Read Stop the Next War Now Online

Authors: Medea Benjamin

Stop the Next War Now (8 page)

BOOK: Stop the Next War Now
5.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

The balance may change over time, with periods of more peaceable behavior following periods of more violent behavior. It cannot be said that humans are innately peaceful or aggressive. Both capacities are there. It is socialization, the process by which society rears its children and shapes the attitudes and behaviors of its members of all ages, that determines how peacefully or violently individuals and institutions handle the problems that every human community faces in the daily work of maintaining itself.

It seems that in spite of the visibility of violence and war, many are able to see past that violence to a different future world. People who cannot imagine peace will not know how to work for it. Those who can imagine it are using that same imagination to devise practices and strategies that will render war obsolete. The importance of the imagination cannot be overestimated.

Peace cultures, however, are not just a figment of the imagination. They exist in daily life and habitual interaction as people get on with their lives and work, negotiating differences rather than engaging in interminable battles over just how to solve each problem as it comes up. Aggressive posturing slows down problem solving. Violence is more visible and gets more attention in our history books and in our media than peace does. But a peace culture will take us where we want to go.

Kenneth Boulding always used to say, “What exists is possible.” Since peace cultures exist, they are possible. If we want the world to be one planetary zone of peace, full of adventure and the excitement of dealing with diversity and difference, without violence, humans can make it so.

BUILDING A JUST AND

 

CARING WORLD:

 

FOUR CORNERSTONES

RIANE EISLER

Dr. Riane Eisler, a scholar and an activist, is the author of the international best seller
The Chalice and the Blade
, as well as the award-winning
Tomorrow’s Children
and
The Power of Partnership
. She is the president of the Center for Partnership Studies and cofounder of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence. A different version of this essay first appeared in
Tikkun
, May-June 1998.

 

Throughout our history, human beings have experimented with almost every kind of society imaginable, from pacifist communities to totalitarian states, with a thousand variations in between. For all their unique peculiarities, though, most of our attempts at civilization have taken on one of two shapes; I call these configurations the “dominator model” and the “partnership model.”

In societies ruled by the dominator model, we often find top-down authoritarianism (strongman rule), the subordination of a large portion of the population to another portion, and a high degree of institutionalized (or built-in) violence, whether in the form of wife and child beating or warfare and terrorism. At the partnership side of the spectrum—and it is always a matter of degree—societies are organized in a more democratic way, economically as well as politically, with everyone equally valued. Stereotypically feminine values such as caring and nonviolence (considered “unmanly” in the dominator model) are highly regarded, whether they are embodied in women or men. And partnership-based societies are less violent. (For examples, see Sweden, Finland, and Norway.)

Given their markedly different qualities, can one model ever hope to become its opposite? you might wonder. If we find ourselves in a dominator-style society, how do we transform it into a culture that prioritizes partnership? We can begin to build this new structure by putting into place four cornerstones.

THE FIRST CORNERSTONE: CHILDHOOD RELATIONS

We are learning that the physical structure of the brain—including the neural pathways that determine not only intelligence but also creativity, predisposition to violent or nonviolent behaviors, empathy or insensitivity, venturesomeness or overconformity—is not set at birth but is largely determined while we’re young children. We are also learning that coercive, inequitable, and violent child rearing—what I call dominator child rearing—is fundamental to the imposition and maintenance of a coercive, inequitable, and chronically violent social and cultural organization.

This knowledge has enormous implications for social policy. It is through our intimate relations that we learn how to feel, think, and behave in all human relations, be they personal or political. If these relations are violent, children learn early on that violence committed by those who are more powerful against those who are less powerful is acceptable as a means of dealing with conflicts and problems.

What’s needed is no less than a global campaign against intimate violence and the abuse of children. We must educate an international audience about the consequences of violence at an early age, and we must provide both women and men with the knowledge and skills necessary for empathic, nonviolent, and equitable child rearing. We must enact and enforce laws criminalizing child abuse, as well as legislation funding education for better child rearing. We must change the mass media, first by raising awareness about routine representations of violence in movies and television shows. And we must persuade spiritual and religious leaders to take a moral stand on this pivotal issue of intimate violence—the violence that every year blights, and all too often takes, the lives of millions of children and women and perpetuates cycles of violence in all relations. This is the mission of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (www.saiv.net).

THE SECOND CORNERSTONE: GENDER RELATIONS

How a society understands the roles and relations of women and men is central to the construction of every social institution, from the family to organized religions to the government. Not only do gender relations underlie a society’s fundamental value system, but they can also have a profound impact on the nation’s general quality of life. For example,
Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life
—a study by the Center for Partnership Studies (www.part nershipway.org), based on statistics from eightynine nations—found that the status of women can predict the general quality of life in any given state better than GDP or GNP, the conventional measures of economic health.

When societies with institutionalized gender discrimination claim that they prioritize caring, compassion, and nonviolence, their pronouncements are often only rhetoric; in practice, these kinds of partnership values, which tend to be associated with women, remain subordinate as long as women themselves are excluded from governing.

This is not to say that women possess fundamentally different qualities than men. Both women and men exhibit stereotypically feminine traits, such as caring and nonviolence, and both genders engage in so-called women’s work, such as caring for a family’s health and maintaining a clean environment. However, in societies adhering closely to the dominator model, these activities are considered appropriate only for women and inappropriate for “real men.”

In recent decades we have seen a strong movement toward real partnership between men and women in all spheres of life, along with a blurring of rigid gender distinctions. Men are nurturing babies, and women are entering positions of leadership. But this movement is still slow and localized; in some cultures and subcultures it’s fiercely, even violently, opposed (by certain fundamentalist leaders, for example).

