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Tieing it together: Peacebuilding and the words of Deepak Chopra

Some things are more important than me, or my website. Well, many things are... and Peace is one of them. Indeed, an unpolluted world HAS to be a peaceful one. So I've joined a peace site and here's some stuff I'd like to relate to the world:
Spreading the word is what it's about... so here it goes:

John Wilmerding made the post called The Therory of Actice Peace on On iPeace -- which is now gone???

and Jean posted some words from Deepak Chopra: 

9 Steps to Peace for Obama in the New Year
2 January 2009

by Deepak Chopra, Tikkun, 1 Jan 2009.
 

Enjoy -emett


Deepak Chopra
PEACE

You have been elected by the first anti-war constituency since 1952, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected after promising to end the Korean War. But ending a war isn’t the same as bringing peace. America has been on a war footing since the day after Pearl Harbor, 67 years ago. We spend more on our military than the next 16 countries combined. If you have a vision of change that goes to the heart of this country’s deep problems, ending our dependence on war is far more important than ending our dependency on foreign oil.

The most immediate changes are economic. Unless it can make as much money as war, peace doesn’t stand a chance. Since aerospace and military technologies remain the United States’ most destructive export, fostering wars around the world, what steps can we take to reverse that trend and build a peace-based economy?

1. Scale out arms dealing and make it illegal by the year 2020.

2. Write into every defense contract a requirement for a peacetime project.

3. Subsidize conversion of military companies to peaceful uses with tax incentives and direct funding.

4. Convert military bases to housing for the poor.

5. Phase out all foreign military bases.

6. Require military personnel to devote part of their time to rebuilding infrastructure.

7. Call a moratorium on future weapons technologies.

8. Reduce armaments like destroyers and submarines that have no use against terrorism and were intended to defend against a superpower enemy that no longer exists.

9. Fully fund social services and take the balance out of the defense and homeland security budgets.

These are just the beginning. We don’t lack creativity in coping with change. Without a conversion of our present war economy to a peace economy, the high profits of the military-industrial complex ensures that it will never end.

Do these nine steps seem unrealistic or fanciful? In various ways, other countries have adopted similar measures. The former Soviet army is occupied with farming and other peaceful work, for example. But comparisons are rather pointless, since only the United States is burdened with such a massive reliance on defense spending. Ultimately, empire follows the dollar. As a society, we want peace, and we want to be seen as a nation that promotes peace. For either ideal to come true, you as president must back up your vision of change with economic reality. So far, that hasn’t happened under any of your predecessors. All hopes are pinned on you.


Deepak Chopra is acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest leaders in the field of mind-body medicine. He is the author of over 50 books, including Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment and Ageless Body, Timeless Mind.

Source: IMAGINEPEACE.com


Here follows the Active Peace post by John W.:

The Theory of Active Peace
Posted by John Wilmerding on January 4, 2009 at 12:28am in Uncategorized
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Presented here, for comment and discussion, are the five developmental stages toward Active Peace.

[0. 'Surface' -- conformity without question. Unconsciousness, unawareness, denial, or opposition to issues of social conscience involving violence, oppression, subjugation.]

1. 'Aquiescence' -- You know there is something wrong, but take no action, or it doesn't affect how you live your life. Your response is to remain 'quiet' to others and within yourself. "Things have always been this way ... there is nothing that I or anyone else can do to change them."

2. 'Pacifism' -- You are no longer quiet within yourself. Your discomfiture with violence, oppression, etc. begins to affect how you live your life. You might turn the other cheek in a fight, for example. You are likely to witness to others (and to yourself) that organized violence and oppression is wrong.

3. 'Passive Nonviolent Resistance' -- Many or all of your private decisions become influenced or governed by conscience. 'Conscientious objection'. You make changes in your own behavior by reasons of conscience but are not necessarily social about it, or don't publicly, systematically cite your actions or your reasons for them. It's also akin to the concept of 'standing aside' or of 'abstaining' on a vote.

4. 'Active Nonviolent Resistance' -- You take social leadership in attempting to thwart the forces of violence, oppression, and subjugation, or join with others who do, publicly, and attempting to spread the word about the initiative and get others to take part.

5. The triad of 'Active Peace':

5A. 'Peacemaking' -- the transformation of conflicts away from violence, oppression, and subjugation by social and political means. Mediation, conferencing, circles peacemaking, and kindred 'encounter' forms. 'Workshop' methods such as AVP can also be effective. There are hybrid forms (encounter/workshop) such as HROC, a spinoff of AVP in Rwanda.

5B. 'Peacekeeping' -- Nonviolent Accompaniment. Need not be organized or public in its motivations, but is more effective when it is done publicly, and the reasons are publicized. [Not what the UN does with guns and uniforms, though they call it that.] Most well-know exemplars are Nonviolent Peaceforce, the proposed Canadian Civilian Peace Service, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Muslim Peacemaker Teams. "Why are the missiles called peacekeepers when they're aimed to kill?" -- Tracy Chapman

5C. 'Peacebuilding' -- Sustainable Development -- providing for human needs so that the associated conflicts involving sustaining life (land, water, food, health care, etc.) are ameliorated or eliminated. Fair Trade as opposed to '"free trade". Local economic initiatives. Local alternative currencies. Barter economies. 'Organic' agriculture. Methods of redistribution of wealth, including economic stimuli, may be useful on the way to more synergistic outcomes where the weal is more naturally held and distributed in common.

One interesting aspect of the five-stages theory seems to be that the next one only becomes visible or understandable to you once you have attained the one before. In this way, each stage represents a 'perspective', both individual and social, and social 'organisms' can be said to progress through the stages as well as individual ones.

Another dynamic is that, for various psychological reasons I won't go into here, people or social groups can vary in how they move through the stages, and sometimes regress. However, my understanding is that one one has a firm purchase on a stage, retrogression becomes much more unlikely. Human beings and social organizations are very complex, however, so there is still much more to learn about how to bring everyone into higher stages. Education about these things is both inevitable and necessary.

Of the five stages, only Active Peace -- stage V -- can accurately be interpreted as 'the ocean of light flowing over the ocean of darkness.'

Congratulations and acknowledgements go out to Gray Cox for first writing about Active Peace, and to Johan Galtung for his work in refining the development of the triadic theory -- peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding. Incidentally, many peace studies and conflict transformation programs throughout the world use these terms interchangably, and therefore inaccurately and misleadingly. Of those who do, the ones most likely to do so are those influenced by governmental or corporatist entities and agents.

It is crucial that these terminologies be used accurately and consistently in order that humanity as a whole might progress toward Active Peace -- or alternatively (as some see it) recover Active Peace as our natural state.

like it? I do... and I'm all the more inspired.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

On the road to peace there are places where we have to stop and catch our breath and look up, slightly up and far into the peaceful future... to try to see the goal. If we're on the right path at all, then looking ahead, which is one of many things our brains are so good at, will help to show us the way.

Nobody in all the history and prehistory of humanity has been as farsighted as Deepak Chopra, as this post here shows.

Things that are "normal" and necessary" and "honorable" and have to do with the life of an average human, like economic issues are so stuck right now. The economy is feeding the war machine, polluting as it goes, taking what it wants and needs, and it doesn't care about human life, or the planet. It must be changed.

I like the tai-chi of it. It can't be stopped... it all has to be redirected. This post show us some more of where to push it all.

Individuals have all the power, the power to not shoot the gun, not train with the gun, not teach the gun, not buy or sell the gun, not make the gun... if only everybody could just stop, all at once, right now... but they can't, so we re-direct, they need a new livelihood, like Deepak said: farming, helping, making other things, living.  Assisting others to breathe easier. 

we're pushing humanity towards peace... that way. I feel the hope.

we have to keep the children safe, and far far far away from violence. Some kinds of violence are a part of nature, and we can show them those things, at the right age. People, kids, need the truth, but we shouldn't have children out there getting scarred by growing up with war all around. Violence towards humans becomes the norm for them and that's terrible for them, us, and the world.

Can't we help them get away?

I hope the money and economies that feed the war machine and the war mongers all get redirected to peacebuilding.

we're so smart and we keep learning. we're so connected, we're so so stuck on this little tiny marble rolling through a space so vast, and we're stuck together. I hope we can make it last, and enjoy the ride and each others' company.....

it's sad really, there should be (there is) money enough for us all to live and pursue our dreams and happiness, to live as greatly as possible... with love and in the light of love,

with peace and in the light and love of it -e

Views: 32

Comment by Emett on June 10, 2014 at 3:32am

Hey, this good stuff..  I killed dead links and edited it today.  Just fishing for views now...

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