July, 2004
Violence has become an every day component of life, whether we are subjected to it directly or observe it from a distance. If we are to have any chance of replacing violence with a ‘culture of peace’, it is essential to find ways of extending our sense of belonging, beyond family, race and nation to include our identification as a member of the one humanity. How can we say that there is peace in the world whilst 80% of the human race is living in poverty, whilst we are polluting the planet beyond its capacity to regenerate and whilst we continue to spend disproportionate sums of money on weapons that bring pain and even total annihilation? If humankind is brought to the point where a large enough number of persons are able to sense and acknowledge an overriding identity with humanity, however, we will no longer be prepared to turn a blind eye to the suffering of our fellow human beings and the earth on which we live.
Those nations enjoying stable peace have an important role to play on the world stage at this time, not through economic or political domination, but rather through continuing to pioneer ways of raising public awareness of the needs and the rights of all human beings. By strengthening human identification in this way and promoting a more widespread civic participation in world affairs, Martin Luther King’s dream that, “people everywhere can have 3 meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits”, can become the new reality of the 21st century.
If peace is the societal equivalent of physical and mental health, then violence, as the opposite of peace, is easily seen to equate to illness or disease. Natural health practitioners consider illness to be the result of ‘dis-‘ ‘ease’, that is, the state of not being in harmony with oneself. The level of violence expressed in societies worldwide is indicative of the depth of disharmony within the ranks of humanity, both at the inter-community and intra-community levels.
If we consider history as the evolution of the human consciousness, we can discern 3 distinct phases through which mankind has, or is, progressing: in the first phase, the race was driven purely by the instinct to survive; subsequently, desire and emotions became the main driving force for progress; and, currently, human beings are finding themselves more and more polarised in the domain of the intellect. Furthermore, present day society, particularly in stable nations, is characterised by a vast network of information technology, which has brought us into vivid contact with the day-to-day reality of life in almost every corner of the globe. This fact together with the high value placed on intelligence, that is the ability to think, highlights the need for all persons to give greater prominence to morality and ethics in their relationships, whether this is at the macrocosmic level in such fields as politics and trade; or on a community and individual basis. Our greater maturity as a race brings with it the responsibility to re-assess our attitudes and behaviour patterns, emphatically rejecting violence as a method for attaining peace.
Anyone who has looked into the field of peace studies will know that violence is more than direct aggression. However, the average person is not aware of the structural and cultural dimensions of violence, or at the very least they have never labelled such things as poverty, unemployment (structural), censorship and sexual discrimination (cultural) as violence. And yet if governments, educators, the media and every aware individual can raise the profile of these additional categories of violence, the mass of humanity will understand more fully how far we still are from creating a culture of peace and, thus, how urgently we need to establish new structures which will guarantee a more peaceful future.
Structural and cultural violence can of course also lead to acts of direct violence as a result of:
• Feelings of frustration and built up aggression in which violence is an emotional reaction;
• Heredity, that is, childhood experiences which give rise to expectations of hopelessness in the person when he/she reaches adulthood. Violence in this case is a mental reaction;
• A living environment in which a person is surrounded by acts of violence on a daily basis. The resort to violence in this instance will be to protect physical basic needs such as safety, food, and freedom;
• Historical antecedents such as the fact that a distant past was characterised by war. Violence here is engendered by the collective subconscious.
Once again we can make the parallel between the causes of an outbreak of violence and the causes of an outbreak of disease in a healthy person. An individual can become ill as a result of:
• Stress, that is, illness is an emotional reaction;
• Heredity, namely for psychosomatic reasons expressed by such thought forms as, ‘It runs in the family’. Illness in this instance is a mental reaction;
• An environment which is characterised by inadequate nutrition and drinking water or high levels of pollution. Disease will result because physical basic needs are not being met.
• Historical antecedents in the form of inherited illnesses from immediate or distant ancestors. In the field of natural medicine, these are referred to as ‘miasms’, that is, energetic imprints which can remain benign but which can also unexpectedly lead to the physical manifestation of illness.
Whether we consider frustration, heredity, environment or history as the stimulus for direct violence, the quest for money and power are often accompanying factors. If we are to establish a culture of peace on the planet, global policies must be put in place to resolve the issue of unequal opportunities and the rich-poor divide (both within a nation and between nations). This calls for a review of our existing monetary policies and trade practices and highlights the need to strengthen the rule of international law. Governments and tax-payers should also seriously question the sense in spending enormous sums of money on military budgets when ‘might against might’ only addresses the symptoms of conflict, which at times may be necessary, but which cannot lead to renewed ‘health’ because war does not treat the underlying causes of ‘illness’. Furthermore, if the reason for spending such disproportionate sums of money on weapons is not simply to fulfil perceived security needs, but is actually motivated by greed and the desire for domination, then we are faced with a doubled-edged sword, that is, the very instrument which we are told is creating the peace we are so proud of is in fact perpetuating direct, structural and/or cultural violence.
