From Violence to Peace: A Series

Part 10. Tools for Peace and Harmony

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Observe good faith and justice toward all nations.
Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

~George Washington~

Sebastian Junger, in his book Tribe, discusses self-determination theory. According to this theory, people have three basic needs in order to be at peace and in harmony with the world and each other:

• Feeling competent–If people feel they are not able to do anything right, they tend to stop trying to accomplish anything in their lives. “What’s the point? I’m no good at anything I do.” Some people who feel incompetent tend to sink into depression and feelings of uselessness. The ultimate depths are thoughts of suicide and at the extreme suicidal behavior. Drastic actions are much less likely when a person feels able to accomplish things.
• Feeling authentic or autonomous–This is a sense of being worthy to be taken seriously. Authentic people care about what they believe and say. They feel value in themselves rather than just for membership in a group.
• Feeling connected to others–If a person feels competent and authentic, he or she will also seek to connect with other people on various levels since they are able to see themselves as of some importance to others.

When these basic needs are not met, the risk of feeling impotent, unimportant and disconnected leaves fertile ground for feelings of rejection, disempowerment and eventually anger, rage and violence.

The Great Work

The monk and environmentalist Thomas Berry wrote, “In reality, there is a single integral community of the Earth that includes all its component members whether human or other than human.” In my recent travels, I visited the Passionist Faith and Spirit Center in Louisville, Kentucky. Its mission is based on the thoughts and writings of Thomas Berry, a priest who once helped me find and plan a new phase of my life when I felt lost. He went on to become a significant voice for Earth and for the community of living things that inhabit Earth.

During the past several centuries, humans have come to see Earth as a collection of commodities to use and consume. We see ourselves at the top of the heap with all of Earth’s resources at our disposal without an obligation to respect Earth. During earlier periods of civilization, indigenous cultures before our time viewed Earth with reverence and wonder.

Our recent history has led us to see ourselves primarily as consumers of what we want, drawing from Earth’s treasures and dumping what we don’t want in ever increasing piles of trash. Berry invited us to rediscover Earth as our home. If we continue to destroy it as we have been doing, there will be no place for us to live.

All this might sound alarmist, a “Chicken Little” complaint. When foreign settlers came to our continent, they viewed it as a vast inexhaustible supply of land, water and other resources lying before them and ready for the taking. They often ignored or laughed at the view of indigenous peoples that Earth is a sacred place which needs to be respected. In exchange for giving them what they needed, these people felt an obligation to care for Earth in return. Otherwise, it is like using the walls of your home for firewood. Soon there is nothing left and no place to live.

For many years, traditional cultures across the world continued their rituals and customs revolving around respect for Earth. In more recent times, our consumer approach has spread to the far reaches of the globe and contaminated traditional ways of life. In many ways Earth and its resources are now seen as grist for the mill by many global corporations which are chiefly concerned with profit, regardless of the cost to mankind or to Earth itself.

We have traveled quite a distance down the commercialization path. Whether we as humans can survive the damage we have done to Earth in the name of profit remains to be seen but time is getting short. Continuing down this path may well make Earth inhospitable to the lives of other species of animals and plants in addition to our own species. The physicist Stephen Hawking predicts that the Earth will become uninhabitable in the next hundred years.

It is very difficult to give up the immediate rewards of acting as predators of our planet. Yet there are other ways to live. They involve taking a different approach where we consider the well-being of our planet as well as our own immediate needs and wishes. Are you ready to do your part?

Here are some things you can try:

• Study the history of how we have treated the Earth.
• Spend some time communing with the wonders of the Earth.
• Set aside time to watch a sunrise or sunset.
• Meet the plants, birds, fish and animals who share the Earth with us.
• Decide how you can respect Earth and then try it.

A letter from our children

Gaylord Nelson wrote that the ultimate test of human conscience may be the willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations.

A while ago I met an eight-year-old girl on the beach in Florida early one morning. As our paths met, the girl asked me what I was looking for. I told her I was looking for shark teeth and showed her my small handful. She showed me her handful, and she offered them to me.

