It is easy to get discouraged in the face of all the violence in the world, including the violence perpetrated by our own governments.
But individuals can make a difference. You can make a difference.
One initiative that you can endorse is The People’s Charter To Create A Nonviolent World, launched in Australia in November 2011.
Here are some excerpts from the Charter to whet your appetite and stimulate your optimism:
“Recognising that:
1. The United States government dominates world affairs and is engaged in a perpetual war (sometimes presented as a ‘war on terror’) to secure control of essential diminishing natural resources (including oil, water and strategic minerals)….
2. The United States government (sometimes together with pliant government allies in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, America and Australia) maintains occupation forces in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and the Mariana Islands…..
10. The use of nuclear materials to generate electricity and create weapons of mass destruction exposes humankind and other species to unnecessary and unacceptable risks of radioactive contamination….
14. Many people devote their energy to the design, manufacture and/or use of weapons and torture equipment in order to harm, mutilate or kill fellow human beings….
21. It is human violence – against ourselves, each other and the Earth – that threatens to cause human extinction….
This Charter identifies eight aims of a nonviolent strategy to mobilise ordinary people, local groups, communities, non-government organisations and international networks opposed to these and other manifestations of human violence to explicitly renounce the use of violence themselves and to take nonviolent action to strategically resist this violence in all of its forms for the sake of humankind, future generations, all other species on Earth and the Earth itself.”
Please take a few minutes to read the complete charter, and sign it if you wish.
If you do so, you will learn that as of December 21, 2012:
936 individuals from 45 countries have signed the Nonviolence Charter pledge, and 59 organizations from 19 countries have endorsed the Nonviolence Charter.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology
To view an inspiring set of New Year’s resolutions from proponents of non-violence, go to http://wagingnonviolence.org/2013/01/revolutionary-resolutions-for-2013/#more-20651
I marvel that the author of this blog is able to deal with these all too true tales of violence inflicted on innocents. My own daughter, from the time she was a child, could not bear to see even an insect struggling for its life. When she was five, I was prompted by her pleading “Hurry, Mom!” to rescue a Dragon Fly floundering in our children’s wading pool. Now in her twenties, she is a staunch campaigner for peace.
There was an episode in the news lately that gave evidence of the lengths to which a violent person will go to get “revenge.” A woman pushed a man she perceived as a Muslim onto the tracks of an oncoming train because, she said, she remembered the day her country was attacked by Muslims.
Keep up your fine cause, Engaging Peace. If only one life were spared through your efforts, it would be a victory. I am optimistic that there will be many more victories.
Hi! I found this article very interesting, but I have to dispute. The world would be such a beautiful place if violence did not occur. Although everyone would love the world to be a non violent place, in my opinion I believe that will never happen. We cannot control anyone’s actions but ours. There are only limitations.
Thank you for your comment, Yesenia. I don’t think it is useful for one group to think about controlling another group or its actions, but I think history has given us thousands of examples of individiuals who have worked together successfully to bring about peace, cooperation, the survival of species, the healing of wounds. If you do a google search starting with engagingpeace.com and then type in “moral engagement,” you will find some examples in our blog.
i have always been a anti-war supporter, i really believe that one day human kind will realize that peace throughout the world is the chance we have to survive. the world population is growing faster then our natural resources. the only way to survive is for us to come together and agree on the best way to save ourselves from becoming extinct. if we keep on fighting like most powerful nations across the world, then we are all going to perish.
Dear Rudy, Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the importance of peace. I think you are correct that joining together peacefully to protect our environment is essential to the survival of the human species. Have you read the post by our Managing Editor Pat Daniel on the very topic? http://engagingpeace.com/?p=4516
This is similar to Mikhail Gorbachev’s Manifesto of the Earth. We had a recent conversation in one of my classes about the cost of war and I was shocked to realize that many of my classmates didn’t care about the lives that were lost during these events and were so focused on nationalism, that they didn’t even realize that the question was on human beings not United States citizens. Frequently giving the answer well that’s war, what can you do. You can take a stand against it, that’s what you can do. The concepts in the charter above are things that all human beings should embrace for the betterment of humanity and not just our own borders. If more people realized that exploitation of resources and privatization leads to poverty and disease which leads to aggression and violence, which eventually leads to war and truly understood what that means perhaps we would see some change. It’s so embarrassing that as many intelligent people there are in the world and not just the US, it really takes extreme atrocity to see the highest levels of humanity.
Thank you Charlene for your heartfelt and peace-promoting comment. If readers would like to learn more about Gorbachev’s Manifesto–and it certainly has lots of food for thought–they can click on http://peacenews.info/node/5048/mikhail-gorbachev-manifesto-earth
Fear is a tool that is used daily to create and unsteady steady view of the fellow man. We turn on the news and the media feeds us examples of certain groups participating in acts causing us to question all members of a group based on their appearance and not so much that members actions. I agree with the idea of a peaceful existence through the ownership of both our actions and inactions. Why is it so hard to be unified? What is it that they fear?
Thank you for your comments, J. What are your own thoughts concerning what people fear and how those fears are generated by our media? And do you think our media promote unified action among groups? Why or why not?
I think that although ideally we would all love to live in a peaceful world, it is not possible, and the world would not be able to function. Wars and disputes are what allow economies to move in either direction, they employ people (military), and they allow world powers to come into play to strengthen their own countries. We have no historical evidence of a peaceful world or a peacful world where all was well. Peace efforst should always continue, but realistically, we need conflict.
HI, Amanda. While it may be true that the world has never been at peace im its entirety, there certainly have been very peaceful societies, and even today some societies and some countries are much more peaceful than others. You might want to learn more about Iceland, a country that did quite well without wars and armed disputes for hundreds of years, and developed economically. In the recent worldwide recession they were sold out by bankers but I don’t think that anyone has suggested that they would do better if they went to war. For a powerful documentary on the role of banking and investment firms in creating the ecoomic disaster of late 2008, see “The Inside Job.” Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzrBurlJUNk
In response to Amanda and Kathiemm:
We all strive for a peaceful existence on the individual level, why not dream of peace worldwide even if it may seem impossible? I do think we will not see that in our lifetimes, but the idea can spread, and education toward that end can begin.
It has begun on a small scale in schools with their “Zero Tolerance” policies regarding bullying, and encouraging acceptance of diverse populations whether that means racial, ethnic, or “special needs” peoples within their environments.
I have seen such education carry over into adulthood (an incident regarding my own special daughter when in a public setting) and commended the individual, his parents, and even his High School teachers despite both parties having already graduated from school. Anyway, I digress.
My point is, it’s got to begin somewhere, and we can all hope for a future that is more peaceful than currently.
Thank you for your great comment, Linda. I always appreciate people sharing personal experiences, particularly when they are a basis for optimism. I agree that the road to peace has to start somewhere, and where better than with all of us.
Maintaining the least level of violence that we can is a sensible ideal. Read Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard: “The Better Angels of our Nature – Why Violence has Declined” to gain a realistic appreciation of how society can be changed by concerted efforts to encourage people to change their ideas towards peace rather than violence to resolve conflicts.