What happens when the noise in your head drowns out the calm in your heart? What happens when this construction of peace seems impossible to achieve?

We all have moments when our reality is less desirable than what we anticipate. When we become obsessed with what we could have rather than what we do have. When our sense of urgency is much stronger than our sense of gratitude.

Lately, my life feels as if it has been at the whim of numerous external circumstances. My level of control seems nonexistent. Sometimes I don’t know exactly how or where to start taking charge again.

I know how Charlie Brown feels about that damn football. It gets lined up perfectly for him to strike. He runs quickly and furiously towards it and at the last second it’s pulled out from under him. Over and over again, he ends up spinning in the air and landing painfully on the ground, dizzy and confused. You’d think he’d stop trying. You’d think when Lucy tells him “I won’t do it this time” he’d listen. He never does. He just keeps trying to kick that stupid football. It seems he has an optimism his audience has lost.

Charlie still has hope. He is still beautifully and naively uncertain of what will happen and wants to take his chances. The unknown is still full of possibilities.

Hope is essential to life but at times difficult to maintain. It is life’s way of telling you to keep going and always remember better days will come. It is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It is the purpose and the rigor behind our existence. It is that feeling Charlie has when he grits his teeth and speeds towards the football. It needs cultivation, care, and stimulation. Without these, it starves and its rival is victorious.

The name of this rival is resignation. It’s when the light starts to dim and flicker, like a lantern running out of kerosene. It is Charlie Brown standing on the side-lines, already knowing what will happen.

I guess hope is form of peace. It gives you a calm in your heart, even if just for a short time. It’s what allows you to experience ever so slightly the reality that eludes you. If we can create our own hope, if we can keep it alive, if we can evade its rival then we can create our own peace, we can keep it alive, and we can evade its rival.

I know now I was practicing compassion. Not pity. Not sympathy. Compassion. I was nurturing the ability to feel what someone else may be feeling. There was no hesitation, justification, expectation, or determining if the person was worthy of my kindness and “deserved” my humble offering. While this came easily as a child, as I get older it becomes increasingly difficult to let this instinct overwhelm me instead of the justifications and excuses. It is easy to dismiss other people’s feelings and choose not to feel compassion for their circumstances because they brought it upon themselves or they are not “good” people. However, when we can stir up feelings of compassion in these more complicated situations, we know we are growing as human beings, we know we are expanding our capacity to love. When we can feel compassion for others and then, here’s the key, act on it without expecting recognition or praise is when we know we have touched something in ourselves and between human beings most people don’t recognize or try to find.

My previous post Global Empathy describes how travel can develop empathy for others around the world. When it was published, I was asked the question, “Do you really believe that people who spend all their lives in one place cannot develop the capacity for empathy?” This was thought provoking because we really should develop this capacity no matter what our circumstances. So this post challenges us to do just this and find that part of ourselves that just feels with no reason, no rationalization, and no defenses and then apply it to our immediate surroundings. In the wise words of one my favorite musicians Ryan Adams, “kindness doesn’t ask for much, but an open mind” and I would add, an open heart.

Joan Halifax shares in 13 minutes what she has learned about compassion.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, this beautiful piece written by Bruce Springsteen, was born out the mixed emotions unearthed by the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the inception of this long standing war. “It is basically a song about a soldier’s point of view in Iraq,” Springsteen says. “But it kind of opens up to a lot of other interpretations.”

I have my interpretation; it reconfigures itself according to the day and my mood. I hope you will take the time read, listen, create your own, and then let it adjust and change as time passes.

Devils and Dust
Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

I got my finger on the trigger
But I don’t know who to trust
When I look into your eyes
There’s just devils and dust
We’re a long, long way from home, Bobbie
Home’s a long, long way from us
I feel a dirty wind blowing
Devils and dust

I got God on my side
I’m just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear’s a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It’ll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust

Well I dreamed of you last night
In a field of blood and stone
The blood began to dry
The smell began to rise
Well I dreamed of you last night
In a field of mud and bone
Your blood began to dry
The smell began to rise

We’ve got God on our side
We’re just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear’s a powerful thing
It’ll turn your heart black you can trust
It’ll take your God filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust

Now every woman and every man
They want to take a righteous stand
Find the love that God wills
And the faith that He commands
I’ve got my finger on the trigger
And tonight faith just ain’t enough
When I look inside my heart
There’s just devils and dust

Well I’ve got God on my side
And I’m just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear’s a dangerous thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It’ll take your God filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust
It’ll take your God filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust

We have all been forced to apologize as little kids, whether it was to our siblings, friends, random children on the playground, or even our enemies. Both of us always ran to an adult, pointed at another child accusingly, and tattled about some extremely serious transgression. Sometimes these petty arguments would even escalate to the point where balling up our sweaty fists and slamming one of them into our opponent’s closest body part seemed entirely reasonable and justifiable. This behavior always warranted a forced “I’m sorry,” while we stood there red faced and sniveling, snot across our cheeks and a mean glare in our eyes. I never walked away from those interactions feeling even the slightest bit sorry for what I had done. I only feigned remorse because there was an interrupted game just waiting for my arrival.

So if my “I’m sorry” was completely shallow and had no real meaning, why was I forced to say it? Why did the adults feel it was necessary that apologies be exchanged? I can think of two reasons.

One: We had to be taught a lesson. What we did was wrong and we needed to make up for it.

Two: It made the adults feel better. With two small words, the situation was quickly settled and we could move on with our day, although as children the apology didn’t actually resolve the tension and anger bubbling under the falsely smoothed surface. We just weren’t allowed to talk about it anymore.