This encounter reminded me how innocent, curious and generous children can be. As adults, we often become obsessed by our search to improve our collection of things and become preoccupied with fear that someone will take it from us. In the process, we move faster each day to gather what we can and forget the joy of just standing on a beach or somewhere else in nature.

Some of us are just beginning our productive years. Some of us are steaming ahead in mid-career. Others are winding down and hopefully have some time and energy left to enjoy the world and what it has to offer. In another fifty years, our children and grandchildren will replace us at various stages of their own lives.

If they could write us a letter from the future, what would they have to say about the legacy we have left them? Would they thank us for finding a way to understand and accept each other rather than continuing to compete with each other? Would they thank us for finding ways to love rather than hate each other? Would they express disappointment that we were not able to live together in harmony?

That future has not yet arrived and there is still time before such a letter is written. We have choices to make at every moment of our lives. No matter where we are in our life journey, we can choose to make the world a little better place with our unique contributions. We can also choose to take whatever we want from the world without giving anything back. We can link with others in their journey through life, ignore them or hate them. We can choose the path of love and acceptance or the path of fear and intolerance.

All of our collective decisions about how to act in each circumstance that appears before us contribute to the legacy we will leave to our children, grandchildren and their descendants. Each of us can contribute to leaving a better place for those who follow us or a worse one. The prophet Jeremiah spoke of God as thinking thoughts of peace and not affliction toward us. He invites us to follow God’s example. Are you willing to do your part through the actions of your daily life? Here’s how.

• Choose what legacy you want to leave your children.
• Learn what you have to contribute.
• Start by finding peace within yourself.
• Find ways to be at peace with others.
• Choose love over fear.

Nearing the end of our journey

Throughout this series, I have tried to help you understand the nature and origin of violence. We have looked at all the levels on which it exists. We have done the same with peace and harmony. How do we tip the balance to decrease rage and violence and increase peace and harmony? Here are some approaches you can try. This is not a job for one person or group. It is a challenge for all of us to accept and a way to encourage each other to join together in the effort.

• Being content is another way of describing being at peace. Feeling competent at what you do means that you have skills you can use productively, a way of life which calls on these skills and an opportunity to put them into practice.
• Feeling authentic in your life means feeling autonomous or able to effectively control the course of your life rather than feeling like a cog in a machine.
• The comfort of personal contact has faded into the background and many people have retreated into a lonely electronic society with little actual social and personal contact. You don’t need to stay imprisoned there.

Here are some ways to find peace with yourself, with others, with God and with the Universe:

Getting personal–Intolerance lies within you as a possibility, but you do not become intolerant in a vacuum. You hear attitudes toward others expressed by your family members from the moment of birth. Sometimes intolerant attitudes toward certain classes of people are a common topic of conversation in families as if they are perfectly normal. You probably did not question what you heard as a young child and accepted statements by your relatives as the way things are whether they spoke of the weather or others’ shortcomings. At some point in life, you ay have questioned your relatives’ opinions, or you might have clung to them as the truth, no matter how outrageous they seemed to others.

Earlier we considered Ruiz’s fifth agreement- to be skeptical of thoughts and opinions, your own included. One way to decide whether you need to rethink your opinions is to consider how they make you feel. Intolerance leads to feelings of anger, sometimes and with some people often accompanied by violent anger.

Such feelings may be directed toward entire classes of people, Muslims for example. When you stop to examine your attitudes, think about how many people in this class you have met and how many of them have treated you in a way that demands or even justifies many of the emotions or actions they bring about in you.

Are your feelings based on your personal experience or on what you learned from others? Examining your assumptions might be a good way to improve your disposition toward others you thought it necessary to hate. Here are some things contributing to attitudes:

Your inner workings–Your emotions are not the only part of you which bears examination. We just discussed attitudes passed on by your family. In addition to adopting the attitudes of your family, you arrive at some thoughts based on what you might have heard from people outside your family.

You are constantly exposed to what others say and how they act in various situations. You also form opinions and attach emotions to almost everything that happens to you or around you. Many daily experiences arouse weak opinions or emotions. Much of what you experience has little relevance to the core of your being and you hardly notice it. Once in a while something that happens to you which strikes a nerve and sticks with you.

A traumatic event can create new thoughts and emotions which is troubling for the moment or sometimes for much longer periods of time. Traumatic events can also compound already existing troublesome thoughts and emotions. Emotionally traumatic events can deepen your level of intolerance as a way to protect yourself from possible harm. In contrast, positive interactions with subjects of your intolerance can serve to reduce your level of intolerance.

Your values can also affect your level of intolerance. If you are secure in your values, encounters with others are less likely to affect your level of tolerance for those different from you. If you are uncertain of your values, insecure about them or need a very rigid routine to maintain your emotional equilibrium, your defenses are likely to increase as well as your level of intolerance for those who have values different from yours.

Spiritual perspective–A very narrow or literal perspective on your life makes it difficult to tolerate people with different views on life. Such a perspective inclines you to avoid, fear, dislike and even hate those different from you. You also come to view those around you as threats to your well-being.

We talked about spirituality earlier. You might recall that a spiritual approach to life creates a larger context in which to view the meaning of your existence. Spirituality is a way of looking beyond your own existence and viewing yourself in the context of your relationships with others, with Earth, and with God. This perspective helps you appreciate others’ desires to find meaning for their own lives, even when their paths differ widely from yours.

Social spirituality–So far we have considered contributions to your sense of peace on a personal level. The next level is the interpersonal one. We just discussed viewing your life from a spiritual perspective. You can also view others and their lives from a spiritual perspective with a little openness.

As you can do with your own life, you can also consider ways to help others find joy and meaning in their lives. This means spending time and effort to understand their goals, motivations, fears and limitations which might differ from your own. While your lives differ, you might be able to complement each other in ways which might be hard to imagine if you cling to intolerance instead of being open.

You might find it a stretch to appreciate others. Maybe you can’t imagine living your life like they do. They might have the same trouble appreciating your approach to life. With effort, you can come to understand them even if you don’t agree with everything they think, feel or do. You still have to share the Earth with them and are still looking for the same thing, namely how to find joy and purpose in life.

Healthy communities–Before we consider what makes a community healthy, let’s look at what comprises an unhealthy community. Groups within such communities are often at each others’ throats, vying for power and influence on behalf of their own needs. They are so busy with infighting that they lose sight of the common good. Safety, education, sanitation, water and power are basic needs of everyone in the community. They should be able to agree to work together toward meeting at least these very basic needs.

A healthy community is one in which groups listen to each other and decide on common goals for everyone’s benefit. It is one wherein individuals and various social groups in the community work together to achieve goals for the common good.

Such cooperation also requires the various groups to compromise so that all have their basic needs met. To do this, groups must learn about each other and understand shared basic needs. It also involves learning what the cultures of various groups can contribute to the community, making it a richer environment for all involved.

Facing poverty–Poverty is one condition contributing to rage and violence as we have seen. Have you ever experienced true poverty? I mean not having enough food to maintain proper nutrition. Even worse is not having the means to feed your family and having your children constantly hungry. You don’t have enough money to maintain adequate housing for yourself and your family. You don’t have money to pay for heat in your home

We have the money and resources as a country to feed our population and to allow everyone to have their basic needs met. Warren showed us how those who have gained enough power grabbed control of a much larger percentage of our wealth than they could ever possibly use to their own benefit other than as bragging rights. The history of civilization shows a pattern of very wealthy and powerful people controlling just about every form of government including our own as well as the bulk of available resources and wealth.

I am not suggesting that all wealthy people ignore the needs of those less fortunate than themselves. Plenty of them have directed considerable amounts of money and energy for the common good and to the benefit of those struggling to make ends meet and to maintain a minimum standard of living.

You can do your part as well. You can contribute to community and religious organizations that help the poor. You can volunteer to work in these organizations as well. Maybe you know a family who is struggling and can offer to help them out more directly than through a charity.

