Not so difficult is to argue against war and militarism, against the suffering in war that may also accrue to oneself, and against the doctrine that the lasting solution to conflict is military victory.\u00a0 Be strong, deter, win; dictate peace does not convince.\u00a0 Nor is it so difficult to argue that solving the underlying conflict is a better approach: engaging antagonist verbally, in dialogue with or without mediation, in a joint search for an acceptable and sustainable solution.\u00a0 A military victory delivers neither one, nor the other.<\/p>\n
More difficult is to argue the significance of conciliation, of clearing, closing the wounds of the past, for a future together; the only future there is in a globalizing world.\u00a0 There are so many wounds.\u00a0 One of them is the trauma of having traumatized others, with the intense fear that one day revenge will come.\u00a0 Unreconciled trauma causes not only stress but leads also to mental disorders in both.\u00a0 There is fear of demands for compensation; moreover, like for conflict some may want no solution, processing conflict and trauma into aggression.<\/p>\n
Most difficult is to argue positive peace: cooperation for mutual and equal benefit and harmony, emotional resonance.\u00a0 Easy to explain,\u00a0 with examples, difficult to make attractive, even compelling, so much so that they join security–no threat of violence–as major goals.<\/p>\n
Peace studies are not alone in this predicament.\u00a0 Health studies focus much more on absence of disease than on presence of positive health, with only vague efforts to spell it out.\u00a0 Like psychology: long on mental disorders, but still short on positive psychology.<\/p>\n
There are, say, four explanations, not justifications, around.<\/p>\n
The tendency in the West to focus more on wrong than on right; on forbidding, than on encouraging; on laws promising punishment than on rewards; on the wrong acts of commission rather than the good ones.\u00a0 So also for peace, health, mental health.\u00a0 Crime is the model.<\/p>\n
This being so there is more consensus and willingness to act on what is wrong than on what is right; or so people believe.\u00a0 The peace movement during the Cold War: what matters are big demonstrations.\u00a0 NO to the nuclear arms race unites; what peace might look like divides.<\/p>\n
There is also the idea \u201cget rid of the evil-bad-wrong, and the sacred-good-right is already here, it comes naturally, is all in us.\u201d All that is needed is to remove impediments, deviance and deviants.<\/p>\n
And then the idea that freedom is absence of want, fear and other negatives, and<\/em>, on top of that, the free choice of the positives, not to have them thrown on us like a strait-jacket.<\/p>\n There is some truth to all four.\u00a0 But that does not rule out general visions–not commands–spelling out dimensions, examples, opening for dreams and creativity.\u00a0 When asked “what kind of person would you like to be in five, ten years”, and the answer is “rich”, to ask how? and relations to your family? to others? and your joy at being alive, a part of Creation? is not a strait-jacket, but an eye-opener.\u00a0 When released from a hospital after a successful operation it makes great sense to ask “how am I going to make use of this new lease on life?”\u00a0 Or the convict walking out of prison, freedom regained, how best to use it?\u00a0 A big void for new goods may easily be filled with old bads.\u00a0 Not one dogmatic answer but a cafeteria, leaving the final menu to be decided.\u00a0 If not, somebody else will do it.\u00a0 Syria.<\/p>\n Two general positive guidelines are equity-parity, and resonance.<\/p>\n To mediate marriages means switching from blaming each other to a focus on what good marriages look like.\u00a0 From Israel and Palestine, blaming each other, to what a peaceful Middle East could look like.\u00a0 Many believe that he who can heap most verified accusations on the other wins the future by being right about the past. Undo the wrongs and the future is there!\u00a0 But this locates peace in the past, and that past produced the wrongs that happened.\u00a0 Something has to change.<\/p>\n If the parties explore, separately, later on jointly, a positive and creative future together, guided by equity and resonance, we are already half way, maybe more.\u00a0 But here enter our limitations. How good are we ourselves as marriage partners?\u00a0 And our countries at practicing mutual and equal benefit, and at sympathy across borders?<\/p>\n The fifth and major obstacle now shows up: a good marriage, like any good relation, requires work.\u00a0 One way of avoiding that challenge is not to know about it.\u00a0 Sounding out not only one’s own but also one’s partner’s problems, to resolve them as if they were one’s own, looks like doubling the task of existence on earth; so also for inter-state relations.\u00a0 Holding high the benefits may be useful.\u00a0 Help and you are helped in return!\u00a0 But I don’t need any help!\u00a0 Not today, but disaster may strike.\u00a0 Old age will come.\u00a0 Do you really expect care to come out of your own lack thereof?\u00a0 Take the extra job of triple union, sex with parity, reciprocated love, joint projects–not just to be amply rewarded, but because they are so good in themselves.<\/p>\n Why is positive peace so problematic?\u00a0 Because there is work to do, here and now.\u00a0 Economically, to equalize numerous side-effects, not only to get the price right.\u00a0 Military-security wise to identify conflicts, and their solutions by peaceful means.\u00a0 Politically to negotiate, all cards on the table, no arms-twisting.\u00a0 Culturally to dialogue; mutual learning being a goal. Much work, but not impossible.\u00a0 Instead we often inherit, with no questions asked, bad habits from our parents’ marriages and our countries’ history. But, unless blatantly in the wrong, we want neither to disavow our parents, nor ourselves.<\/p>\n And then, point no. 6: war may be wrong, but an alternative may be not right or<\/em> wrong, but right and<\/em> wrong; yin\/yang?\u00a0 A better map of reality? Alternatives, in the plural?\u00a0 Try them out in different parts of the country or one after the other till the shadowy sides show up, then switch.\u00a0 Maybe that is doing what comes naturally, not clinging to one.<\/p>\n _____________________<\/p>\n \u00a0Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU<\/a>. He is author of over 150 books on peace and related issues, including \u2018<\/em>50 Years – 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,\u2019 published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgment and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, is included. Thank you.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most difficult is to argue positive peace: cooperation for mutual and equal benefit and harmony, emotional resonance. Peace studies are not alone in this predicament. Health studies focus much more on absence of disease than on presence of positive health, with only vague efforts to spell it out. Like psychology: long on mental disorders, but still short on positive psychology. There are, say, four explanations, not justifications, around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}