Thank you again for your thoughtful responses. At present my best answer to your question is to get as many as people as possible to what Ken Wilber describes as the Integral level of Consciousness. (See for example A Brief History of Everything or Trump and a Post Truth World.)

For me to play the atheist I would need to set out a set of ethics that would guide my thinking. I suppose that I could try to destroy, punish, or silence the people who disagree with me, but in doing so I would simply adopt my morals to whomever I am struggling against. Obviously, Tolkien was a deeply Christian writer, but I have always loved his idea of not being able to use the Ring of the Enemy without becoming an Enemy. I am actually working on a piece of the Grand Inquisitor right now. It is clear that Dostoevsky found a hope in a mature love he found among the elders of Orthodox monasteries that inspired him.

My primary training is in History and teaching, although I do have an undergraduate major in Russian Language and Literature as well. One of the biggest question that has been driving my thinking over the last few years is how change actually happens. It is clear that peacemaking efforts and truth and reconciliation commissions have helped tremendously to reduce conflict. It is also true that bitter hatreds can reemerge once the horror of warfare has been forgotten by later generations.

The greatest challenge is how to overcome our relentless drive for more wealth, power, and prestige. Finding a way to check those impulses may be the only way humanity survives the twenty first century. While I “identify” as a Christian I am very open to insights from other religious traditions and philosophy.

I don’t know if this answers your question or not. It may come down to the question of whether love for self and tribe can be overcome by love for all of humanity and the natural world. The best any of us can do is take the steps that make sense to us in that direction.