I have been on The Peace Alliance e-list for some time now hoping above all hope that finally a force was building that would begin to truly try to understand Peace. They have a mission, strategy, and basic action plan that seems to focus only on the advocacy for a department of peace that resonates well with me, but after review comes to me as another camp-meeting attempt where at the end of the weekend we all go feeling good about what we experienced but having failed to establish the requisite energy that will result in lasting transformation.
The fruit of the work for peace requires self-sacrifice of one’s own desires to ensure the needs of the other is met. I truly support efforts to work for non-violence and to create pockets of cooperation. These are core values that any healthy family system tries to instill in their children. The problem as I see it however is this: It fails to understand the ultimate vision of peace, the need for the wellbeing of every living creature on Earth.
One might say: Yes, but that is what cooperation is all about. But I respond saying that too often cooperation means We can get some of our way if we can negotiate such that the other gets some of their way as well. As such, cooperation as a negotiation style remains focused on our self-interests and never fully achieves the goal of peace.
Authentic attempts to peacemaking must first seek to confront the motives of the parties involved in conflict; then have the desire to meet the interests of others; and finally seek to measure results with measurable rule-sets. In this way we can honestly begin to think about the real possibility for transformation.
Transformation is a long won process of connecting ones current reality to a future reality. Often times this future reality can only be first understood through a negative prism – e.g. to begin to articulate what peace can look like then first ask the question: What is “Not Peace?” I refer the reader to the Biblical vision of peace: turning swords into plow shares, and spears into pruning hooks, and every person will sit under their own vine (implying safety, security, good health, and self-fulfillment).
Current reality is this: the making of peace has been placed in the hands of The Department of Defense and the arms manufacturing industrial complex. Peace is all too often managed through military cooperation agreements, arms sales, and alliances to build military strength. This only serves to make one side stronger than another. Such cooperative efforts are fear based as are most cooperative-based negotiations tend to be.
I conclude thusly, if The Peace Alliance is to succeed it will need to understand the language and science of the DoD. Only then will they begin to appreciate the task of peacemaking before them, and only then will the warriors, into whose hands our government has traditionally delivered the process of peacemaking, take them seriously.
Posted by John Fair 