“Third World” – Engaging Peace

By Antonio C. S. Rosa

The three pillars of high finance and international movers are:

oil,
armaments (legal and illegal),
drugs (legal and illegal).

International capitalism has become hopelessly dependent on the activities of organized crime, in fact adopting its Modus Operandi.

Government officials are hostage to their complicity with lobbies. The mafia entered the system and imposed its ethics. This state of affairs is not resolved with terrorism, but with radical changes not only in the paradigms of economic, political and social structures, but also and especially in the minds, in the individual consciences/consciousnesses that are beget in the womb of reality. We are the builders of our own realities–from the personal to the collective.

Need for an Alternative

For each Hitler there is a Gandhi. For each Trump there is a Nelson Mandela. For each Bolsonaro or Boris there is a Luther King. Those who are not part of the solution are, by necessity, part of the problem in a world with a record population of 8 billion interdependent beings where everyone affects everyone and nobody is an island. We represent a colony on earth—not a globalization construct, not merely numbers, statistics or resources to be exploited.

It is undeniable that societies classified as Civilized, First World or Developed, led by the USA and the West but spread throughout, retain the reins of world markets, politics, economics and culture, being the main producers of weapons, technology, science and atmospheric pollutants as well as wealth (or poverty, depending on the viewpoint) and materialistic values. As such, they also retain the greater share of responsibility for the misery that spreads throughout the so-called Third World. After the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union, the number of members of the underdeveloped has increased, not because poverty has expanded, but because the labels have changed places. In English, there is a rhyme: the West and the Rest.

We need a viable alternative–more benign–to the ‘trickle down’ economy, more aptly named ‘trickle up,’ which slowly and inexorably corrodes and erodes the spirit of nobility in everyone’s character, whether labeled or believed to be civilized, barbaric or savage. We become slaves to the monster we believe in, our Leviathan. The so-called Capitalist/Protestant ethics is outrageous, ignominious. God is not the God of the affluent, white people. This is an incongruity, heretic, unadulterated primitivism.

Our mental paradigm must change, both individually and collectively, towards cooperation, nonviolence, conflict resolution by peaceful means, and sharing–with equity and reciprocity–of the planet’s resources, instead of lethal competition for them; passing through the elimination of sick nationalisms and sociopathic and homicidal patriotisms that kill legally en masse. Our mental constructions must be modified by ourselves, by education, and not by the state. If there were no soldiers logically there would be no wars as generals do not fight each other. We must achieve a degree of civilization that does not require authority, police, justice, militarism or weapons of any type or size for collective control and destruction. Replaced by social servants, leaders. Utopia? I believe not; if we work for it.

United in our diversity and accepting our differences instead of dividing us into races, we may, in any future, acquire a Consciousness of Civilized Beings–and act on it. Without this shift in consciousness any other meaningful change is unlikely as Darwin’s myopic and ethnocentric theory will continue to influence our lives, private and public, and our spiritual (not religious) evolution.

I recommend the works of Prof. Johan Galtung.

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Antonio Carlos da Silva Rosa (Antonio C. S. Rosa), born 1946, is founder-editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS (from 2008), an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and recipient of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility’s 2017 Anthony J. Marsella Prize for the Psychology of Peace and Social Justice. He is on the Global Advisory Board of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and completed his B.A., M.A., and graduate Ph.D. work in the fields of Communication-Journalism and Political Science-Peace Studies/International Relations at the University of Hawai’i. Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe-India since 1994. Books: Transcender e Transformar: Uma Introdução ao Trabalho de Conflitos (from Johan Galtung, translation to Portuguese, 2004); Peace Journalism: 80 Galtung Editorials on War and Peace (2010, editor); Cobertura de Conflitos: Jornalismo para a Paz (from Johan Galtung, Jake Lynch & Annabel McGoldrick, translation to Portuguese, 2010). TMS articles by Mr. Rosa HERE. Videos HERE and HERE.

by Kathie MM

World War I Victory Parade – 700 Block Hamilton Street – Allentown PA. 1919.
In the public domain

Just google “perpetual war,” and you will find many articles on US involvement in what appear to be endless military actions around the world. Google “PTSD” and you will find many more articles on the pernicious effects of war on those who are sent to wage it.

Given the huge costs of war–financial and humanitarian–why do so many Americans continue to support their government’s military undertakings?

These excerpts from an article in Transcend Network by Johan Galtung provide one thought-provoking answer.

“Very well known is post trauma stress disorder, PTSD; no doubt a very painful disorder experienced by many, most, maybe by all of us. Something went very wrong: a shock, violence, physical, verbal, by and to individuals, groups in society, societies, groups of societies….

What would be the opposite of trauma? Evidently something positive…. [One] type of trauma is defeat in a war and the opposite is victory. Basking in the glory, not suffering the gloom of trauma. And then, if trauma could lead to a state of stress,…maybe deep and repeated glory could lead to a state of, let us call it exuberance?….

Death in a war is a major trauma for the bereaved and all, victory a major glory for many and all. The loser is traumatized, the winner glorified. The loser may suffer deep disorder, like nations traumatized by Western colonialism. Or they may say “Never Again” and launch a peace movement. The winner will do his best to keep war as an institution. Till his time comes to lose….

Because to any PTSD it makes sense to postulate a PGED [Post Glory Exuberance Disorder] as a strong cause having that PTSD as effect. If we want to reduce the PTSD, it is obviously insufficient to work on the victim side only, with therapies and remedies, when PGED reproduces PTSD. A whole system has to be changed….

Take the war system, … as alive as ever with threats of major wars in many places in the “Middle East” (West Asia), the USA-EU-Ukraine-Russia complex, and in the “Far East” (East Asia). The relatively peaceful continents are in the “Third World”, Latin America-Caribbean and Africa; the enormity of violence against them being structural more than direct war.

In this there is a message to those who naively believe that “development leads to peace”; right now it looks more like the other way around. Why, given all the suffering, the PTSD, caused by wars?

Because of PGED enjoyed by the winners. Not only basking in the glory of ticker tape parades and similar orgies, but in billions to the winners, incidentally also to some of the losers…. Wars make money flow.

The world’s major war machine is the United States of America. No US president winning a war has ever been blamed for human suffering caused…. The war in Vietnam was lost, a terrible trauma for US leaders, population, and the bereaved of 58,000 killed. But not of 3 million Vietnamese? Grotesque insensitivity. Questions raised were not about the political use of war but how to win future wars to overcome the “Vietnam syndrome”.

To win means collective glory and exuberance, individual profits in the billions high up, and some heroism, glory, and medals lower down. Of the millions killed and tens of millions bereaved: no word.

Try one minute, or an hour rather, to contemplate the total PTSD perpetrated by US warfare on the peoples of Afghanistan from 2001, and Iraq from 1991, and 2003. True, there has been no US PGED but even some US PTSD from the “unfinished wars” as CNN calls it. Also true, lots of US psychotherapy for PTSD has been made available both places.

But most in need of counseling are Americans hit by wanting PGED, demanding winnable wars as therapy; disasters to the victims all over, even counting in the millions, with enormities of PTSD in their wake.

We are victims of a negative psychology of individual therapy. And short on a positive psychology to provide work for negative and positive peace, for security and good relations to higher ups who want PGED. And to remove causes of war: unsolved conflicts and unreconciled traumas.”

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Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, is founder of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. Prof. Galtung has published 1670 articles and book chapters, over 470 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service, and 167 books on peace and related issues, of which 41 have been translated into 35 languages, for a total of 135 book translations, including ‘50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,’ published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.

This is a shortened version of an article originally published on TMS: The Post Glory Exuberance Disorder-PGED.