As adults, unless we are in an unusual circumstance, we are not obliged to say, “I’m sorry.” There is no external force that helps rebalance the equilibrium when we commit an act of injustice, which means we must determine by ourselves when we want to admit we did something wrong and apologize. Saying “I’m sorry” becomes a choice, not a mandate, consequently, there are numerous reasons why we decide to utter these two words, some of them not quite in the spirit of a true apology. These are the repeat offenders from my personal experience.

One: To make ourselves feel better. This is typically what happens when we says I’m sorry and expect the hurt party to quickly and easily forget about whatever happened. Later, the shocked words, “but I apologized!” come out of our mouths when we discover the other person is still upset and perhaps angry. Another typical, and fatalistic, response in this case is, “there’s nothing else I can do.”

Two: To get an apology. Let’s say two people hurt each other’s feelings. One person comes to other and says, “I’m sorry” and has the expectation that they will hear it back. However, he or she doesn’t take into account that the other person may not ready to genuinely accept an apology, let alone give one.

Three: To be perceived as “the better person.” This relates to making ourselves feel better, but goes a little further because in this case an elevated status is desired. You gain immediate satisfaction from saying “I’m sorry,” but this action also gives you a reason to feel pious and guilt-free in the long run as well as always come out looking like the “good guy.”

Four: To avoid punishment.

The common thread throughout all these is they are lacking a crucial element of an apology, sincerity. They use “I’m sorry” as a bargaining tool or strategy rather than a method of restoring a relationship. A genuine apology is intended to be a way of outwardly admitting and acknowledging you did something wrong. With an apology, you own your actions and the reality that you are not perfect. As human beings, we are all going to make mistakes. In fact, we should make mistakes, but because our mistakes are typically not planned, we should be prepared to make amends for them.

Additionally, even if we rally enough courage to humble ourselves, face the person we hurt, and say “I am truly sorry,” we need to accept the fact that while you may be ready to give an apology, the other person may not be ready to embrace it and simply move on. We can take this as an opportunity to show our sincerity through our subsequent actions. This is not to say we should be taken advantage of or be condemned to a lifetime of indentured servitude for a transgression. It only means if someone is worth apologizing to, they should also be worth the time it takes to rebuild and restore whatever was broken, however minor or acute it may be.

Saying, and accepting, “I’m sorry” can be two of the most powerful steps towards building peace because they require realizing, facing, and publicly admitting our own imperfections as well as understanding the limitations other human beings sometimes expose. It then requires a commitment to conduct ourselves differently in the future and alter the behavior that warranted apology in the first place. These moments are what create a consciously flawed yet real, beautiful, and ultimately unified humanity.

There is a famous quote lifted from a poem by John Donne, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Donne’s quote carries special weight here because peace can and will only emerge from a collaborative process. Consequently, I want Critical Peace to be a medium for global collaboration amongst those who want to contribute to the pertinent and challenging discussion about peace. In an effort to support this initiative, and sustain the conversation, Roxanne generously wrote the following post for Critical Peace, in which she allows us to see the product of her inner musings about objectivity and personal storytelling. Thank you Roxanne.

We, the stories

“Don’t be the story. Write the story.”

A freelance journalist recently returned from Libya where she was held in captivity for six weeks, shared this piece of advice with the attendees of a panel at Harvard University earlier this week. It is a kernel of wisdom journalists often pass on to budding reporters: Write the story you came to cover, not your personal story.

What happens when those paths intersect? What happens when the story you came to cover seeps into your own life story, affecting you deeply and birthing a new set of stories? This is what happened to Mac McClelland, the Mother Jones reporter who went to Haiti on assignment and returned with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. For Mother Jones, McClelland wrote the story she had set out to write. For GOOD magazine, a few months later, McClelland told her own story: one of trauma and an unorthodox method of coping and recovery. McClelland’s GOOD piece was titled “How Violent Sex Helped Ease my PTSD.” Following its publication, a conversation has started about trauma, reporting and taboos.

I will admit I balked when I read the title of McClelland’s article on GOOD. As someone who works with women affected by conflict, and who has been affected by post-traumatic stress herself, the idea that one would willingly and deliberately simulate violence as a cure to an ailment was highly uncomfortable. What was more uncomfortable, however, was reading comments on McClelland’s piece which, as Amanda Taub at Wronging Rights has put it, fall under three categories. In Taub’s words, the critiques can be summarized as:
1. PTSD isn’t real, it’s just San Francisco therapy-speak for “having a bad day,” so McClelland must have been a self-obsessed narcissist to write about it as if it’s something to be taken seriously;
2. PTSD is real, but McClelland either had no right to develop it or was faking it, because reporting about other people’s trauma doesn’t seem like it should be that hard; or
3. McClelland was allowed to get PTSD, but isn’t allowed to write about it being triggered by reporting from Haiti, because that might give people the impression that bad things can happen in Haiti, and that is clearly racist and colonialist.”
At Wronging Rights, Amanda Taub has done a fantastic job of debunking this commentary. Jina Moore has also offered some excellent guidelines on trauma reporting and journalism. Ms. Magazine interviewed McClelland herself after the controversy to better understand her perspective on the story.

This story raises questions on storytellers’ responsibility, reporting ethics, trauma and recovery. In addition to the articles referenced above, Max Fisher at The Atlantic addresses and summarizes these concerns as well. The angle that interests me currently is the resistance to the idea that, in addition to a story of Haiti and of rape and of victims, it can be a story of McClelland too – a story about McClelland. In her piece at GOOD Magazine, McClelland did not set out to tell the story of Haiti — she sought to tell how her experience in Haiti affected her. It was a personal essay and the fact that McClelland herself is the subject does not rob it of its value. There seems to be another taboo lingering here: that of the reporter or photographer turning the scrutiny on herself. “The war photographer’s biggest story: themselves,” reads the title of a post on Duckrabbit, a portal for photography, film and journalism.

