Tag: activists

Today: A day of mourning and celebration

Posted on by kathiemm

Today is a day when we should mourn the first and only use of nuclear weapons and their growing threat to life on earth.

Nuclear bomb test on Bikini Atoll
Nuclear bomb test on Bikini Atoll (Image in public domain)

By some estimates (e.g., the Ploughshares Fund, June, 2010), there may now be over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Primarily owned by Russia and the United States, these modern weapons are more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today is also a day that warrants celebrations. It is a day to appreciate the ongoing efforts of thousands of activists around the world to resist the spread of nuclear weaponry—including the unintended “weaponry” that unleashed death and contamination at Japan’s Fukushima power plant.

Today, psychologists emphasize mindfulness as a path to greater mental health.  Think of the anti-nuclear activists as our global agents of mindfulness.  They risk persecution and prosecution to help sustain life on earth. They educate, agitate, and promulgate on behalf of all of us.

Today we are approximately one quarter of the way through August, which is Nuclear-Free Future Month.  At least for today, think about what this world would be like if we stop — or fail to stop — nuclear proliferation and the retention of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Is this not an issue worthy of your attention? What will you do to make your voice heard?

Today is a good day to learn more about anti-nuclear crusaders for peace and justice. For example, check out The Nuclear Abolitionist, Waging Nonviolence, and The Ploughshares Fund.

Today is a good day to get Howard Zinn’s last book, The Bomb, (City Lights Open Media) and to listen to Daniel Ellsberg’s discussion of the man and the book.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

More than a few “bad apples”: American soldiers, the legacy of torture, and the trauma behind it

Posted on by kathiemm

[Editor’s Note:  In today’s post, we introduce a new feature to our engagingpeace.com blog. Periodically we intend to offer a brief review of a contemporary book that sheds light on issues such as war, torture, terrorism and their aftermaths, as well as on peace, reconciliation, and apology and forgiveness. We also invite our readers to submit commentaries on books they have found helpful.]

Review of None of us were like this before: American soldiers and torture By Joshua E.S. Phillips

Reviewed by Charikleia TsatsaroniNone of us were like this before

In this thought-provoking and revealing book, Joshua Phillips asks why U.S. forces and officials believed that torture was effective, permissible, and necessary, and what were the factors that led them to engage in such practices.

He begins his quest with the death of Sergeant Adam Gray, who made it home from Iraq and died in his barracks. Phillips then guides us through his interviews with ordinary American soldiers, their families and friends, victims of torture, military, governmental, and intelligence officials, human rights lawyers, and activists, to name a few.

These interviews provide many examples of Albert Bandura’s socio-cognitive mechanisms of moral disengagement (e.g., advantageous comparison, euphemistic labeling) as the expanding set of individuals connected with the use of torture try to make sense of what happened.

Phillips’ narratives lead inevitably to the idea that Americans who engaged in torture were not just a “few bad apples” (p. ix) and that the factors leading to torture did not lie only within individuals but also and most importantly within the societal context and its interwoven systems.

His book also strongly reinforces the importance of greater attention to the trauma inflicted on soldiers by their involvement in torture and abuse; it is apparent that most of his interviewees deal daily with personal demons.

Overall, I would recommend this very readable book for its eye-opening narrative and its ability to keep you involved until its painful ending, which highlights the fact that wars have victims on both sides.

Even physically untouched “victors” can bear wounds forever because of what they did in the context of war.

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.

Conservative and liberal world views

Posted on by kathiemm

George Lakoff's book Moral PoliticsOne of the theorists to be considered in greater detail in later posts is George Lakoff.

We introduce several of his main ideas here because they are relevant to how readers are likely to respond to this blog; specifically, Lakoff has provided a brilliant analysis of moral reasoning in liberals and conservatives.

In his book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Lakoff argues that liberals and conservatives hold different values.

Specifically, liberals value:

  • Empathetic behavior and promoting fairness
  • Helping those who cannot help themselves
  • Protecting those who cannot protect themselves
  • Promoting fulfillment in life
  • Nurturing and strengthening oneself in order to help others.

By contrast, conservatives value:

  • A “strict father” morality (using punishment to establish respect for authority)
  • Self-discipline, responsibility, and self-reliance
  • The morality of reward and punishment
  • Protecting moral people from external evils
  • Upholding the established moral order.

Traditionally, liberals have been viewed as doves and conservatives as hawks; however, within both sectors there are pro-war and anti-war activists who differ primarily in their moral reasoning:

  • Pro-war conservatives often refer to the evilness and moral inferiority of the identified “enemy” and view protestors against war as unpatriotic.
  • Pro-war liberals are more likely to use the rhetoric of helping others.

In regard to this blog, it is the liberals who are more likely to be sympathetic to advocacy of peace activism. Would you agree? Why is this likely to be so?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology