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[0:00] Ok. Welcome to the Building Peace Initiative and our podcast entitled “You Want a Peace of Me?” This is our introductory podcast will give us some idea of what we’re doing here. And we’re also going to be doing a blog on our site, so feel free to make comments and provide information, your insights, anything that moves us forward to a more peaceful world is appreciated.
So we’re dedicating our site to the study and practice of the “P” word. It’s a word that’s not spoken enough in public, so I’m going to help desensitize you and everybody else we come in contact with to the “P” word. So, are you ready to say it?
Peace.
There, you said it.
Say it again.
Peace.
Now, that wasn’t so bad. But you may have noticed people looking at you strangely. However, with your help, we’re going to change that and normalize the concept. So it’s time that we wake up and make peace a mainstream topic and practice instead of something we just wish for. Now if we can succeed in getting companies to provide us with non-GMO foods based on the strength of our dollars– that is, where we spend them– then we can encourage people, companies, and governments to support this in creating a more just and peaceful world. Now, it’s not only possible, but it’s necessary that we plan to preserve both ourselves and the planet. And, again, by preserving the planet, we preserve ourselves. They’re both interdependent.
So, if we take the time to become educated and develop informed, assertive voices, we can counter the often loud voices who persist in telling us that violence must be used to fight violence. Many people—governments, individuals, companies—claim they want peace, but they don’t seem to know about… They don’t seem to know how to go about attaining it. In fact, talking, as I mentioned earlier about the “P” word, is something we avoid for any number of reasons. Now, personally and professionally, I’ve spent probably around the last 10+ years focusing on peace and conflict studies and I rarely encounter the strong emotional reaction that the topic evokes in people. It’s been an adventure, to say the least.
I tell people sometimes that I’m a bit of a moth drawn to a flame in this topic. If you begin the topic of peace, you’re inevitably going to get into a discussion that could go in just about any direction. From sort of a meaningful, collective attempt to resolve the issue to name-calling and accusations of just about anything. And one of the things I’m going to talk about is the main issues that inhibit our ability to have productive conversations about peace.
Now, the first one are cultural prohibitions and stereotypes.
It’s pretty common to get accusations that address your lack of patriotism. You may be accused of being un-American and emboldening the enemy if you choose non-violence. And, again, in a sense this seems unpatriotic to some. As a culture, we seem to like to fight and win. An example of this, I read an article the other day about people who are not taking advantage of relocation funds to relocate from flood areas. If you remember Sandy that inundated any number of areas and really did a tremendous amount of damage. But, people don’t want to leave because they don’t want to admit they’re losing a battle with the ocean.
Now, they instead choose to stay put and lose their homes and, in many cases, their belongings. This isn’t a battle that can be won, if you consider winning in dualistic terms. As an example, winners versus losers. In this particular game of chicken, the ocean is going to win. But, our mental set says fight. We can still fight, but we can do so more intelligently. You know the old saying, “fight smarter, not harder.” Or, is it “work smarter, not harder”? But, I’ll adapt it to my needs at this point. You may see the irony here: that we created the force which is defeating us in relation to flooding, and that’s global warming. The ocean and rising water is a result of the warming.
Now, based on a lack of understanding of the issue and cultural norms, we (not wanting to be defeated) choose a course of action that cannot succeed. Similarly, when we do not understand the causes and effects of using violence to defeat violence, we become involved in an endless cycle of violence. War after war, violent conflict after violent conflict, has not brought us any closer to peace. The violence we use comes back to haunt us.
As my Uncle Albert used to say, doing the same thing and expecting different results [5:00] is the definition of insanity. Just for something to think about, consider that warfare can be characterized as a collective form of mental illness. The intent of warfare is to kill as many enemies as possible… And then return to normalcy? It doesn’t work that way. People are often traumatized in so many ways and revenge, often veiled as a thirst for justice, is often the course chosen. Now, people have long memories and can wait a long time for revenge. History has taught us that.
So, we need to look more deeply into the causes of peace. Yes, peace again. And study and practice it with the same intensity that we would practice warfare. I’m arguing that the study and practice of peace needs to become the preferred option.
So, another issue we get into are stereotypes. People who wants peace are stoners, hippies, and cowards. Apparently, I’m gay, smoke a lot of weed, and was a hippy. At least, that is what I was told after starting to teach the Building Peace class. Now, these stereotypes are not attached to me with any of the other classes I taught. But, when the “P” word comes up, the stereotypes follow.
So, let me address one. Weed, well, that doesn’t work for me—so that’s out. I always joke that I’ll be happy to take a urine screen with anyone, any time. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it just makes for one stereotype to be X-ed out. Gay? Who cares, really, what my sexuality is? What is interesting is the association. So, if you talk about nonviolence, compassion, forgiveness, and love—that’s the label? So you can see how it’s pulled out of the normal by the stereotype. And, finally, a hippy. Boy, I’ve got lots of stories about my non-hippy upbringing, including working in a small family contracting business, Republican politics, hunting, gun club meetings, and no support for education. So, now I have disabused you of the three stereotypes. But, again, it speaks to how people have been socialized and the need to reconstruct the definition of peace—both practice and theory—so we can make it mainstream.
Oh, I forgot one more labelling: I’m a liberal, apparently. I didn’t know that, either, and I often ask people to explain that. There’s a more noxious term, called a snowflake. I come up with a counter for that, if I’m feeling mean. What I can call someone now is a ‘marshmallow’: you’re white, full of hot air, and soft intellectually. But, if I throw that at you, what does it do? It turns us into twelve year olds who are just, basically, what we used to call ‘ranking’ each other.
Name calling is a great way to turn a discussion into an argument. What is a liberal? What is a conservative? That’s a much more productive approach. Again, a dualistic approach—all or nothing, this or that—does not help us. Instead, what could we both agree upon? Clean air? Clean water? Good jobs? Health care? Well, maybe not the last one. But, in regard to health care, what’s vexing is that when people were asked if they supported Obamacare, they said no. But when you ask the same people if the supported the Affordable Care Act, they said yes. They’re the same thing. So, we need to become better informed and be aware of how our particular ideology affects our attitudes, clearly define what we’re talking about, evaluate evidence-based information, and come to a decision based on it. Then, communicate in a way that can be heard. Not necessarily to win, but more so for our mutual survival.
Another issue is a lack of understanding what peace is. It’s important to know if it means running around in tie-dyed shirts, carrying daises to put in gun barrels—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but does it mean something perhaps more substantial? I don’t want to make this sound really academic, but we need to know a couple of terms so we can talk intelligently about peace.
There’s a great book, An Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies by David Barash and Charles Webel, and they do a great job at defining peace. They delineate basically two perspectives and the most common definition is called negative peace. That’s defined simply as an absence of war. The second, positive peace, is defined as a social condition where exploitation is minimized or [10:00] eliminated and there is neither overt violence or the more subtle phenomenon of underlying structural violence. And this is the cool part: it includes an equitable and just social order, as well as ecological harmony. In the end, our natural world, our environment, our ecological issues are really going to move us in hopefully a direction of peace more quickly. [10:27]