Our own life has a story, too. Our own life can be the story, affected and touched by the other stories with which it intersects. There is inevitably bias in telling, sharing, or publicizing that story — but that is a bias we can acknowledge and one that does not have to handicap the story. There are plenty of reasons to criticize McClelland and her methodology and many have done it. I refuse to be one of those who criticize her for telling the story or for having skewed priorities — for her story is one of overcoming as well and it affects the stories of others who empathize, understand, and are moved by her troubles.

We cannot extract ourselves from the stories we tell. We walk into them with our lenses, our preconceived notions, our pre-held perspectives and, even after we leave the war zones, the stories continue to travel with us and affect us. That which lends a story bias also lends it its life: the breath of human honesty and the vulnerability of telling a story about oneself.

The world is interconnected. “You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate the breeze from the wind,” Mitch Albom writes. That breeds a responsibility in storytellers of all kinds to the subject of their stories. I am not a journalist and I am not a reporter; I do, however, wear the photographer, storyteller and writer’s hats among others. In claiming those labels, I also claim my story, my biases, the magic of storytelling, and the dangers of it as well. In writing the story, I give you part of myself – inevitably or consciously. As such, I am willing to acknowledge that in every reporter, in every journalist, in every photographer — in everyone who is in the business of documenting other people’s stories — there are no airtight compartments: The stories on which these people report intersect with their life stories, the threads interweave, and new personal stories are born. Those personal stories distinguish the personal essay from reportage, the memoir from a biography, a first person account from an exposé.

Journalists, reporters, war photographers are more often paid for the latter, for the reportage and the facts over the “being the story.” I am just as fascinated by the story they live in, the story they are, and, far from critiquing them for sharing it, I am anxious to hear it. In a post titled “The Next Phase of Storytelling”, Global Fellows Manager for Acumen Fund Blair Miller states:

“We, the storytellers, need to let some stories go so that the voices of the world can truly be heard.” Indeed. We, the storytellers, also need to, as Ray Bradbury would have it, tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. Our voices are voices of the world too.

About the Author

Roxanne Krystalli shares her experiences of conflict management and storytelling at Stories of Conflict and Love.

This is a quote taken from the book The Moral Imagination by John Paul Lederach. He is discussing the process of composing and implementing peace accords, supposedly designed to end deeply-rooted cycles of violence and war. However, is ‘peace’ the actual outcome of ‘peace’ accords? When considering the subsequent collapse of numerous carefully crafted ‘peace’ accords and the return to violence, perhaps ‘peace’ is not the correct usage of terminology for this phrase. It is difficult to blame anyone for using ‘peace’ in this context, although it may not be entirely appropriate, because there is no unequivocal definition of ‘peace.’

A prominent peace researcher, Johan Galtung, presents the argument in his paper Violence, Peace, and Peace Research “Few words are so often used and abused – perhaps, it seems, because ‘peace’ serves as a means of obtaining verbal consensus – it is hard to be all-out against peace.”

Defining peace is not a simple, black and white process because, like most every other word, it is strongly attached to our personal connotations. It is malleable based on your vision of ‘peace.’ Take this question into consideration: Is peace an on-going process or a destination? Will peace arrive at some point or do we have to nurture it every day?

The good news is numerous other people have considered these questions extensively before us, so we already have a good starting point. In order to aid with the process, I have compiled some of the most popular definitions of peace, used and understood by virtually all peace practitioners and theorists.

Negative Peace is a destination oriented version of ‘peace.’ Here ‘peace’ is simply regarded as the absence of violence, which typically describes the state of society after the signing of a peace accord. In many violent circumstances, this may be the best scenario we can work towards, but while peace accords might end open fighting, they may not actually create institutions and structures that allow a sustainable peace to emerge. The advent of a society that integrates these institutions and structures and is capable of seeking peace without using force is typically called Positive Peace.

Another standard interpretation of ‘peace,’ Liberal Peace, is the practice we see every time the United States engages in intrastate operations. Daniel Philpot in Strategies of Peace defines this as the dominant thinking that “pervades the most powerful and prestigious institutions and governments who take on the work of peacebuilding. Its aims are simple and familiar: to end armed violence and to establish human rights, democracy, and market economies…It envisions the UN, outside intervening states, state governments, and oppositional factions, undertaking mediation, military intervention, war settlement, disarmament, election monitoring, refugee resettlement, and the creation of free government institutions, free markets, and free media. A cardinal virtue is finitude: when will this operation end?”

While these definitions do require a process, it is typically a predetermined process, geared towards an end product. They desire to answer the question: what will society look like when we’re done? Alternatively, the following definitions leave space for flexibility and creation, for building peace, rather than just expecting it.

Justpeace is Lederach’s preferred definition. He describes it as “an orientation toward conflict transformation characterized by approaches that reduce violence and destructive cycles of social interaction and at the same time increase justice in any human relationship.”

I would like to propose another definition. Those who study the spread of democracy, or “democratization,” are familiar with the term “consolidated democracy.” Simply, this means democracy is the only acceptable “game in town.” While we may want to tweak certain parts of our democracy, we really do not challenge the overarching concept or the practice or try to institute another governmental structure. What if we extend this concept and consider a Consolidated Peace? What if ‘peace’ was the only acceptable state and we did everything in our power to build a society that sustained it?

To reach a sustainable, consolidated peace, one that can last beyond a peace agreement, that reduces cycles of violence, and increases justice, we need to engage in building peace. In order to implement this type of ‘peace,’ peacebuilding must be defined as well.

Lederach’s book Building Peace in Divided Societies understands peacebuilding to be a 
“comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates, and sustains the full array of processes, approaches, and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships. The term thus involves a wide range of activities and functions that both precede and follow formal peace accords. Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a condition. It is a dynamic social construct. Such a conceptualization requires a process of building, involving investment and materials, architectural design and coordination of labor, laying of foundation, and detailed finish work, as well as continuing maintenance.”

Strategies of Peace offers a “far wider, deeper, and more encompassing” definition “a far greater array of actors, activities, levels of society, links between societies, and time horizons than the dominant thinking recognizes. It involves the United Nations carrying out sanctions against terrorist groups in a way that promotes good governance, human rights, and economic development in the countries where the sanctions are targeted. It involves coordinating the international prosecution of war criminals with the need to settle a civil war and the efforts of local cultures and leaders to bring peace. It involves educating the children of the next generation so as to transform their hatred into tolerance and even friendship. It involves nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society. It involves religious actors, who are all but ignored in most current thinking on peacebuilding. it involves combating inequalities that are embedded in global structures or power and wealth. It involves trials, truth commissions, and reparations, and also apology, forgiveness, and rituals of reconciliation. Not only is the broad range of these players, practices, and periods crucial for achieving sustainable peace, each is linked to others in cause and effect, for better or for worse. Effective peacebuilding, it follows, aims to strengthen these ligatures of interdependence, accenting, deepening, and synchronizing them, and linking them further with efforts of governments and international institutions and with the broad project of building a just peace in and between societies.”

As humans, we like to classify and organize everything into neat packages because this is how we begin to fully comprehend the complexities of the world; definitions aid with this process. It is critical we understand peace so that we may create peace. If we can define something vague and abstract, such as ‘peace,’ perhaps it will be a little bit easier to put in into practice and begin to build something desired.

It can elicit latent emotion, enhance an already present emotion, describe feelings you may not know how to articulate, and draw you out of a current time and space into an alternate reality. Just look closely at any musicians’ faces as they play their instruments. It doesn’t matter what instrument, it is obvious they are passionate about and moved deeply by what they are playing. They are raw, unguarded, and connected with their core. Consequently, we can connect with them on a personal level. This association is so potent and commanding, people spend valuable time and money chasing it for months, or even years, at a time. Watch this short video and examine the musicians as they play, but more importantly, actually feel the emotions this raises. Connect with yourself.

Music also requires and coerces collaboration. I find the best collaborations to be unexpected and unusual because, if executed in a careful manner, these are what can result in the most beautiful, harmonious, creative outcomes. Think of two artists you were surprised to see work together, but ended up producing music that was reminiscent of them both, yet created a novel, unique sound and vision. Personally, one of the best examples of this Alison Krause and Robert Plant’s grammy-winning collaboration Raising Sand. These artists both have roots in blues and folk, but took alternate routes when it came to their distinct musical sounds. However, this album exemplifies what can emerge from attempting something different, from not taking the obvious route, and working together with someone you never thought you could or would. Listen to this one song off of this inspiring and interesting album.

Ask people what they can’t live without and, besides the obvious, I bet most of them will say music. Although we all have personal tastes and opinions about our choices in music, it is still one of the world’s ultimate unifiers. It has the ability to take individual, completely different units and transform them into a cohesive, beautiful whole. This statement is true for both individual instruments in a band or autonomous members of society.

Like music, building lasting peace requires being raw and unguarded with your emotions and unexpected collaborations. See what happens when you let your guard down and reach out to someone unanticipated, it could fail miserably, but it could be one of the best choices you have ever made.

After World War II, social scientists began studying the effects of contact between in-groups and out-groups in order to determine if it could positively influence prejudice and stereotypes. One of these social scientists, Thomas Pettigrew, developed his own version, Intergroup Contact Theory, based on empirical evidence, studies, and research. It discusses the four interdependent processes that “operate through contact and mediate attitude change.”

The first step is just learning about the out-group. To begin the process of improving attitudes and stereotypes, we must acquire new information about the out-group.

The second step, changing our behavior, is a difficult one. Attitude change is often contingent upon behavior change. Expectations of ourselves, whether internally or externally motivated, change according to situation, consequently, we also change our behavior dependent on the different circumstances we are placed in throughout our lives. These may include unexpected interactions with members of our out-group, however, old prejudices do not suddenly disappear when we are simply placed in contact with out-group members. If a situation forces us to “play nice” with those we don’t voluntarily choose to be around, we may have to participate in certain behaviors that do not necessarily feel normal or practiced. In these situations we may have to resolve this dissonance by actually altering our attitudes towards those in our out-group. A shift in attitude possibly means we will place ourselves willingly in contact with members of the out-group again. This repeated contact will hopefully reinforce a positive new attitude about the out-group.

Step number three relies on positive emotions to be effective. Generating affective ties is critical for successful intergroup contact. Think about the last time you were in proximity to someone who made you uncomfortable, angry, or irritated for any number of reasons. This anxiety can precipitate negative reactions, but if the interaction elicits positive emotions, the probability of wanting to be around that person again will increase. According to Pettigrew, those who developed friendships with out-group members “significantly more often reported having felt sympathy and admiration for the out-group.”

