Nelson Mandela – Page 4 – Engaging Peace

Call for an international meeting of the wise people of the world

Posted on June 21, 2012June 26, 2012 by kathiemm

[Today we welcome guest contributor Dr. Majed Ashy]

United Nations flag — U.N. flag. Image in public domain.

The world is facing serious political, economic, and social upheavals and challenges.

This calls for wisdom that goes beyond the narrow visions of ideologies, politics, parties, interests, pride, specialized knowledge and professions, strategies, and power conflicts.

What we need is wisdom derived from deep integrative knowledge characterized by a sensitive, perceptive and unfragmented view of the world, nature, knowledge and time. Such wisdom will derive from lessons of history, philosophy, and the deep underlying wisdom of religions.

We need wisdom that is devoted to the revelation of a holistic truth and justice–as much as humans can do that–and not to winning.

Thus, I would like to suggest an international meeting to be organized by the United Nations. Participants would include wise people from every nation without exception. These individuals would embody respect, experience, and the ability to put their own needs and narrow interests and visions aside.

Their task would be to:

Discuss the current international political and economical situations.
Declare to the Security Council and everyone in the world the truth as they see it.
Recommend a course of action.

This body in the UN can include wise people from various walks of life such as ex-politicians, economists, scientists, social scientists, ex-military officers, philosophers, religious scholars, and others. In addition, known international figures such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Aung San Suu Kyi would be included.

In the day of the Internet and social networks it will not be difficult to identify the people in each nation who are considered wise and are respected for their wisdom.

Majed Ashy, Ph.D., Associate Researcher in Psychiatry, Harvard University/McLean Hospital; Assistant Professor in Psychology, Bay State College

Why not a Father’s Day for Peace?

Posted on June 14, 2012June 13, 2012 by kathiemm

This blog has featured a Mother’s Day for Peace, describing the roots of the current flowers-and-candy-for-Mom day in the work of Julia Ward Howe.

A nod towards initiating a Father’s Day of Peace was made in 2007 in a brief video from Brave New Foundation. The video provided a poignant reminder that fathers around the world love their children and want to see them survive, but little seems to have been done since then to promote a Father’s Day of Peace. Why not?

It’s time for fathers to link themselves to peace, not war.

Role models are available for men of peace: Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Liu Xiabo, Muhammed Yunis, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiezel, Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and thousands of other less well-known men. Maybe your own dad is among them.

Perhaps Veterans for Peace (VFP) could take up this banner. Their goal is to “change public opinion in the U.S. from an unsustainable culture of militarism and commercialism to one of peace, democracy, and sustainability.” They have over 100 chapters in the United States, funded in part through a grant from Howard Zinn. One of their participating groups is the Smedley Butler chapter in Boston, MA, which provided active support for Occupy Boston in 2011.

Learn more about VFP’s mission through this video, then write to them and ask them to add the promotion of a Father’s Day of Peace to their projects.

No dad needs another necktie on Father’s Day. What he needs is a path that offers his children the best opportunity for growing to maturity in a world of peace.

Promote a Father’s Day for Peace.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The enduring attraction of war (Portraying “the Other,” Part 3)

Posted on May 21, 2012May 29, 2012 by kathiemm

[Today we have another guest post from our regular contributor, John Hess.]

In her remarkable study of our westward expansion, The legacy of conquest: The unbroken past of the American west, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues that the values the pioneer Americans attached to westward expansion persist even today, in cheerful defiance of any contrary evidence.

Among those persistent values, few have more power than the idea of innocence. Americans moving west did not see themselves as trespassers or criminals; rather, they were pioneers. The ends, to them, abundantly justified the means.

Personal interest in the acquisition of property coincided with national interest in the acquisition of territory, and those interests overlapped in turn with the mission to extend the domain of Christian civilization.

Innocence of intention placed the course of events in a bright and positive light.

This innocence is preserved and the nation regenerated through violence, its guilt and failings purged and cleansed through blood. As Chris Hedges puts it in War is a force that gives us meaning:

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destructiveness and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidity of much of our lives become apparent….And war is an enticing elixir. It allows us to be noble” (p. 3).

“War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one. Most of us willingly accept war as long as we can fold it into a belief system that paints the ensuing suffering as necessary for a higher good, for human beings seek not only happiness but also meaning” (p. 10).

“The goal of such nationalist rhetoric is to invoke pity for one’s own. The goal is to show the community that what they hold sacred is under threat. The enemy, we are told, seeks to destroy religious and cultural life, the very identity of the group or state” (p.14).

No wonder we salute people like Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Eva Mozes Kor, for they are, sadly, extraordinary.

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Vaclav Havel, crusader against tyranny

Posted on December 19, 2011December 27, 2011 by kathiemm

Yesterday, December 18, 2011, saw the passing of Václav Havel, an exemplar of moral engagement. Havel was a playwright and poet who became the leader of the opposition to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia starting in the 1960s.

He helped launch the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution” in Prague on November 17, 1989—which began with student protests, expanded to include labor unions, and led to his election as president of Czechoslovakia on December 29, 1989.

For his role in the Velvet Revolution, Havel has been recognized as a leader comparable to Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi.

What resemblances do you see between the Velvet Revolution and the Occupy Movement that is spreading around the world today?

Havel was a model of moral agency, both inhibitive moral agency (he was a gentle man who resisted any call to violence) and proactive agency (criticizing Communist domination and seeking democracy, even though he was harassed and imprisoned for his views).

He used his plays, poems, and essays to spread his anti-Communist message. Even while plays such as The Audience gained critical acclaim around the world, they were banned in Czechoslovakia.

Havel’s best-known essay was “The Power of the Powerless,” a title carried forward into the award-winning documentary “The Power of the Powerless,” narrated by Jeremy Irons. (See trailer.)

Tom Stoppard’s play Rock n’ Roll, is dedicated to Havel, and part of it was inspired by Havel’s writings. (See trailer.)

Like Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other great crusaders against tyranny and terrorism, Havel’s name should echo in history as an example of what a single individual can achieve on behalf of peace and justice.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology