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Peace is not the Absence of Conflict; It's a Way Through It
September 21 is International Day of Peace, a day established by the General Assembly of the United Nations for "commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace within and among all nations and people." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also has urged all combatants to honor the day by standing down from battle. "I call for a day of global ceasefire: A 24-hour respite from the fear and insecurity that plague so many places," he stated on this date last year. "I urge all countries and all combatants to honor a cessation of hostilities. I urge them to ponder the high price that we all pay because of conflict. I urge them to vigorously pursue ways to make this temporary ceasefire permanent."
What is peace? Is it a temporary condition between periods of conflict? A worthy but unattainable ideal? Just a hope, or a dream?
Peace is not as elusive as that. It's got a past, present and future. Peace is not so much a goal as a process. As the great nonviolent organizer, AJ Muste famously said, "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."
Peace is not the absence of conflict; it's a way through it. Because we humans are always going to be in conflict in some form or another, making peace means actively addressing conflict and injustice - not running away from it - using nonviolent methods. The choice is always available.
Some forms of peacemaking are so common that most people do it just like breathing. It's the smile of affirmation, the word of encouragement, the humor that eases tension, the candid statement that clears the air. It's the community garden, the guitar lesson, the basketball game. We make peace a hundred times a day because it's the natural thing to do.
Peacemaking is also a discipline. We may make conscious decisions to refrain from gossip or name-calling, learn how to apologize, let go of a grudge, and firmly and respectfully stand up to bullying. Nonviolence, at its best, involves confronting an adversary while simultaneously preserving the adversary's dignity.
People using principled nonviolence catch courage from one another. Like the father who forgives the man who murdered his daughter and then visits him in prison, the unarmed peace team that intercedes between armed militias, the former gang member who talks kids out of retaliatory violence, the soldier who refuses to return to war.
Peacemaking is done spontaneously or may be strategically planned - and is often both. Actions may be immediate responses to overt violence or symbolic acts that address root causes of injustice. Methods may include civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance and creative intervention. Like the elderly woman who is first to crawl under the barricade, the young people who sit in the road to halt business as usual, the cellist who plays Bach in the middle of a besieged town square, the student who faces down the rolling tanks.
The more we know about nonviolence, the more likely we are to use it. If media reports about people who commit violence dominate the news at the same time that nonviolent actions are ignored or minimized, what message does this convey, especially to young people who want to be heard?
I'm not convinced that violence sells the news, but I do think that the news sells violence, and it doesn't have to.
I'd like to see what would happen if, even just for one day, like a Global Day of Ceasefire, all major media outlets around the world directed their journalists, photographers and videographers to document the ways people are choosing active nonviolence in the face of conflict, terror and injustice. Inspiration is contagious. A temporary ceasefire could become permanent.
14 Comments so far
Show AllUnfortunately, this country is rife with violence. America's excessive "love" for guns even to the point of putting that and the bible as a higher priority over the economy let alone respect and understanding of others will always keep the war machine going. Moreover, since "capitalism" demands profits over principle and morality, violence trumps peace. If there is a way peace can be more profitable than violence, then only will the tide turn big time.
By the way, did any of you notice that ever since the ban on Cannabis was signed in 1937, the war machine has only stayed more powerful? It is no coincidence that America fights wars for oil all the while outlawing a harmless plant of peace that can in fact pull us out of despendence on fossil fuels 100%.
Susan,
Great article. Keep 'em coming. Our discipline will be sorely tested during the coming year.
Charlie Jackson
Texans for Peace
http://www.texansforpeace.org
thanks Susan
Frederick Johnson notes:
"It is no coincidence that America fights wars for oil all the while outlawing a harmless plant of peace that can in fact pull us out of despendence on fossil fuels 100%."
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Now Fred, you wouldn't be a pot head would you? I ask because I am all for the legalzing of hemp for the making of everything from rope to cloth, to the use of the seed oil.
I am also not oppossed to the smoking of the dried leaves as a help for those suffering from the pain of glaucoma or terminal diseases, or relief from the constant nausea that accompanies chemoterapy for many cancer patients.
But I am just as oppossed to the unregulated proliferation of marijuana production as I would be to the unregulated proliferation of poppy plants (source of hash-hish, morphine, and heroin) or psyclobin mushrooms (a hallucinogenic drug).