When you isolate yourself from an out-group, the tendency is to start believing that your immediate circle, the in-group, knows how to manage the social world best, and anything different is substandard. However, by exposing ourselves to the out-group, changing our behavior, and generating affective ties, in-group reappraisal may occur. Positive interaction may give you new insights into different and unfamiliar norms and customs, which may result in a fresh perspective, perhaps a restructuring of the way you view your in-group, and less provincial view of the out-group.

When we think of the dynamics that create in-groups, out-groups, stereotypes, and prejudices, the images that come to mind are perhaps those of segregation, civil rights, and ethnic conflict. However, these are representations of extreme stereotypes and prejudices on a grand scale. Now take them down to a micro-level, and think about the people in your out-group. They are placed in this second-rate category because of personal perceptions. The perception of our in-group is that we know what is best and believe our methods of navigating the world are most effective. Alternatively, the common view of our created out-group is that there is something fundamentally flawed about how they choose to negotiate the same world. This dichotomy can be difficult, if not impossible, to mentally restructure because it is never easy to accept we do not always have it right. We have created images of certain people, or groups of people, so powerful and persuasive it takes groups of social scientists and theories to understand how change happens under these circumstances.

I had to really contemplate who I put in my out-group category, who I continually choose to avoid. Then I had to be honest with myself about the stereotypes and prejudices I have created about these people and whether or not they are deserved or just me being stubborn about my opinions. As I repeatedly read the four stages of Pettigrew’s proposed process, I realized why he has labeled them a process and not just independent states of being. It takes deliberate time and effort to reevaluate our own in-groups and out-groups and then alter our behavior accordingly. We have to consciously move through the stages, because just doing one is insufficient, all have to be completed to successfully change our stereotypes and prejudices.

I am certainly not preaching that you must be friends with everyone you encounter. I am just trying to relate our own humble in-group, out-group dynamics to those that result in segregation and ethnic conflict. We must take the time to decide that those in our out-group are worth getting to know and then be able to admit to ourselves, and others, if you actually end up liking the people. However, this process won’t begin if you don’t make the choice to desire it.

In this 3-minute talk, cartoonist and educator Jok Church tells a moving story of his own experience developing an unexpected relationship with an out-group member.

We traveled from the populated and urban capital city to the northern region of Tigray and the very small, rural town of Edaga Arbi, where one dirt road led in and out, the school we came to assist was a 3 mile hike into the hills, electricity was a luxury, and hot water, or running water at all, was nonexistent. We discovered quickly this town was completely unfamiliar with foreigners. Anytime we left the hotel compound, children would run into their houses yelling, “forengi!!, forengi!!” (foreigner in the language of Tigrinya) and inevitably a crowd would gather and begin to faithfully follow us down the street. Some brave children would approach us, hold our hands, and try to teach us words in Tigrinya, giggling at our attempts to articulate the difficult accent. Teenagers and adults would stare at us curiously as we toured the small town, occasionally taking our pictures with their omnipresent cell phones. Even though I knew the stares and and crowds just emerged from a fierce curiosity, I still couldn’t shake the feeling of annoyance. Walking anywhere was impossible, my personal space was constantly infiltrated, communication was virtually impossible, and it felt as if there was nothing I could do.

Nothing except change my attitude. The moment things shifted for me was when I began to actually learn about the people I had been encountering daily. They immediately stopped being bystanders and started being human beings with their own histories and narratives, different than mine, yet with the same wants and needs creating threads of commonalities. I began to discover our shared humanity.

The woman who led us up and down the hill to the school was now Germanesh, a courageous woman in her 30s whose teenage son had drowned in a well years earlier and daughter who couldn’t go to college because she didn’t pass the necessary exams. Germanesh invited us over to her one-room house to share the little food she had available and we met her baby, who lay sleeping quietly, despite the numerous flies and extreme heat. While we were all strapped up in our waterproof and protective boots, she never wore shoes as she hiked the rocky, dusty terrain. Even when we got stuck in a torrential downpour, she just plowed through the mud, regardless of a thorn being wedged deeply in her foot the entire time time.

The man who came to visit us at our hotel, and we could never understand, became Abraha, a young, award-winning teacher who created a small, local public library using extremely limited resources, giving students a place to study, access to book, and ultimately, the gift of knowledge. We gave him some of the books we couldn’t use for the school library, and on our last day in Edaga Arbi, he brought us a parting gift of freshly baked bread with “thank you” on the top constructed out of strands of dough.

The young girl working at our hotel was named Salam. She was 16 and forced to move from her home in a nearby city because her father had died and her mother couldn’t care for her. She had to work in the hotel instead of attending school, yet curiously spoke some English and was happy to have some female companionship. When I gave her a copy of In Style magazine, her eyes lit up and she was fascinated by all the colorful images and strange material items crowding the pages.

The children who just previously followed us around, began to tell us their names. As we tried to create a new, shared language, we discovered Michael Jackson, 50 Cent, and Tupac are apparently universally comprehensible. Despite our extreme differences, we found something in common, something to build on, and it worked.

I tell you this story because there is a peacebuilding message attached. Building peace requires caring about others, learning their unique narratives, and developing empathy for their situations. Empathy is difficult to understand or feel if you never experience your own version of other people’s narratives, if you never walk a mile – or more – in their proverbial shoes. Empathy requires travel. We need to see the world and visit places we never considered, because then we can begin to comprehend the various worlds that exist beyond our carefully crafted, pleasant lives. Everyone has a story to tell, the question is, do we care enough to ask?