The subject of money is central to any discussion on peace culture because it forms an important part of our current value system Particularly in Western nations, we often judge people more by the amount of money they have in their bank accounts than by the contribution they are making to society. This same value system claims that peace is the absence of war. However, a more precise definition of peace has been defined by Fischer, Nolte & Oeberg (Winning Peace, Crane Russak, 1989) as:
“(…) all that aims to develop security and secure development of the whole human being, and all human beings, in a permanent process, taking its point of departure in a model of human and social needs based on an ethics of global care and allowing for unity in diversity.”
The phrase “an ethics of global care” is an important reminder that true peace encompasses not only human-human relations, but human-nature relationships too. A peace culture must reflect humanity’s interactions with the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, which until now have been strongly characterised by the domination of the ‘weakest’ (nature) by the ‘strongest’ (humanity), in the same way in which human-human relations have been. Humankind’s desire to dominate the environment with scant regard for the consequences has led to the growing scarcity of natural resources, the pollution of the earth’s waterways, sickness in animals necessitating mass killings, changes in climatic conditions and devastating natural catastrophes, etc.
Having discussed the nature of violence and the need for us to review what the concept of peace actually means, let us consider the principles which we human beings need to develop if we are to succeed in bringing about a more peaceful global society. Historically, the Buddha indicated to humanity the road to peace through the 8 fold path of right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right mindfulness and right concentration. These principals have stood the test of time and are undeniably as valid today as they were 2,500 years ago. Bonaro W. Overstreet in this book, Understanding Fear – In Ourselves and Others1, quotes a somewhat amusing approach to this question by Peter Viereck:”Peter Viereck describes our modern ‘limbo’ as a place where…
…men are filed in their own filing-system
With frayed manila folders for their souls,
Once labelled GOD’S OWN IMAGE: USE WITH CARE
But now reclassified as OBSOLETE.”
It is unfortunate indeed that the beauty of the spiritual truths at the heart of the world religions has sometimes been distorted by individuals either out of ignorance or in their quest for power and domination. This, together with the strong science-religion divide which characterises many Western countries in particular, has led to a distinct apathy on the part of many persons to the more spiritual facets of life. In order to combat this loss of spiritual identity, such peace initiatives as the World Parliament of Religions are to be applauded and supported. The spiritual component of man should not remain the exclusive domain of religions, however. Educators, governments and the media, amongst other players, should urgently place humankind’s spiritual needs alongside our instincts, emotions and intellect. In this way, those in positions of power can play the joker in the pack, namely our spiritual identity as one humanity, which might just win us all the game of peace.
Active participation through peace and non-violence was of course strongly advocated by Gandhi in the 1900s. He promoted such concepts as:
• Ahimsa – non-injury through “the renunciation of physical and mental violence against one’s self, others, animals and nature”2;
• Advaita – the interconnectivity of all life forms;
• Tapasya – the willingness to suffer rather than inflict pain on others;
• Sarvodaya – everyone’s basis needs must be met even if that means that some people must give something up so that others are not left out;
• Satyagraha – the pursuit of Truth through non-violent action.
A modern day approach to peaceful human relations through the realisation of the interconnectivity of life is Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-violent Communication method, which encourages individuals to connect compassionately with themselves and others in order to resolve differences peacefully.3
If humanity were to actively practice such principles as highlighted above and advocated by numerous individuals over the course of time, it could just be possible to establish a culture of peace in the world which would be, in the words of Professor Emerita, Elise Boulding, “A mosaic of identities, attitudes, values, beliefs, and institutional patterns that lead people to live nurturantly with one another, deal with their differences, share their resources, solve their problems, and give each other space so no one is harmed and everyone’s basic needs are met.”4 These values should underlie all peace cultures, although the structural reality would vary from community to community in accordance with the principle of ‘unity in diversity’.
True peace must be won simultaneously at the microcosmic and the macrocosmic levels as depicted in the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol. Peace is not something intangible, which we have no control over; rather, peace is something which we can actively contribute to creating, whatever our professional and personal fields of endeavour. Each of us has the power to make a difference. Our greatest enemy is the sense of futility or insignificance.