Selby Davis, a woman in my community, organized and ran a free weekly dinner for anyone in my community with the help of organizations and volunteers from surrounding neighborhoods.

Most people have the right to vote. Legislators are elected and re-elected when they meet the expectations of voters. If everyone demanded that they pass laws in favor of helping the poor, poverty could be greatly reduced. To exercise this option, you must be aware of what your legislators are doing rather than voting in line with ads and commercials. It’s up to you.

There is an assumption that many people are poor through their own fault and prefer to sit home collecting welfare benefits rather than working. The sad reality is that welfare and Medicaid provide the indigent and the disabled with a greater chance of meeting their basic needs than would low level employment. What would you choose in their situation?

As we have seen, racism and other forms of prejudice reduce opportunities for those who would otherwise be willing to enter the work force. Being born into poverty, living hand to mouth, attending inadequate and dangerous schools and not being prepared for a good job all foster a culture of poverty and the likelihood of being stuck in an endless loop of misfortune.

People do claw their way out of poverty, but doing so successfully seems more the exception than the rule. Changing this trend requires a long process of support, opportunity and training not often available to those who need it most. Change requires involvement of citizens who are ready to alter the culture in which they grew up.

Eliminating racism and prejudice–You can’t change the color of people’s skin, the culture in which they grew up or their set of individual life experiences any more than you can change your own. Racism and prejudice consist of attitudes and feelings you might have toward others based on aspects of their lives which differ from yours. Such attitudes consist of hating others for who they are. These people most likely have done nothing to harm you, but merely differ from you in a variety of ways that neither of you can easily control.

Sometimes people speak of fighting racism. That is still fighting and engenders anger and violence. As we saw with poverty, the end of racism and other forms of prejudice can only come by learning enough about those who differ from you so that you can see who they are rather than merely members of a class of people who rankle you with their differences.

You can best do this by examining your own prejudices. Are there groups of people who bring up feelings of anger, disgust, or revulsion? If so, try to trace these feelings back to their origins. Did they arise from your own experience or were they implanted in you your family or someone else?

Next, try to imagine being a member of a group who is shunned by others. Perhaps you are a member of such a group and know how it feels. Pondering this might well help you to realize that your prejudice is rooted in ignorance. People tend to distrust, fear or even hate others with whom they have little or no experience and whose lives they don’t understand. You might feel more comfortable with groups of people you have known all your life, yet closed groups are limited by their experience and miss much of the diversity found in the traditions of the many cultures in the world.

Racism and prejudice have two ties with violence. One is a form of prejudice against people of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, whether they be American Indian, African American, Hispanic, Arab or of cultures different from your own. Racial or ethnic prejudice is not just a matter of judging certain groups as inferior to one’s own racial or ethnic group. It also entails seeing these groups as stupid, impinging on the mainstream’s way of life, lazy and generally no good. All of these judgments contribute to dislike and eventually hatred.

The other tie is violence on the part of those on the receiving end of personal, social and institutional racism and prejudice. Their anger can boil over into violence in response to their treatment. When it does, they are blamed as troublemakers.

Laws are passed to limit their rights and opportunities, keeping them trapped in their misfortune. Even when these archaic laws are overturned, racism and prejudice linger in the hearts and minds of individuals and groups to limit them from social and economic opportunities available to others.

Law and order approaches focus on controlling unrest in inner cities by overpowering those seen as responsible. Their young people are frequently caught in a web of crime sometimes just to survive, and they suffer a greater likelihood of being suspected, arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated.

Many of the same roadblocks affect victims of racism and other forms of prejudice as they do victims of poverty and the culture of poverty. People of certain races, those with physical, emotional and mental disabilities, people of certain religions and those of other than heterosexual orientation tend to be seen as having fewer abilities and unsuitable personalities for inclusion into the mainstream. They are often seen as being so different from the majority that they struggle to find their place in mainstream culture. Women have suffered the brunt of prejudice for years, similar to that directed toward the groups I just mentioned. They also constitute half of the people in each group. Women have made great strides in becoming accepted as equals although there is still quite a bit of room remaining for improvement.