The Twenty Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea

1) There is no proactive word for nonviolence.
2) Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.
3) Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.
4) Once a state takes over religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.
5) A rebel can be defanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.
6) Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.
7) A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
8) People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.
9) A conflict between a violent and nonviolent force is a moral argument. If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, then the violent side has won.
10) The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power.
11) The longer the war lasts, the less popular it becomes.
12) The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
13) It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails.
14) All debate momentarily ends with an “enforced silence” once the first shots are fired.
15) A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.
16) Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
17) Warfare produces peace activists. A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.
18) People motivated by fear do not act well.
19) While it is perfectly feasible to convince a people faced with brutal repression to rise up in a suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance.
20) Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all volunteer professional military.
21) Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper,” without limits.
22) Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation – which is only dismissed as irrational if the violence fails.
23) Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.
24) The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
25) The hard work of beginning a movement to end war had already been done.

“The early 20th century French novelist Anatole France wrote: “War will only disappear only when men shall take no part whatever in violence and shall be ready to suffer every persecution that their abstention will bring them. It is the only way to abolish war.” As William Penn said in the 17th century, “Somebody must begin it.” One of the greatest lessons of history is that somebody already has.”

Growing up, we learned popularity was the key to survival. We needed to figure out ways to fit in and be liked, if this meant submitting to the crowd mentality against our better judgement, so be it. Hopefully, we have all grown out of the worst of this stage, however we can never really shed the influence of peer pressure. The desire to placate people and not ruffle any feathers is never absent entirely from our daily operations. To put it simply, no one wants to be “that guy,” the one to upset a group’s balance or natural rhythm, whether or not going with the flow is actually beneficial. Occasionally, or often depending on who you are, this feeling can be overwhelming and prevent us from doing something we know we should, even if it is the best option.

According to Mark Kurlansky, the best way to be “that guy” and ensure your unpopularity is to be a practitioner of nonviolence, to be a peacebuilder. He argues in his book Nonviolence Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea, “nonviolence is a marginal point of view..It has been marginalized because it is one of the rare, truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous.”

Fortunately, here in the United States, we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Our predecessors have made it possible to actively build peace through a variety of methods, so my next question relates to personal motivations. Reread the quote at the beginning of this narrative and then consider this question: Why are peacebuilders lonely? Is it because most people just accept violence as a legitimate, and often inevitable, form of conflict resolution? The majority of us do not accept violence as a means to solve our interpersonal conflicts, we don’t simply attempt “diplomatic measures” and then allow our problem to escalate quickly to a lethal level. Ironically, the same majority of people likely accept this identical practice on an interstate level.

A common conception is peace is unlikely and temporary while war is inevitable and continuous. We have chosen to marginalize peace by embracing this mentality because our actions will ultimately be dictated by this defeated attitude. Think critically about the state of the world, not just your comfortable little corner. Can we really afford to maintain the “established order?”

The world will never change if we continuously avoid being “that guy,” if we refuse to make a revolutionary idea mainstream.

Learn a lesson from this guy and start your own revolution.

2,620 people in eastern DRC were surveyed to “assess exposure to violence among the population; understand the priorities and needs of Congolese civilians affected by the conflicts; and capture attitudes about peace, social reconstruction, and transitional justice mechanisms.” Their findings give us some perspective on the extreme situation in the DRC: 55% of respondents were interrogated or persecuted by armed groups, 53% were forced to work or were enslaved, 46% were beaten by armed groups and/or threatened with death, 34% had been abducted for at least a week, 23% had witnessed an act of sexual violence, and 16% reported having experienced sexual violence. This is in addition to acute poverty, the widespread, frequent recruitment of child soldiers, the displacement of 3-4 million children, and the looting and damaging of property. All of these atrocities occur and few perpetrators are ever prosecuted, leaving survivors without justice.

However, despite this reality, 90% of the people believe peace can be achieved in Congo.

The humanity behind these statistics reveals decades of fear. Fear of starvation, fear of abduction, fear of persecution. Many have been beaten and raped, had their children stolen, their families torn apart, their entire lives destroyed. Yet, almost all of them still believe peace is a possibility. In fact, they even believe it is a probable reality. This is the power of true hope.

This boundless hope touched me. I tried to imagine having the capacity to maintain such strong optimism despite witnessing a reality that works entirely against it. I’m not sure I could, but then again I’ve never really had to hope for peace, it has always just existed.

There is an intersection between hope and peace. They do not exist in parallel realities, because for peace to exist someone had to hope for it. Someone had to believe in it strongly enough to make it happen. For us, hope might seem insufficient. At its best, it is easily dismissed as just a feeling that doesn’t require any effort or lead to any tangible positive outcomes. At its worst, it is viewed as an excuse to remain idle. This is because we think about hope from our own frame of reference. We have all experienced devastation, we have all had the complexities of life interfere with our other plans. However, despite these challenging circumstances, most of us have only known a peaceful existence removed from the daily realities of ongoing violent conflict. We also have the ability to take action to build peace, consequently, our concept of hope is different from those who have nothing else left. For people who have suffered through decades of brutal war, peace is not conventional and taking action to build peace may not be a possibility. This is when hope becomes a peacebuilding action. This is when grasping to the belief in peace is so challenging, it takes as much, if not more, effort and strength than physical action.

90% of eastern Congolese people believe peace can be achieved in Congo. Do 90% of us have the same faith in peace? If we had just a small portion of the hope the people of the Congo seem to possess, we wouldn’t be so complacent about peace. We wouldn’t just assume its existence or disregard it as an unachievable, idealistic goal. We would hope for it and believe in it enough to take action, simply because we can.

