The Contagious Love Experiment sounds like a ’70s rock band. It’s not. It’s the title of a cross-country journey made by two Iraq vets—Josh Stieber and Conor Curran—that started this past summer. Inspired by the title of Gandhi’s autobiography (The Story of My Experiments with Truth), Josh decided to become a conscientious objector. His plan: to walk and bike across the country, meet people, talk to them about his experiences in the war, and to learn about other organizations that started with one person’s idea of change.

Wait. Hold on. Iraq vets? Gandhi? War stories? Bike rides? Contagious love? Yes, my thoughts exactly. I had to talk to these guys.

Josh Stieber Says No to War and Yes to Change 

I first spoke with Josh, the initial instigator of the experiment. He decided to join the army right after 9/11 when he was still in middle school. He felt that if there was a war going on when he was of age, he was going to enlist. And he did: High-school graduation was in June of ’06, basic training began in July, and by February’07, he was deployed to Baghdad. On the surface, there wasn’t a person better suited for the job. He was young, healthy, and strong. He grew up attending religious schools where he read about “the prophecy of George Bush”. He believed that “we” were right and “they” were wrong. He wanted to help rid the world of the bad guys in much the same way a doctor would cut out a tumor.

Once he got there though, his reasoning began to make a lot less sense. “I realized things weren’t so black and white. I realized that much of my decision to enlist was based on fear and paranoia and hatred. Kicking down doors of people’s homes on a daily basis in order to find anything suspicious, seeing innocent people die—it forced me to question my own beliefs and to realize that I needed to start looking at people with compassion,” Josh says. 

In fact, Josh says that soldiers are taught to “dehumanize entire groups.” They learn that empathy is a liability. “If you have empathy towards someone, you are less likely to shoot to kill.”

While he was still in Baghdad, Josh began reading Gandhi’s autobiography, as well as books by Tolstoy and Martin Luther King Jr. (earning a bit of an outsider reputation). He began to see the hypocrisy of believing in both the Christian ideal of “love your enemies” and being asked to show little care for human life. After being deployed for 14 months, Josh decided to become a conscientious objector.

It was then that he realized that if he was going to say ‘No’ to war, he had to say ‘Yes’ to something else.

Taking a cue from organizations such as Alex’s Lemonade Stand, which started with one person’s decision to make a difference (in that case, a 4-year-old cancer patient’s decision to raise money for research, which is now a foundation that has raised more than $30 million), Josh decided to take a bike trip across the country. His goal: To meet people and talk to them about his experiences. Fueled by the knowledge that love is stronger than fear, hate, suffering, and even death, he wanted to listen to others, show compassion, and withhold judgment. No easy task! That’s why he calls it an experiment.

Conor Curran Finds Salvation in Bravery

Conor came to similar conclusions, though his path was a little more complicated. Rejecting, at age 16, the strict Christian beliefs he grew up with, Conor soon became addicted to the immediate-rush experience found in extreme sports, drinking, and drugs. By the time he was in college, he saw the Marines as a way out and into a more honorable way of seeking the same kind of excitement. He continued to judge others and feel contempt towards religion, but he felt a new confidence in having people think he made a brave choice. It wasn’t until he completed four years of service and returned home that he began to recognize how negativity, anger, and fear had been such a motivation for him.

While Josh feels the turnaround in his views of the war was a gradual process, Conor remembers a very particular experience that changes his perspective. On his first tour of duty, he worked clearing roadside bombs, and quickly worked his way up to a rank of sergeant. On his second tour, he was in Ramadi with his squad when he decided to do a random search of the village. They came to one house that had a courtyard in the back with lush green grass (uncommon in the desert) and a beautiful garden.

“It looked like someone had put a lot of time and effort into its care … It was magical,” Conor says. Thinking this was suspicious, they entered the home and “pulled it apart,” while Conor went into the garden to sweep with his metal detector. He was digging holes in the lawn and pulling out plants when the man of the house came outside carrying a tray. Without acknowledging what Conor was doing, the man spoke in perfect English and offered him a cup of tea.

“My brain fried,” Conor says.

Nothing in basic training had prepared him for an act of compassion. Though he said that this marked the moment when his own turn of consciousness began, he’s quick to point out that it didn’t fully sink in until months later.

After receiving his discharge papers, Conor assumed he would be able to just pick up where he left off, but he wasn’t aware of the anger and hatred he carryied with him. His brother had joined Veterans for Peace, and Conor made fun of him. He finally admitted that he was unhappy and was only able to begin healing when he started acknowledging a commonality between people—how despite superficial differences, we are all human.

“I found that I freed myself from the mental confines I put myself in because up until then I was sort of on a reactionary course where I was always responding to my own judgment or what someone else thought of me.”

Conor said that his spirituality was reawakened as well, which he felt led to an awareness of random coincidence and good luck, such as meeting Josh. “And all of this was rooted in one act of compassion; where one guy loved his enemy, even though he had every reason not to.”

Having finished their cross-country trip, which you can read about here, they are now preparing to join forces with a group of young people from Afghanistan who want to have an open dialogue promoting peace and non-violence. In addition, they are working on a book and documentary chronicling these events. Channeling the same energy and focus they put into joining the war, they are now dedicating themselves to showing how love and cooperation can be effective and powerful ways to deal with conflict. “Every action we make isn’t going to change the world overnight, but day-by-day ,there are plenty of ways we can move in a more loving direction”.

What one experience completely changed your belief system?