By Kathie MM
Regarding love and marriage, Dad was told by mother, you can’t have one without the other.
In the sophisticated 21st century, we know that what the song was really about was sex and marriage, but one could argue that the essential link between the two is love.
Well, similar things can be said about peace and social justice. You can’t have peace without social justice, and the essential link is love for humanity and the earth, expressed through activism.
Think about the huge profits the military industrial complex reaps from warfare, arms sales, military bases, and “defense” budgets. How does one shake their dedication to promoting targets for rage on the home front in order to serve their desire to keep the country in perpetual armed conflict against designated enemies within and outside national borders? It is pretty obvious that the MIC will not give up their billions easily; active protest is essential.
To reintroduce our new series emphasizing the intimate connection between peace and social justice, today’s offering is a reincarnation of one of engaging peace’s first posts back in 2011.
Negative versus positive definitions of peace
Posted on May 16, 2011 by kathiemm
*Negative peace refers to definitions that identify peace with the absence of war or armed conflict.
*Positive peace refers to definitions that focus on the prerequisites and criteria for a sustainable peace, including respect for universal human rights (which are not synonymous with the legal rights granted by any particular legal authority).
The major public media in this country certainly do little to promote the idea of peace per se, let alone positive peace.
A report released by the Institute for Economics and Peace in October 2010 described a study regarding violence and peace in television programs. Included in the research were 37 news and current affairs programs from 23 networks in 15 countries, including the United States.
Overall, only 1.6% of the stories examined in the study considered issues of positive peace. However, there was some variation across the countries in amount of media time devoted to issues of violence. According to the report, “Of the 10 TV programs with the highest level of violence coverage, 8 are from the United States or the United Kingdom.”
Do you think there have been any changes in our culture of violence since 2011? Do you see any signs of resistance to the business as usual of hatred and violence? What actions, what protests, are you aware of in our society today that might contribute to resistance to endless war and social injustice at every level of society? Please share your ideas.