Each individual has the responsibility as a member of the human family to find ways of expressing right human relations within his/her own being, family unit, community, nation as well as in relation to the natural environment. Contributing to global peace requires not only dynamic action, but also inner reflection on the part of the individual and group (nation, community, religion, etc) in order to unveil any unconscious prejudices and misplaced preconceptions. As peace workers we must be conscious of the spectacles through which we are looking at the world – we must realise that our perception of events is tinged by our cultural background, our experiences in life and our individual personality makeup. Richard Guggenheimer, in this book Creative Vision, sheds some light on this question:
“It is difficult for the mind to operate freely over the vast areas of its widest range if the brain is constantly intruding its narrow preoccupation with the interests of the immediate ego. That ego is made up of demanding appetites and requirements seeking the most immediate and fullest possible gratification. It is also ridden by fears, anxieties and prejudices emerging as the negative consequences of unfulfilled desires.”
Jung has also made an important contribution in this area through his work on projections, that is, our propensity to see in others what needs healing in ourselves. Each time, therefore, we feel the urge to criticise and make a judgement, we would do better to pause and see which of our own faults are being mirrored in the other party.
This introspection is certainly more readily undertaken by individuals, stimulated by their sense of conscience; it needs, however, to find its place at the level of governments, corporations and civil bodies too if we are to create a true culture of peace.
“True vision requires far more than the eye. It takes the whole man. For what we see is no more or no less than what we are.” (Richard Guggenheimer, Creative Vision)
In the midst of the innumerable intractable conflicts of today and the existence of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the world many times over, peace workers must aim high and take up the challenge of embodying the peace that they hope to see mirrored in the world community.
Education and the media both have a tremendous potential for transforming the human consciousness through re-education, peace orientated information and control of discrimination. By promoting the ‘common’ and the ‘good’ rather than the ‘divisive’ and the ‘bad’, educational systems, both formal and informal, and the mass media have the power to lead humanity to the point at which it places great value on the concept of tolerance and respect for all manifestations of life. If at that point the educational systems and the mass media could go one step further and stimulate the desire for mutual learning, there would be a tremendous strengthening of the sense of human identification. This would be reflected in our behaviour patterns through greater compassion and our enhanced sense of ‘unity in diversity’. If a family member is suffering, most of us are quick to help. It follows, therefore, that if we are taught from a young age that we share our life experience with all other human beings and if this identification is reinforced by the media (to name but one actor), perhaps in the future we will respond as effectively to starvation and suffering even if these are occurring in far away lands.
A peace culture is impossible to envisage without reviewing humanity’s relationship to the environment, which in modern times has been characterised by high levels of violence and domination. Education and the media must here also play a key role in promoting changes in attitudes and behaviour patterns worldwide to reflect a more responsible and ethical value system. Human beings must resume their role as ‘guardians’ of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms; rather than seeing themselves as ‘masters’ of the earth and its resources. In the realm of human-nature relations, our identification needs to go beyond the human race towards an identification with Life itself. Together with government policies, formal/informal education and media coverage, therefore, the revival of celebrations and rituals to mark important times of the earth calendar could help to rekindle our sense of connectivity with the planet.
Humanity is capable of reaching a greater degree of maturity. Humans have evolved from cave men, to tribal (primitive community) members, to the highly developed individuals in the complex, inter-connected societies of today. However, humanity is continuing to evolve and, as such, it is a plausible hypothesis to imagine that peace, in its extended context, can characterise global societies in the future and that we will reach a wider sense of identification which will unite us in our diversity. Human beings will be able to look back on the early 21st century in the same way as we currently look back on our ancestors and rejoice in the progress made by the race.
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too. (…) Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” (J. P. Goethe)
* Vicky Rossi was a participant in the European Peace University (EPU) course in spring 2004. This is one of the papers she wrote during the course.
Bibliography
Problems of Humanity course, Lucis Trust, www.lucistrust.org
European Peace University, Stadtschlaining, Austria, March-May 2004.
The Essential Jung, C. G. Jung, Fontana Press, 1998, London, England.
Footnotes
1: Understanding Fear – In Ourselves and Others, Bonaro W. Overstreet, Harper Bros, New York, 1951.
2: A Glossary of Peace and Conflict Terminology, Christopher A. Miller, University for Peace, 2004, Geneva, Switzerland (internet).
4: Prof Emerita, Elise Boulding, interview with Peace Work, January 1996, Cambridge, USA.
