Something suddenly became crystal clear to me yesterday. What had been fuzzy and out-of-focus, in a flash became sharp and well defined. It wasn’t of Newtonian ‘apple-falling-from-tree-equals-gravity ‘ proportions – yet important for me nonetheless.
Dreaming Of World Peace
I’d just returned from an International NVC Mediation Conference and was chatting to a friend over a coffee, sharing our impressions of the Conference. I get quite animated when talking about my dream for the future of the world – the one I state as clearly as I can in the Welcome message over there on the right:
“… a world where conflicts are solved peacefully …”
Despite my passion for this vision, I found myself apologising for it as naïve, idealistic and impossible to achieve. I could even say I was whining a bit!
Why was I apologising, I asked myself? Do I really have my head in the clouds, I wondered? It was more confusing as I’d just spent the last 5 days together with 60 people from all over the world, learning how to mediate between two conflicting sides.
Then the apple fell.
I, like the majority of people, haven’t believed that universal peace is possible:
“World Peace? Wonderful idea .. but no chance of happening! At least not in my lifetime”
But why not?
Are we doomed to a future of turmoil, hurting and killing each other? Are we really unable, as a species, to rise above that and choose love and peace instead of hatred and fighting?
Believing In The Possible
If I don’t believe something is possible then how can I expect it to happen? If I’m trying to achieve a goal without the conviction that it can happen, my energy is getting diverted. It’s half-hearted.
This last week I found the belief I was missing. I started to believe that not only is peace possible, it’s actually not that difficult!
I learned a few skills and a simple process designed to help solve conflicts peacefully. They’re not hard to learn and we all have the foundations already – for example, empathy, interrupting, asking questions, making requests, keeping track of a conversation. There’s a little more to it than that – but not much.
I became clear that anyone can learn how to solve conflict peacefully.
World peace is possible.
All it needs is enough people to learn and apply these skills. We’ll have world peace when most of us learn a little – just enough to solve day to day conflicts, and a few learn deeper to deal with the more intense conflicts.
Peace In My Lifetime
Conflict is not going away – it is an important part of life. It’s stimulating and in the tension where interests meet there’s a creative possibility greater than what the individual sides bring. Conflict – inner or outer – drives us to innovate, create and is part of being alive. I love conflict!
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the resolution of conflict with love and respect.
I strongly believe the majority of the world’s population want this – they just don’t believe it’s possible. Many people get a superficial kick from violent conflict – but deep in their hearts are wishing to get their kicks in ways that are peaceful.
We all want peace in our lives but we don’t yet believe it’s possible. We’ve built a world where we are constantly receiving messages designed to keep hope away and keep us believing in violence.
- War has been glamorised to get us to support killing in the name of the nation, religion or other cause
- Violence has been pushed down our throats as entertainment by the mass media
- Our culture values aggression as a sign of strength.
We’ve lost our collective hope that it can be different.
Yesterday I had also lost hope.
Today I write boldly and clearly:
Help me build a world where conflicts are solved peacefully – it is not only possible, it’s easy.
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Hi Ian
I like your clarity that it is possible, and what it would take, and that the first step we all can do is to start dreaming of the world we want to live in, and in the same breath we also start practising the dream in our own lives. So our dream can be visual for others thru our own actions and way of life.
Looking forward to meet you again and see how our dreams come together.
hugs from a white place in the north of Sweden
Kay Rung
Kay – thanks for commenting and it was a real pleasure for me to meet you last week. I look forward to our next meeting and bringing dreams together.
What stuck me hard here is the glamorization of war this is so true for some.
which I feel had a very power hungry~ emm, ok, leader with a small man syndrome mentality.
To me war isn’t glamorous at all.
There is a certain country
You may know him, the little guy in the bar who has a couple of drinks and then feels 10 feet tall and bazooka proof ??? He gets in everyone’ s face.
I think power makes some people drunk and abuse their authority. Why people insisted on keeping “him” around for 2 terms, I have no idea.
People have to unit and we all must be on the same page, wanting peace with out causalities but compromises.
Bunny. I think I might have an idea who you are referring to here
My guess is that war is never glamorous to anyone who has actually been involved in it in some way – even more reason to make it seem glamorous if your aim is to get people to go off and actually do it. ‘Peace without casualties’ .. absolutely!