To continue to make change, the world’s progressive leaders must prioritize a global campaign for equitable and nonviolent gender relations. Valuing so-called women’s issues has enormous implications for the environment, the peace process, economic equity, and political democracy. As long as boys and men are socialized to equate “real masculinity” with violence and control— be it through “heroic” epics or war toys or violent and brutal television shows—how can we realistically expect to end the arms buildups that are today bankrupting our world as well as the terrorism and aggressive warfare that threaten our species’ survival?

THE THIRD CORNERSTONE: ECONOMIC RELATIONS

It makes no sense to talk of hunger and poverty in generalities when the mass of the world’s poor and the poorest of the poor are women and children. Many studies show that in most regions of the developing world women allocate far more of their resources to their families than men do. Development policies need to shift their focus to women, and we must include the work of caring and caregiving—still performed primarily by women worldwide as part of the “informal” economy—in national and international systems of economic measurement and accounting (since they are not included in either GDP or GNP).

We should encourage and reward economic and social inventions that assign value to caring and caregiving work in both the market and nonmarket economic sectors. For example, we have national programs to train soldiers to kill people—and we offer these soldiers pensions. By contrast, we have no national programs to train women and men to effectively care for children—even though we have gained solid scientific knowledge about what is and is not effective and humane child care.

People need meaningful work. Is there any more important or meaningful work than caring for other humans, particularly our children, and for our natural environment? In the dominator model, work is motivated primarily by fear and the artificial creation of scarcities through wars and misallocations and misdistributions of resources. Redefining what productive work is allows us to imbue work with what it lacks in a dominator system: a spiritual dimension.

THE FOURTH CORNERSTONE: BELIEFS, STORIES, AND SPIRITUALITY

As more and more of us come to realize that partnership is a viable possibility for human society, our understanding of spirituality may change radically: not merely an escape to otherworldly realms, spirituality offers us the opportunity for active engagement in creating a better world right here on earth.

But to spread this consciousness will require what I have called spiritual courage: the courage of political, religious, educational, and business leaders to actively oppose injustice and cruelty in all spheres of life. We must summon great bravery to end domination and violence not only in international relations but also in intimate relations, not only in the so-called public sphere of politics and business but also in the so-called private sphere of parent-child, gender, and sexual relations. Domination and violence have been with many of us a long time—they may still be part of our most deeply ingrained traditions—and challenging this heritage will be unpopular at best, dangerous at worst.

But it must be done.

Only if we consciously and concertedly build these four foundations for a partnership way of living can we move from a violent dominator culture to a more equitable, peaceful, and sustainable future for ourselves, our children, and generations still to come.

“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it.

 

And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”

 

—Eleanor Roosevelt

“If we despair over the way in which war seems such an ingrained

 

habit of most of the human race, we can take comfort from the fact that

 

a poor invention will usually give place to a better invention.

 

—Margaret Mead

THE CHALLENGE

 

OF EDUCATING FOR PEACE

JOAN ALMON

Joan Almon is the U.S. coordinator of the Alliance for Childhood. She is a Waldorf kindergarten master teacher and the chair of the Waldorf Kindergarten Association.The following is reprinted with permission of the Alliance for Childhood (www.allianceforchildhood.org).

 

American children, fed a nonstop toxic diet of electronic-media images, are increasingly fearful about the threats of war, terrorism, crime, and other forms of violence. The threats, in some cases, are real. In other ways, they are greatly exaggerated by our preoccupation with violence and gore, which inundates children daily on television, movie, and video-game screens.

Today, parents and teachers are asking for an antidote.

In the past few years, the United States has changed from a confident nation to one beset by fear. In times of fear we tend either to seek security and hide away or to rush forward and attack. But those are not the only options. Many parents and teachers are asking how we can help children face the world with courage and equanimity. How can we educate them for a life of caring and compassion when the news is so full of stories of hatred, revenge, and cruelty? How can we prepare them to work through conflicts in creative ways?

The answer is a new national commitment to peace education. Teaching about peace can touch the lives of children at every level—in the home and at school, in both local and global communities.

It is easy to teach children about war. It is much more challenging to teach them how to create peace. In war, we draw lines and barricade ourselves against the enemy. Educating for peace means building bridges between people across every divide, including ethnic, racial, religious, and national lines.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks—and amid ubiquitous talk of war—many new toys and games that glorify violence have appeared in stores. Examples include Forward Command Post, marketed by Ever Sparkle Industrial Toys, with a two-foot-tall dollhouse that looks like a typical American home—but one that’s been bombed out and turned into battlefield headquarters. J.C. Penney, at its online site, recommends the $44.99 Command Post for children ages five and up, and notes that it’s loaded with realistic toy weapons and other battlefield gear. J.C. Penney’s site also promotes World Peace Keepers Battle Station, which includes “everything needed to stage a battle,” including a cannon with battery-generated light and sound effects. That one is recommended for ages three and up.

These kinds of toys “focus children’s play on violent themes, undermine lessons adults teach, and bring in scary real-world themes young children cannot fully understand,” notes the
Toy Action Guide
recently published by Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children’s Entertainment (truce), a national organization of educators concerned with how toys and entertainment affect children’s play and behavior.

BOOK: Stop the Next War Now
5.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

What You Leave Behind by Jessica Katoff
A fine and bitter snow by Dana Stabenow
Flight of the Earls by Michael K. Reynolds
Blood Feud by J.D. Nixon
Wilding by Erika Masten
Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
Parsifal's Page by Gerald Morris