam like a laser, is the essence of the duality of quantum mechanics and wave-particle duality. There is an important analogy here for human interaction and influence.

    Understanding Light Emission: Quantum Mechanics and Wave-Particle Duality

    Light behaves both as a wave and as a particle, exhibiting properties that depend on the observational context. Light can spread spherically from a point source when considered as a wave, similar to ripples spreading across a pond. This wave-like behavior enables light to be emitted in all directions simultaneously, suggesting a form of omnipresence in the same way in which the sun’s light travels infinitely throughout space in all directions or a candle in a dark room. This …

  • The Great Oxygen Exception

     

    Our planet is rare and beautiful; blue planets are even more exceptional. Astronomers have discovered 5,502 planets around other stars (known as exoplanets) in the Milky Way. In our solar system, only one other planet is blue, Neptune, reflecting the methane embedded in its ice. Other blue planets have been discovered. HD189733b, for example, orbits its yellow-orange star, HD189733, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope measured the actual visible-light color of the planet. 

    An oxygen atmosphere, however, is truly unique, which is why we exist as self-conscious beings, made up of the stuff of the universe, but thinking and reflecting on the universe. We breathe based on plant life, where sentient, self-conscious beings breathe, and this has no precedent across the galaxy. We may never discover any self-conscious forms of life anywhere.

    Oxygen-based life is so exceptional that it has not always been the case even for most of Earth’s existence…

  • Compassionate Reasoning, the Future, and Reconciliation

    Reconciliation between those in deep conflict and hate mostly never happens. It is deeply challenging to move relationships in the direction of reconciliation.  The challenges of reconciliation as a valuable form of social change revolve around the fact that if reconciliation is seen as a faith gesture, it loses its attraction. It is a done deal that you believe in or don’t believe in, and if you believe in it, it becomes an automatic gesture between people. We can safely say that people resent that because it doesn’t begin to get at the deep levels of hurt, rage, and anger.

     

    It certainly doesn’t address any of the justice issues. But to the degree to which reconciliation is more of an investment in facing the past and then moving towards a different future, with unique gestures and ways of talking and thinking that suggest that there will be a new future, …

  • Overcoming Tribalism: A New Way of Thinking

     

    The most important thing to understand about tribalism and gang warfare is that it is deeply damaging to human societies and that it always has been for tens of thousands of years. We like to think that tribalism is somewhere else. It’s not where we exist; it is very far away and primitive. But the fact is that tribalism is something that we all naturally fall into for various complicated reasons in human nature. We tend to affiliate with groups that will make us feel protected, initially the family and the family unit. But it constantly expands to include people we trust in more significant circumstances, expanding to community, culture, and nation.

    Studying the impact of tribalism and its consequences is an important part of the sociology and anthropology of all normal human communities. At the same time, we need to think about the destructive aspect of tribalism that results …

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