One of the keys to finding and staying in the way of peace has got to be a fully engaged mind not addled by the distractions of depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, or other intoxicants.
Poet
Industrial hemp is not marijuana. Quit confusing hemp with marijuana. Hearst and his thugs already did that and look where we're at. I don't know how harmful Cannabis is but name me one drug or pill that's actually less harmful to your health than Cannabis. Better yet, name as many as you can.
Okay, then explain the difference rather than just stating it--are the plants seperate species or related? More information please.
Poet
http://www.houseparent.net/information/Hemp.htm
If you cannot accept the indisputable fact that hemp is not marijuana, then you are part of the problem. You want more wars for oil and more desperate offshore oil drilling that your kids and grandkids will hate you? Be my guest.
The trolls are out today.
They are distantly related. The major diff is that a pothead won't buy hemp to smoke. The stuff is less potent than 'yankee ditch weed', proper pot - raised for smoking - does take a bit of effort to grow well.
Susan Van Haitsma concludes:
"I'd like to see what would happen if, even just for one day, like a Global Day of Ceasefire, all major media outlets around the world directed their journalists, photographers and videographers to document the ways people are choosing active nonviolence in the face of conflict, terror and injustice. Inspiration is contagious. A temporary ceasefire could become permanent."
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Great idea that would have to be a regular feature to be anything other than a prod to cynicism or despair. That would be public broadcasting worth watching.
Poet
The article is well meaning but I think it misses the mark. I see nothing here that could stand up to Saddam Hussein. The article, therefore, gives peace a bad name.
First, the view of peace we need in America is one that often increases tension. As Martin Luther King, that great community organizer stated: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.” The article shows no real understanding of this quote and the rest of "Letter from Birmingham," King's most important statement. It's focus is just the opposite.
Second, any peace, to be at all adequate to our time, must focus on the incredible cowardice of war and the whole movement toward war. The goal is not so much to "speak truth to power," as it is to "speak truth to cowardice." The opposition to peace aren't a bunch of powerful tough guys, they're a bunch of yellow bellied, tail between the legs cowards. Ok, it's not that name calling against cowards is helpful in specific situations, but peace will get nowhere if it doesn't, in general contexts, call a spade a spade. And following 9/11 and the march to war, my challenge is to name any pro war group that couldn't be described as acting hugely out of cowardice. When the peace movement starts getting tough and serious, it'll win easily and decisively. Sadly, as this article shows, that day is still a long ways off, not out in society, but back inside the peace movement. Certainly, if you want to seriously and successfully promote "nonmilitary options for [male] youth," this thick web of cowardice must be explained.
Third, while claiming to be "not as elusive," the article offers little that is concrete. Sure, there is a list of specifics (a smile, a garden, a guitar lesson, a game), but it is, in my view, worthless. It totally distorts what we'll have to do to achieve peace. So I see no hope for those civilians being daily abused and slaughtered in places like Iraq in these specific methods! (Oh wait, is this just a conservative plant? Well done!)
In the view of peace I'm promoting, peace is an overarching paradigm of concrete strategic and tactical methods that are more powerful in influence than the power politics and the under-realistic Machiavellian fatalism that undergirds war. Instead of placing diplomacy in a small role within an overall paradigm of war, war plays a small role in a comprehensive peace paradigm. Roger Fisher of the Harvard Negotiation Project illustrated in his "MAP" diagram in his book International Conflict for Beginners years ago. War, he pointed out, is just one half of one of 16 factors. Anyone who seriously doesn't want the various slaughters to continue needs to master these factors. Fortunately Fisher et al have published new books, still in print. Beyond Machiavelli must become a part of every peace activists library. (I challenge anyone to name a more important book.) Coping With International Conflict, his more comprehensive textbook, must be in every peace organizations library and strategy room. And so too with the supplementary books, especially the workbook, Getting Ready to Negotiate and Ury's book, Getting Past No, which is now at iTunes (with Getting to Yes). I also recommend International Mediation. My only criticism is that these Harvard folks aren't focused on the group method of organizing. That's a serious flaw, but they're still light years ahead of most of the peace movement. Because, sure, the Bush/Congress wars have failed to succeed, but so has the peace movement failed, even after all these years. Peace activists (and educators!) have work to do!
Now, I have no affiliation with any of these, at all. I'm just tired of those who drag down the meaning of peace to the level that conservative spinmeisters have set. I conclude that the article's description of peace is equivalent to how Sarah Palin would describe the community organizing of Martin Luther King. And yes folks, that ticks me off!
Let's wake up, stop the coddling the cowardly slaughter, and teach our service-seeking youth the plain facts of life at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
If you market the 'successes' of a military process (like the newspapers and government are doing) while ignoring the successes of the 'peace' process, you create an imbalanced view of history. Of course, the creators of the war and injustice want to create a false reality because it will support their greedy psychotic goals.
Is that too harsh? No, not if you consider the dead and dying that is created by our economic, social, and environmental policies which only serve to benefit the corporate elite.
The framework for peace in our society is missing or corrupted. The time has come to have a Department of Peace. There needs to be a fundamental change in our dominant culture (and it ain't happening folks).
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” declared Frederick Douglass in 1857, in response to those who suggested that the great abolitionist was pushing too hard for an end to human bondage. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Vote Nader, vote Green Party, don't support the corporate elite.
www.NotOneMore.US
I really like this article. Although it makes me sad at the same time, sad because there are simply too many people who refuse to see another person as a human being unless they get knocked on their ass. And it goes from the punks in the schoolyard to the middle managers to the CEO's and world leaders.
That's not to say that I support war, because I dont. There are too many innocents dying and too many evil people raking in dividends over it. But God is being peaceful the toughest thing to do. If you do nothing or stand up to certain people as the author suggests, you're just seen as ineffectual. We live in a society where ordinary people often take it out on each other and don't want to be peaceful. They think and/or are raised to believe that being kind, tolerant, generous, and decent is to be weak, and that mean-spiritedness, bigotry, graciousness, and shamelessness is they way to live.
I am not a misanthrope. I am certainly not one of those people who will wontonly bash Americans, working people, or the less fortunate. I know that we're not all a bunch of trolls. There have been at least as many saints in my life as there have been knaves, but it's those knaves who make it so difficult for regular people, the rank and file, to just be.
You have the kids who bully you, the co-workers who harass and insult you, the bosses who undermine you, the owners who exploit you, the jackals who would rob and assault you, and the politicians who disenfranchise you and put the world in which you live in peril for their benefit.
Why does peace have to be so difficult? Why is turning the other cheek akin to a Gordian Knot?
I do what I can. When people are kind to me, I reciprocate. I wish, I want all men and women to be my brothers and sisters, but when I or an innocent is wronged purposely in some way, I am filled with a terrible rage that just builds inside me.
I want to smite the bully in the playground.
I want to make the co-worker submit.
I want to make the common criminal scream.
I want to humiliate and ruin the suits.
I want to execute the elite.
Feeling this way at times exhilarating and also makes me ashamed.
It's my demon. I hate bad people, and they have come in all stripes and from all backgrounds. I hate them in part because they take solidarity, which is what we need to help make this world worth living in, and strangle it. They make others fear and hate them. They make me hate them. I hate them for making me hate them and making me want to hurt them.
Sometimes I think I am a neo-con. I believe in Heroism and Villiany, Good and Evil, Virtue and Vice. It's just that war, capitalism, disparity, pollution, and intolerance are immoral to me, not accord, socialism, equality, purification, and understanding.
But I try. I wear the psychic armor. I try to unleash my angst in constructive ways. I tell myself that I'm on the right track. I befriend my demons instead of letting them devour me.
Perhaps that's the key? We can be angry. We can shout at the sky and pound our fists and stomp our feet. We can surround ourselves with our kindred, giving and gaining strength to and from each other. We can do everything but destroy other souls, human and animal alike. We can destroy THINGS and IDEOLOGIES. We can kill EMPIRE and all that follows it, and we can do that without drawing blood, breaking bones, and bruising and burning flesh. We can marry IMAGINATION to COMPASSION and nurture the offspring of that union, for it is that child who might save the planet.
Yes, why is peace so difficult? Here are more reflections directions for further study.
