retaliation – Engaging Peace

Martin Luther King, Jr., champion of peace

Posted on January 17, 2011July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

Illustration of Martin Luther King, Jr. — MLK by Engaging Peace staff illustrator Margo Bendery

Today, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and an exemplar of moral engagement. He demonstrates all the criteria for moral engagement:

He provided moral justifications for peace, fairness, and justice.
He used accurate descriptive language when referring to the evils of racism and war.
He compared segregation, injustice, and war to better alternatives.
He demonstrated personal agency, accepting the responsibility to help make America a more just land.
He was aware of the negative consequences of governmental aggression and indifference to the social problems created by unjust policies.
He humanized and exonerated the victims of oppression and preached forgiveness for the oppressors.

His moral engagement is reflected again and again in his words. Today we present just a few examples of the lasting messages he gave us all:

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

What have you or your friends or family done to speak out against war and injustice? Send us your stories.

Finally, to listen to examples of MLK’s stirring speeches, check out these videos:

Martin Luther King – His immortal Vietnam speech

Martin Luther King preaches against war

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Exonerating or pardoning the victim (Moral engagement, part 9)

Posted on December 16, 2010December 22, 2010 by kathiemm

The form of moral engagement that we call “exonerating or pardoning the victim” is in many ways a logical outgrowth of perspective taking and empathy. If you are able to put yourself in the shoes of another, you become more able to understand the ways in which people who behaved inhumanely may be no more inhumane and evil, and have no more desire to kill and maim, than you.

Failure to pardon can have disastrous effects. After World War I, there was no exonerating or pardoning of any of the people in the Axis powers by the Allies. Instead, the heavy load of reparations, imposed poverty, and humiliation of all Germans–whether they had been directly involved in the war or not–contributed directly to the rise of Hitler and World War II.

After World War II, the victorious powers proved that they, for at least that one generation, had learned the lesson of World War I, and avoided acting on desires for punishment and retaliation, working instead to rebuild Japan and Germany.

Perhaps the highest level of moral engagement can be found in individuals who were themselves victimized but have found the courage to forgive their oppressors; a perfect example of this level and type of moral engagement can be found in Nelson Mandela. In a later post, we will provide a review of the film Invictus, a powerful illustration of Mandela’s forgiveness program, carried out in the context o f preparation for a World Cup rugby match.

The following movie review by our guest blogger, Mimi Maritz, illustrates these themes of exonerating and pardoning in another film.

Review of “Forgiving Dr. Mengele”
This documentary tells the story of Holocaust concentration camp survivor, Eva. Like her twin sister Miriam, Eva was subjected to excruciating and nearly fatal experiments by Dr. Mengele, the notorious prison camp doctor, yet she came to pardon her former oppressors.

Through her search to help Miriam discover which drug Dr. Mengele injected to stunt her kidney growth, Eva met face-to-face with other Nazis involved in the Holocaust. Her search led her to realize that the only way to move forward and live life without regret was by forgiving those who had harmed her and millions of others.

Eva argues that to avoid being victims for the rest of their lives, the survivors of victimization must free themselves from suffering, and that the only way to do this is by accepting the past and forgiving the transgressors.

By forgiving, Eva does not mean forgetting; she is continually spreading her story to all who will listen. When another survivor says to Eva “I am unable to smile deeply from my heart… I do not know how to be happy,” Eva declares that we have the right to live without pain and we do not need permission to start healing our hearts.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology, with Mimi Maritz

Healing in the aftermath of 9/11

Posted on September 13, 2010July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

Ground Zero memorial — Ground Zero (Photo by Niesy74; Permission is granted to use this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2. From WikiMedia Commons)

As we reflect back on the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001, it is useful to consider the question of healing.

Let’s look at an example from the last century. The U.S. and several of its allies learned, at least temporarily, a lesson after World War I.

They learned that a rabid preoccupation with revenge and punishment can keep hatred and a desire for retaliation alive and lead to further violence. Thus, the outcome of World War I led to World War II.

The aftermath to World War II was handled differently and with wisdom, as the allies helped the Axis powers rebuild. Today Germany and Japan are major allies of the United States.

Furthermore, the U.S. government has apologized to the innocent Japanese Americans who were corralled into concentration camps in the U.S. for no reason other than their Japanese ancestry.

Today in New York City we see a reprise of the kinds of hatred and distrust being leveled at innocent Americans because of their ancestry–in this case because they are Muslims.

The efforts to stop the building of an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero are fueled not just by prejudice and ethnocentrism but by the political agenda of power-seekers.

Those power-seekers know that one way to get people to follow you and build your power is to foment fear while also making them believe that you have the answers. But are they the right answers?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Remembering September 11, 2001

Posted on September 9, 2010July 6, 2011 by kathiemm

World Trade Center towers collapsing on 9/11/01 — World Trade Center on 9/11 shortly after the second tower had collapsed. (Photo by Wally Gobetz. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. From WikiMedia Commons)

September 11 is a day that needs to be remembered and reflected on for many reasons:

The tragic loss of life to several thousand innocent people.
The reminder that violent assault on any one individual reverberates through a family, a community, and a nation.
The recognition that for the first time in over 100 years, Americans were attacked on their own soil, challenging their assumption that security can be achieved through armed strength alone.
The killing of innocent people can lead to rage, a desire to retaliate, and calls for revenge.
Validation of the maxim that every time an invader takes one innocent life, 10 new people join the opposition.

The intent of Terry Jones, pastor of a small evangelical church in Florida, to burn more than 200 Qur’ans on the anniversary of 9/11 can be seen as a powerful example of rage, the desire to retaliate, and an act of revenge—the kinds of behaviors that perpetuate cycles of violence, hatred, and misunderstanding.

The loss of innocent American lives on 9/11/2001 was a travesty, as is Jones’s plan to burn the holy book of millions of peace-loving Muslims around the world.

Perhaps burning the holy book of millions is not as deadly as killing an innocent person, but as General Petraeus has pointed out, it certainly provides fuel for the small militant element within Islam aiming to harm American forces in the Middle East and elsewhere.

What does Mr. Jones know of the Qur’an? Has he considered Chapter 5, Verse 32: “[I]f anyone slew a person—unless it be for murder or spreading mischief in the land—it would be as if he slew the whole people. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”

Does he understand that the message of the Qur’an, which overlaps significantly with the Bible, emphasizes peace and brotherhood?

Is he also aware that, like the Bible, the Qur’an contains passages that can be distorted by seekers of power within each religion to advance their own agenda?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology