September 2016 – Engaging Peace

Conscience and Consciousness

Posted on September 25, 2016September 25, 2016 by kathiemm

Blessed are the Peacemakers by George Bellows. Anti-war cartoon depicting Jesus with a halo in prison stripes alongside a list of his seditious crimes. First published in The Masses in 1917. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 70 years or less.

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., September 25, 2016

“Call to Conscience”

The “Call to Conscience” is a noble call, sanctified and consecrated by the sacrifices of peacemakers.

With uncommon courage and conviction, notable peacemakers, including Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Helen Caldicott, Glenn Paige, Bell Hooks, Mairead McGuire, Antonio DeRosa, Dalai Lama, Daisaku Ikeda, and scores of others, modeled “conscience” as a way-of-life, accepting the quest for peace must be nurtured and sustained with the totality of one’s being . . . each breath an affirmation of commitment.

When Jesus of Nazareth, in his “Sermon on the Mount,” stated: “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth,” Jesus invited all to assume the role of peacemakers. Those accepting his anointing have refused to be silenced in the face of oppression. From Jesus to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., peacemakers have endured criticism, condemnation, and persecution from those with wealth, power, and position, those benefitting from the outcomes of war.

To the wealthy, powerful, positioned, and war-hawks content with distance from human suffering, indifferent to the pains and sorrows of victims of violence, war, and prejudice, oblivious to the consequences of self-indulgence, I say you risk eternal damnation as your children behold with contempt your lack of conscience, your failure to model peace.

The “Call to Conscience” requires courage amidst abuse. There is, however, no lamentation among peacemakers. This is the paradox! For peacemakers, the rewards of advocacy ensure their legacy will endure because it affirms human dignity. For peacemakers, mockeries of justice, inequalities of opportunity, denials of hope, distortions of truth, and corruptions of law, compel advocacy!

Peacemakers are not idealists; Peacemakers are realists! Peacemakers awaken humanity to “consciousness!” This fact is testimony to the promise: “Peacemakers will inherit the earth.”

Consciousness

“Conscience” cannot be separated from “consciousness,” nor can “consciousness” from “conscience.” What do I mean?

The very act of seeking and making peace releases us from normal states of human existence. The release sanctions a state of “transcendence,” a state of “consciousness,” a new level of being. It is a release from an isolated self pre-occupation to an awareness of connection to each other and to the cosmos in which we live.

“Consciousness” compels exercising responsibilities, duties, and obligations to speak and to act for peace; implicit within “consciousness,” is a moral impulse to advance and benefit the human condition. Inherent within this recognition, is the awareness “life is sacred!”

The splendor and majesty of “consciousness” is the liberation of our being. “Consciousness” brings a new way-of-knowing (i.e., epistemology), and new way of behaving (i.e., praxiology). It unleashes new ways of understanding human nature (i.e., ontology).

Can anything more be asked? “Conscience” and “consciousness” are the keys to awakening the human spirit, too long subdued and contained by comforts of convention. Peacemaking is the path! Discover its virtues! Join the icons of peace, finding in them, and with them, a transcendent vision and experience of the grandeur of life. Accept the “Call to Conscience.”

Author: Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822. He is the author and editor of twenty books, and more than 300 publications noted for challenging the ethnocentricity and biases of Western psychology and psychiatry, and for advocating peace and social justice.

Your father taught you WHAT? Part 1.

Posted on September 24, 2016 by kathiemm

By Kathie Malley-Morrison

In its inaugural issues, Engaging Peace introduced the work of cognitive political psychologist, George Lakoff—particularly his work on political conservatism and liberalism. Our presentation of his theory included posts on Why We Fight, Countering the Ubiquitous Argument, A New Way of Thinking, and Values and Rhetoric. Today we begin sharing highlights from Lakoff’s psychological analysis of today’s conservative Republicans, such as the supporters of Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Bottom line, according to Lakoff, is that conservatives generally grow up in a strict father family system. In his view, “In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right.”

Lakoff goes on to say, “The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, America above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.”

In regards to renditions of those values in this election year, Lakoff says, “We see these tendencies in most of the Republican presidential candidates, as well as in Trump, and on the whole, conservative policies flow from the strict father worldview and this hierarchy.”

Lakoff also notes that, “Family-based moral worldviews run deep. Since people want to see themselves as doing right not wrong, moral worldviews tend to be part of self-definition — who you most deeply are. And thus your moral worldview defines for you what the world should be like. When it isn’t that way, one can become frustrated and angry.”

What do you think of Lakoff’s views? Do you know any conservative Republicans, personally? If so, do you know anything about their families, their personal histories? To what extent do they seem to support a strict father morality, a father (authority) knows best morality, a WASP-centered morality? Are they frustrated and angry? Are they going to vote this year?

How do you get there from here?

Posted on September 21, 2016September 21, 2016 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

Consistent with its goal of promoting peace within and among nations, the United Nations, in 1981, established the International Day of Peace; in 2002, September 21st became the permanent date for the International Day of Peace.

Did you know today was the International Day of Peace? If not, why not? You would know if it was Labor Day, or Memorial Day, or Halloween, right? So why is there no hoopla about a peace day?

At any rate, today is an internationally declared Day of Peace, and here we are again, most of us hoping for, praying for peace, which probably seems as elusive as ever. How can we get there, in our daily lives, our relationships, our messages to our government? Here is one suggestion, from my friend Tom Greening:

RISE UP

Don’t be an angry, hurtful troll.

Rise up and show you have a soul.

Don’t waste your strength in violence,

don’t do cruel deeds that make no sense.

The world needs men, not angry boys.

Help others have life’s thrills and joys.

Explore the ways in which you can

show that you are a loving man.

As years go by you will be proud

you rose above the madding crowd.

Tom Greening

And to learn more about what YOU can do to help move the world away from war and more towards peace, today and every day, check out this World Without War website

Tom Greening was educated at Yale, the University of Vienna, and the University of Michigan. He has been a psychologist in private practice for over 50 years, and is a retired professor from Saybrook University, UCLA, and Pepperdine. He was Editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology for 35 years. He is a Fellow of five divisions of the American Psychological Association and Poet Laureate of the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry.

If Trayvon Martin/Tamir Rice/Eric Garner could talk

Posted on September 16, 2016March 11, 2021 by kathiemm

1974. Does it seem like a long time ago? A whole different era—before omnipresent computers spying on everyone, before killer drones, before ISIS? Well, maybe.

James Baldwin published If Beale Street Could Talk in 1974. If you read the book, you will have to admit that the experiences of young black men in 1974 sound very much like the travails of people of color in this country today, especially if they grow up in poverty but even if they just happen to be of the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Although If Beale Street Could Talk is an engaging and haunting love story, it is an even more haunting story of racism, particularly institutional racism, police racism, racism that is, directly and indirectly, murderous—to bodies, to minds, to communities, to our nation.

If you want to understand better the necessity and significance of movements like Black Lives Matter, read If Beale Street Could Talk. And if Trayvon and Tamir and Eric and thousands of other young people of color whose lives were brutally ended could talk, they might want to say something like:

“Of course all lives matter. But you white people just assume your life matters, and you assume you have rights, and you demand respect for your life and your rights. If you think you’re not getting what you deserve, you get rip-roaring mad, and you feel downright entitled to look for scapegoats and lock them up or shoot them. And sometimes you even vote for crazy people who promise to get rid of all the bad guys troubling your lives. But if you’re black, you know your life doesn’t matter one whit to millions of white people, you know you’re dispensable, and you know your life is at risk even if you’re just driving your car down the road with a broken tail light.”

For anyone who wants to understand why some people feel the need to point out that their lives matter, that black lives matter, too, I urge you to read James Baldwin. He’s as relevant today as he was 42 years ago, and that is chillingly, distressingly relevant.