Considerable strides have been made in our culture to reduce these prejudices and allow all of those people different from the majority to start taking their place as worthy citizens. Yet there is still much to do in order to finish the job. In my mind, the main roadblock is unwillingness of the majority to get to know those they have kept on the sidelines. Once the majority begins to see and accept others with their abilities and potentials, we will all be well on our way toward greater harmony.

Other forms of discrimination have been a long term problem in this country. Immigrants from various cultures around the world have often been seen as inferior to the people already living in this country. They also currently bear the brunt of current paranoia in our country about sharing opportunities. .
Older people have been viewed as a burden on society and no longer able to contribute to the vibrancy of our nation. They are sometimes seen as being of little use, despite their years of knowledge and wisdom as well as our living history.

Gay and lesbian people and more recently transsexuals have been viewed as inferior, evil and immoral over the years, particularly by various religious groups. At one time, what was allowed in the bedroom was strictly regulated by laws influenced by religious beliefs. Those straying from the path were subject to criminal prosecution. This has largely changed in recent years although prejudice remains alive.

Class prejudice holds that low income people are lazy and a drag on the prosperity of the country. They are not seen as pulling their own weight and therefore not entitled to the benefits extended to more privileged and wealthier strata of society.

People with physical, mental and emotional disabilities have also been seen as inferior to others. They have been seen as not capable of being able to participate fully in society.

Strides have been made through the efforts of advocacy groups to change the face of prejudice with varying amounts of success over the years. Yet maintaining these gains is an ongoing challenge.

Government, institutions and people–We have looked at how individuals and communities deal with each other and what they can do to help create a more peaceful world. Let’s look now at what can be done at the governmental level. We tend to view governments as having a life of their own. Governments at all levels have laws, regulations, agencies, responsibilities and goals. Yet as we saw earlier, governments are constructs of lawmakers on behalf of their constituents. It’s the people–that is voters–who really matter.

All aspects of government were developed by people and are run by people, hopefully for the benefit of the citizens subject to government proceedings. Sometimes those running the government act in the interest of the common good. But not always.

Laws written by legislators are sometimes enacted by people who use their power for their own benefit to the detriment of the people they were elected to represent. In theory, since the people elected them, they should be responsive to the people’s needs. Yet sometimes they enact laws which are unfair to minority populations within communities they represent. Enacting racial or ethnically prejudicial laws does no favors to the overall level of social health in society as a whole.

We talked before about how individual and group discrimination leads to violence within communities. Enacting laws which perpetuate discrimination further erodes the likelihood of trust and understanding among individuals and groups holding different and sometimes contradictory beliefs.

It should be the responsibility and aim of legislators and government officials to help people understand each other and learn to cooperate in the interest of all the people. Over the years, governments have worked toward the common good for the most part. Yet at times governments and their caretakers have wandered from the path. Let’s look at some ways governments can help minimize conflict among their citizens and promote a path toward peace.

Protection of basic rights–Governments and their officials at all levels should have a primary responsibility to promote equal civil rights for all their citizens. The United States Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal and that they all have an inherent right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as basic citizens of our country.

But this is not quite what the founders meant. In practice, they held that all white men were created equal. Non-whites and women as well as other groups I mentioned above were not included. In line with other governments at the time, the Declaration of Independence was written to favor those with power.

Over the years, the US has passed legislation extending basic rights to all people, no matter what race they are or what gender. Although this was a good start, some local communities and state governments have dragged their feet on extending these rights and found ways to undermine their being available to everyone so they can participate fully as citizens.

Prime among these goals are eliminating institutional racism which has improved significantly over the years, at least on the books. In practice, prejudice on all fronts has never been eliminated although it is better than it was in the past.

A forum for communication among groups–Dialogue about the rights and needs of various groups has taken place on a regular basis over the years. Yet what the United States and the United Nations proclaim might take years or decades to reach the minds and hearts of citizens if ever. Local communities often sponsor or participate in street fairs to recognize and celebrate ethnic minorities which help people understand each other’s cultures. Understanding is a main key to cooperation, and these efforts are a good start.

One sad story is the national effort to reduce poverty and racial tension started in the 1960’s in the United States. The original plan was to help communities and particularly their impoverished groups to find ways to change a culture of poverty. The effort started by engaging community leaders among the poor and those caught in racist policies and restive communities because of discrimination to help build functioning communities. Yet there is still much work to do to accomplish a full enactment of this initiative for everyone.

As we saw earlier, the espoused effort to help prisoners to become contributing citizens quickly faded. Now the major effort is again to punish them without much consideration for how they might emerge from the criminal culture and take their place in the mainstream. Felons, even after release from prison, are often banned from jury duty, holding most elected offices, not to mention the basic right of all other citizens to vote.

Attempts have been made in criminal and civil cases to seek communication between offenders and those who have been hurt by their actions. Specialized courts have been established for offenders who have substance abuse or mental illness challenges. These courts have met with some success.

Institutional racism has also been part of the pattern in the criminal justice system. Rather than looking at what accounts for higher rates of crime in racially charged neighborhoods, the emphasis has been on quasi-military approaches to controlling those who are seen as troublemakers. An alternative would be to consider the desperation in the lives of people with very limited opportunities and then to help them work toward ways to overcome their feelings of hopelessness.

Domestic Violence–Before looking at how to react to domestic violence, we should be concerned about how to prevent it. We can continue to expand school programs to help children understand how to respect others and to balance their own personal needs with similar needs of others.

People who engage in domestic violence are expressing their anger. Punishing them is unlikely to make them any less angry. Our immediate priority is the protection of their victims from future abuse. We now have shelters where victims of domestic violence can be safe while they recover and learn about their options for the future. We should continue to be as sensitive as possible to their needs.

In addition, we also need to understand the anger expressed by the abusers. Remember that anger and rage typically result from fear. This includes fear of being powerless, being unimportant or not being taken seriously. As we saw earlier, the current criminal punishment system does little to change the disposition of prisoners. This is especially 0true when supervising people who are already inclined toward anger and violence such as perpetrators guilty of abuse.

Other than focusing on changes in the tone of discourse in the community, there remains the problem of what to do with those engaging in domestic violence. At the extreme, some will need to be confined until they learn how to control their violence.

Even in confinement, they can be treated as human beings. As unpleasant as it sounds, time must be taken to learn their stories and how they came to feel the way they do. Being understood and taken seriously is often the key to finding common ground leading to ways of improving their behavior.

Sexual Violence–Sexual abuse overlaps with domestic violence although the former has a wider scope and also includes violence outside of a relationship and between unrelated people. Our culture has a schizophrenic outlook on sexuality. At times we celebrate sex as a gift to be shared by people in love and in the interest of encouraging parenthood.
Yet we also view sex as dirty. Bodies must be hidden from view. Which toilets people use has become a major controversy. Sex and violence are commonplace in movies, on television and in song lyrics. We seem just as inclined to fight and argue about sex as about anything else. Sexual violence was once seen as strictly a sexual problem. Use of hormones and surgery to reduce or eliminate sexual urges were tried in sex abuse treatment programs. Research eventually discovered that sexual abuse is much more an issue of power and control than it is one of sexual desire. People who commit sexual violence look for a way to feel important and powerful through dominance over their victims.

The main thrust of our efforts to control sexual violence has included the registration and monitoring of sexual offenders and strong punishment which might give the rest of us a sense of satisfaction or revenge but these approaches are not likely by themselves to yield positive results in the long run. Society, the courts and therapists have struggled to find a balance between protecting potential victims and finding effective ways to work with sexual offenders. Early opinions held that sex offenders were not capable of changing their ways and that treatment efforts were a waste of time. More recent studies have found that many sex offenders do not repeat their crimes after being caught. Behavior modification approaches have been found to be more successful than previously thought. In the past, sexual offenders were seen as just bad people, not responsive to treatment efforts. This opinion has been changing lately, and treatment is seen as being more effective.

These are some ways we can help ourselves, our country and the world community move away from violence and toward peace. Good luck with your journey. Go in peace.