After looking at the headlines and reading the two articles mentioned, I had my mind made up that this was another obvious case of discrimination by a Christian organization. However, anyone who has ever been in a conflict knows there are always multiple sides to a story, so I investigated this further and read the public statement as well as the FAQs on Sojourners International’s website, posted in response to the negative public backlash against its decision. I found that the full story is not as cut and dry as was publicized and I encourage you to research this story for yourself so that you may draw your own conclusions.

The issue of discussion here is not who is right or wrong, nor is it which of these organizations should change their opinions and actions. You can also be sure I am not trying to shape your opinion, as I am trying to come to my own conclusions. Rather, my intention is to put this in the context of peacebuilding by highlighting how easy it is to recreate actions you believe are characteristic of your perceived opposition. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community continues to fight for acceptance and tolerance in a variety of forms and has experienced particularly harsh discrimination from specific sects of the religious arena, so it is not unfathomable that this story was published not only for its its connection to a civil rights issue, but for its strategic value of attracting large amounts of attention as well. However, it seems that instead of trying to present both sides of the argument fully and accurately, the two mentioned news sources chose to present the given information in a manner intended to stoke an already inflammatory issue. The problem with this method is that in the process of trying to further a cause that promotes acceptance and tolerance, these sources ended up stirring my existing feelings of disgust towards those “Christians” who claim to believe in God, but damn all “those homos” to Hell. I can easily justify my own intolerance, but apply my justifications to a larger scale, and the result is a substantial increase in the level of global animosity. Perhaps I’m being naive, but this outcome seems to be antithetical to what appears to be the LGBTQ community’s ultimate goal of coexisting in a manner that respects everyone’s unique differences.

This post was not meant to disseminate the notion I that the LGBTQ community does not experience discrimination. Additionally, I am certainly not defending any of this behavior and believe we should never stop trying to eradicate it. However, I still hold the opinion that there are ways to present and handle any sensitive topic without consciously generating or provoking feelings of hate. We cannot claim to agree with a cause while simultaneously sabotaging it elsewhere. Actions really do speak louder than words and if we want peace in this world, we need to choose our actions wisely otherwise we will become what we hoped never to be.

This got me thinking about how simple acts of kindness collaborate with building peace. Perhaps the concept of “peace” is too vague or seems so vast, it is perceived to be unobtainable. Actually achieving peace in this world may require altering expectations or perhaps even just something as simple as terminology. Maybe we just need to make “peace” more familiar, more modest, more obtainable. Let’s start with renaming it “kindness.” Peacebuilding should not be perceived as something that only occurs between nations and governments, because this rationale leaves us, human beings, out of the equation. It is then easy to forget that some of the most important peacebuilding actions are those that occur between individuals. These person-to-person acts of kindness are what larger peace processes are built upon and keeping this in mind as we go about our daily lives is crucial, because we can and should build peace, one act, one person at a time, every day.

My mother seems to have it right with her ‘kindness curriculum” because bullying in schools has become a hot-button issue in this country recently. 18 million children are bullied in the U.S. every year and many organizations have taken steps to combat this widespread, destructive phenomenon and instead create a culture of acceptance and kindness. Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, directed a movie named The Bully Project, to remind us that being kind to one another really matters, can build peace, and make a world of difference individually and collectively.

Please watch The Bully Project’s trailer, follow five bullied kids and their families over the course of a school year, and experience the disastrous consequences of choosing to treat others without kindness.

Watch this short Nightline video to get a lesson in Bonobo peacebuilding.
Bonobo Chimps Practicing Conflict Resolution

Personally, I chose to view this book as a way to highlight the peacebuilding work women undertake all over the world, mostly without recognition or fame, as well as a way to incorporate the crucial female perspective into peacebuilding processes when too often it is omitted. It did, however, get me thinking about gender stereotypes and if peacebuilding practice and literature creates them or simply accentuates present differences. There is no doubt that women must be included in peace processes, but why? One explanation is because we are natural caregivers with a higher capacity to love. However, this explanation is too one dimensional for me, because even if this were true of all women, this does not mean all women are destined to be good at building peace. So, the discussion here is not necessarily if women are better at building peace than men, it’s more about how we are different at building peace than men. It’s about how we choose to implement our unique perspective and creative voice.

Iraqi born Zainab Salbi believes in women’s voices and our capabilities to build peace. This is why she founded Women for Women International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping women in war torn regions rebuild their lives and communities. Women for Women International helps women who are survivors of war and conflict learn the skills necessary to become economically self sufficient with its direct aid program, rights education, job skills training, and small business development.

Salbi discusses the femininity of war in this TED video: Women, wartime, and the dream of peace.

Anderlini supports Salbi and all women with this statement, “Yet, in acknowledging women’s experiences of violence, we cannot overlook or ignore their resilience, sense of self dignity, desire for survival, and struggle to move beyond passive victimhood. In the words of on United Nation’s officer, “in crisis situations, the women are the best humanitarian workers.” They are also among the most committed peacebuilders. We must recognize, respect, and support their efforts.”

After thinking about women, our role in peacebuilding, and whether this is a stereotypical feminine practice and consequently forces us into a role we might not want to play, I came to the conclusion that men and women are different. Our biological, social, mental, physical, and hormonal differences cause us to behave according to our given sex/gender. Whether the ways we operate are inherent or socially constructed does not really matter in the context of peacebuilding and focusing on this aspect can actually detract from important work that needs to be done. What does matter to me is that because of our variances we have the opportunity to include a multitude of views and voices at the table contributing to the pertinent, challenging, and powerful conversation about building peace. Men bring certain individual capabilities and women, as evidenced by Anderlini and Salbi, bring others, equally as valuable. Sometimes these capabilities overlap and sometimes they don’t but the distinctions are what lead to variety and creativity in action. So, I say, yield to our differences, maybe even celebrate them because then we will not relegate women’s observed unique capabilities into a stereotype.