I can’t help but think of women in third world countries. I just don’t know if the world we dream of is possible until everyone in that world can interact as equals, if respect can be given or gained without that.
I actually DO think world peace is possible but I also think that world peace can’t be independent of women’s and children’s rights.
I agree with you. Respecting and valuing each other as human beings (including women and children!) is critical to peace. In fact, if we had that then war would be impossible.
Hi Ian,
Thanks for sharing your insights. I resonate a lot with “the conflict is not going away”. As long as we see conflict as ‘bad’ we are still stuck in judgment. Our fear of conflict seems to make us behave violent. If we learn to feel comfortable with conflict, if we learn to “love conflict”, we will solve things peacefully. And I love NVC for inviting us to do this
Sara. Good to hear from you and thank you for your comment. Feeling comfortable with conflict – and having the skills to solve it – are, in my view, important elements to our way forward as a species.
Thanks Ian. Complete agreement from me.
When I see how easy it is I find it very easy to feel frustrated and impatient.
Evan. First of all, thanks for responding to some of the other comments while I’ve been busy with other stuff. Much appreciated.
I resonate with that feeling of frustration. Once I realised how easy it is, and how possible, my thought is ‘Why doesn’t everyone see it the same way?’ Not everyone does see it that way, and that’s where patience and determination to show the way comes in.
Hi Ian, this is a very inspiring post. You’ve really pointed out that peace is achievable, and ironically, that it’s relatively simple… far simpler than the war and violence we’ve been encultured to accept, often without question.
Is world peace possible when there are so many vehicles, economic, cultural and otherwise, that seem to support a violent means of conflict “resolution”? (If you could even call it that…)
I guess I’m in the same place you were the other day… I WANT to believe that it is, I do think it’s possible, but my mind keeps asking the question… how?
Thanks for sharing this and making me think. You definitely got me pondering, still…!
Cheers,
Miche
Thanks Miche.
A few thoughts to add to Evan’s response about ‘how’.
1 Start with myself.
Am I resolving conflicts in my day to day life in a peaceful and loving way? If not, learn how to do it and do it.
2 Voting with our money.
We are all supporting war and violence by paying taxes to our governments that’s spent on arms, archaic ‘justice’ systems and education of our children. If we choose to continue paying for these things then we have a right to communicate clearly how we want that money spent – and how not. Write and lobby to get our voices heard. Ask for changes in how government spends money on arms, for moves to ‘restorative justice’ and changes to education.
Find out the source of the things you buy and avoid buying from companies that use or support violence.
3 Voting with our time
Stop watching TV shows and films that promote violence as entertainment. Stop watching/reading news broadcasts that focus on war and violence. The media is very sensitive to ratings and viewing figures.
I’m certain there are many other things we can do .. these are just off the top of my head.
Hi Miche,
Ian will know of lots of ways. I know of citizen juries and sociocracy. Both usable at reasonably large scales.
Deep in my heart, I really believe in world peace. But in my mind it is a myth. No matter how much I want unity, the very nature of man prevents me from its possibility. Looking at the present world, man have become worse, wars and conflicts are always on the news. We are commanded by instincts and not of reason anymore.
I hope I’m wrong about this.
I hope so too and I really sense your desire for peace.
Personally I believe we are peaceful by nature – in that we are more naturally inclined to community and co-operation rather than violence. Many studies back this up (though of course there are also studies that prove the opposite). Physically we are not well equipped for violence (look at our hands, our teeth .. not exactly features of hunters). Our brains are our most violent feature .. which means (in my opinion) we’ve learned violence as a behaviour rather than it being natural. And it seems we’ve learned it in the last 10 – 15,000 years – which is a very small proportion of the total time we’ve been around.
My hope is that if we’ve learned violence – we can unlearn it. Many of those involved with NVC are working to change how we educate our children – with many success stories. It’s often called ‘giraffe language’ and there are many ‘giraffe schools’ around the world. I hear from those working with kids that they learn peaceful conflict resolution very easily – it’s the parents that have a hard time unlearning their bad habits.
Hi Walter,
I think it’s possible for our instincts to be satisfied in peaceful ways (sometimes using symbolism, sometimes by controlling the violence – sport and so on).