First, on pathos. Peace must be a saying Yes, and also a saying No. Generally there is a No (social criticism) and a Yes (alternative vision and alternative concrete plan) of renewal. See Lewis Mumford, Renewal in the Arts, (From Revolt to Renewal) Generally the No comes first, but it's important to move beyond it (Mumford's thesis). In the Biblical Tradition the No is often an expression of pathos, (pain, passion). And it hurts the good people around us, (ie. nice people supporting unjust wars, as well as it's impact on the ornery). Immersion in pathos can make us feel pathetic, feel that we look pathetic. I see that as part of the prophetic call. Cf. Robert McAfee Brown, Saying No and Saying Yes, Walter Brueggemann, the Prophetic Imagination and also Hopeful Imagination.
"What we hear most about the psychology of anger is that it clouds our vision, causes us to misunderstand each other, and in general interferes with the calm necessary for a rational, clear view of life. People point out that anger curtails one’s freedom. All this is true. But it is one-sided; it omits the constructive side to anger. . . .
I am speaking, rather, of the anger that pulls the diverse parts of the self together, that integrates the self, keeps the whole self alive and present, energizes us, sharpens our vision and stimulates us to think more clearly. . . . It is the healthy anger that makes freedom possible, the anger that cuts one loose from the unnecessary baggage of living."
See also Rollo May's My Quest for Beauty. He tells a story (cf. The Courage to Create) of a young man bringing poetry for Stanley Kunitz, poet laureate to read. "There's not enough rage in them," Kunitz concludes, meaning human spirit (genii. see below).
Second, on the demons. I like Rollo May in Love and Will on the meaning of the classic term, daimonic. Diabolic (tears asunder) (symbolic, the antonym, drawn together) He argues we've split it, in Western mythology, into devils and angels. At the extremes those are the unintegratable alternatives. In the core, both are transformed into something. In Latin it's genii and integration is our genius, which is not so much intelligence as a charismatic standing out. On "standing out," (exist, existentialism?) see Charles Hampden Turner, Radical Man, one of the great pieces of the peace literature that emerged from the 1960s. Or culture is split. Warmongers build upon this, (fear, etc.) and we need a powerful new synthesis.
Third, in Power and Innocence Rollo May critiqued "pseudo innocence." It's a good discussion, and not one fully understood on first reading. As an example of the problem he cited sticking a flower into the barrel of a gun. Peace must not make this error.
Fourth, what would the peace movement do, if in power? Would it be angelic and pseudo innocent in response to 9/11? "Hey, they're killing us!" My original answers address that. Yes, and we have a better, more competent, stronger response. A newspaper columnist challenged the peace movement here as the Iraq war was started. Ok, what would you do. Some peace activists told me they had no idea. I cited Roger Fisher, Improving Compliance with International Law. I contrasted it to Machiavelli, (power politics, realpolitik, "realism"). Machiavelli had a fatalist view of people, society, politics, history. That's usually been true, for thousands of years. He seems closer to the target. But it's not always true, and there are powerful examples like the fall of the Berlin wall. Fisher sees both sides, (though he rarely gets philosophical). Machiavelli is not a realist, he's a fatalist. Fisher has a more adequate foundation. Fisher is a pragmatist, not a fatalist. He seeks maximum influence. Machiavellianism doesn't. War is rarely very effective. We often underestimate it's negatives. It should play a small role, (in Fisher's view).
Erich Fromm, in "The Prophetic Concept of Peace," (I think it's in the Dogma of Christ and Other Essays.) argues that in the Biblical view of history, the purpose of history is peace, and it's something to be achieved by developing and advancing ourselves. Swords into plowshares, lion laying with the lamb: these are symbols of reconciliation. "The fall," is an advancement into consciousness, as mythologists often argue, but then we struggle with the contradictions. Mumford in Transformations of Man briefly set out stages of history. The simpler, more organic rural phase, plowshares, preceded the urban phase, swords. With urbanism and civilization came many advances, but also huge, daimonic contradictions. We must move forward, but become post civilized, but with a positive thesis, the new Yes. Right now we are a Western, modern urban, civilization that has become post industrial, actually megacivilized. The dominant post modernism is megamodern. Peace requires transcending this.
But peace is not utopian. War, civilization and megamodernism are. Utopianism is where you try to force destiny into a box. War is an obvious tool of utopianism. See Mumford, "The Fallacy of Systems," online or in The Conduct of Life. As we see in the discussion of peace, there are the dilemmas Mumford refers to. Wisdom deals with this as in grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change (destiny), the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to know the difference. This is what any commander in chief needs.
See my post to, The Future's Greener, on utopian farms, 9/11/08.