American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead considered war’s place in this world and raised the question: Is war a biological necessity, a sociological inevitability, or just a bad invention?

“…I wish to urge another point of view, less defeatist perhaps than the first and third, and more accurate than the second: that is that warfare, by which I mean recognized conflict between two groups as groups, in which each group puts an army…into the field to fight and kill, if possible, some members of the army of the other group – that warfare of this sort is an invention like any other of the inventions in terms of which we order our lives, such as writing, marriage, cooking our food instead of eating it raw, trial by jury or burial of the dead, and so on.”

- Margaret Mead

This position offers an alternative to the argument that war is an attribute of humanity rather than only a bad invention just waiting for another better one to render it obsolete, as is what typically happens with most poorly conceptualized inventions.

However, to know human nature is to accept that “once an invention is known and accepted, men do not easily relinquish it.” Knowing this, how can we begin to challenge the invention of war and bring something new to the table? Margaret Mead advises us, “For this, two conditions at least are necessary. The people must recognize the defects of the old invention, and someone must make a new one…There is further needed a belief that social invention is possible and the invention of new methods which will render warfare as out of date as the tractor is making the plow, or the motor car the horse and buggy.”

Everyone has heard the old saying, attributed to Plato, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” In this context, we must insist on “inventing,” or even “reinventing,” peace, on necessitating its revival while giving it relevance for our time. This is what will lead us away from the anachronistic, destructive forces of war and towards more peaceful methods of solving conflicts. These methods are arguably more difficult to fathom and practice simply because they are not already in our frame of reference, but critical nonetheless.

War as a biological necessity and/or sociological inevitability assumes it must and will happen for a variety of reasons, regardless of human interference or choice, whereas the alternative concept of “invention” leaves room for more human participation, engagement, and the freedom to decide, to choose a different, more progressive invention. It leaves room for creativity. Humans are not slave to one path, to one method of solving conflict. In fact, the reality is just the opposite, we are capable of much more, especially when we least expect it, but this requires a choice. Who do you want to be and where do you want to go?

The Peace Machine - Kid Invention created by Peter and Lori of St. Julie Billiart. Only $200 for a whole city of peace! It solves violence using peace! Together, We can make it happen! Rid our cities of senseless violence!!

The Peace Chip - Young inventors - Overseas Children's School. The peace chip is a device, that when implanted in a person's body through surgery makes the person hate war and fighting, and like peace. This has no side effects, and can be very useful for criminals and bad people. The chip is placed in the leg. $5 for a Chip + $250 for the surgery - Adding up to a total of $255.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

I read the book The Moral Imagination, written by John Paul Lederach, an internationally renowned peacebuilding scholar and practitioner, for a class in graduate school and it became one of my favorites, particularly because of one powerful short story. In this compelling narrative, Lederach uses the well-known story of one man in Sarajevo, Vedran Smailovic, to exemplify how a courageous and creative act can convey hope and strength and even change the tide of seemingly intractable situations.

“On May 27, 1992, in the center of Sarajevo, a bread shop opened for a few short hours. A long queue snaked from the door out into the streets as people waited…on a hill miles away, snipers locked their sights down on the bread line. A shell exploded at the feet of the people waiting. As people scrambled to help the injured, the snipers began to shoot emergency workers and anyone who ventured near the explosion. Twenty-two people died. The bread store was in the neighborhood of Vedran Smailovic…he rushed to the square that afternoon and passed a frightful night of anguish watching more neighbors die senselessly.

He recounted, “Filled with sorrow, I eventually fell asleep at dawn, and was awakened by new explosions and the shouts of my neighbors, who were awake carrying children and blankets to shelters. I went to the shelter myself and returned home after the shelling was over. I washed my face and hands, shaved, and without thinking, put on my white shirt, black evening suit and white bow tie, took my cello and left home. Looking at the new ruins, I arrived at the place of the massacre. It was adorned with flowers, wreaths and peace messages; there were posters on local shops saying who had been killed. On a nearby table was a solemn book of condolences, which people were signing. I opened my cello case and sat down, not knowing what I would play. Full of sadness and grief, I lifted my bow and spontaneously made music.”

When his spontaneous playing was done, Smailovic discovered that people had gathered to listen near the square. Around coffee late that evening close friends told him how meaningful it was and begged him to play again, that they felt better when he played…he decided to return to the Bread Massacre Square and play every day for twenty-two days in a row, one for each person killed in the massacre. Shelling never ceased during those days, but neither did his music…on one occasion, during a lull in the shelling, a TV news reporter approached the cellist seated in the square and asked, “Aren’t you crazy for playing music while they are shelling Sarajevo?” Smailovic responded, “Playing music is not crazy. Why don’t you go ask those people if they are not crazy, shelling Sarajevo while I sit here playing my cello.”

…A creative act that transcended the madness of violence, was found in the hands of a cellist who sat fast in the midst of the geography of hate.”

It was because of this pervasive notion that I decided to create a space for those who choose to build peace in this world every day; to give real-life examples of those putting this abstract idea into practice. This is challenging work that requires so much personal commitment and creativity, it is often difficult to remain inspired and dedicated. My hope is that Critical Peace can be a place devoted to reminding you why you do what you do, as well as simply provide a little more insight into the peacebuilding world. It is critical we understand peace so that we may create peace, however we choose to do so.