I really left it till the last moment. I hadn't read half the books, half as thoroughly as I would have like but, hey! I was too busy living.
I went to the main university library Monday. It was deserted, pretty much. Found a few of the books I wanted: Kant's 'Perpetual Peace', Barash, Weil. They didn't have Hinsley or 'The Meaning of Meaning' (a classic text on the subject). Amazing. Lost. (Neither did the college library when I went there later.) Still I read TMOM once upon a time and there is a crib of sorts in Wikepedia.
Tuesday I assembled my essay plan. I had the idea of constructing the essay as Language, Concept and Reality. First I would introduce the semiotic triangle (TMOM), then have a section about 'peace' as a word (indo-european root and all that), then a section about the concepts that the word is used to 'symbolise' ( to use the jargon) and then about the reality that these concepts were 'refer' to.
Wednesday I wrote the beast. I started with the introduction, as I have been taught. Write an account of what the essay is going to about. I did that. The centre of gravity of the essay was always intended to be an analysis of the conceptions of peace used in the 'conflict resolution' community, so that is probably where I should have gone next. I didn't. I started of with the philosophy of meaning and the linguistics of peace and got a bit lost and used up a lot of words and became tired. Half the day was gone. Started with Michael Bank's conceptions and started to get fired up. Realised that I would have change my plan. Hell, I was enjoying this. I should write about something I'm fired up about. So I changed plan. Its late in the day now. I decided to dump my attempt at 'A history of peace' and replace it with an analysis of JFK's big speech on peace. Much more fun. So this took me most of the way. When did I decide to include a reference to Prem Rawat? Not until the end really. When I looked at quotes I was glad I hadn't tried to construct a concept of peace and that I acknowledged the utility of conflict resolution, even if it is not 'peace'. To bed at 3.15 am.
Thursday I tried to polish it up. I like it. Given more time I think I would have cut some stuff out and clarified and developed the argument more but hey! its done. Its a polemical (look it up) rather than a scholarly piece, given that I make an argument and seek to support it, rather that weigh up the pros and cons of contending meanings. But that's the way it came out and I don't think I would change if I could. Perhaps there is too much opinion and I didn't conduct my analysis in the manner of an academic in the 'conflict resolution' community. It will be marked down. It was when I had a rant about the Chinese military buildup. But here it is...[footnotes missing]
What is the meaning of peace?
Introduction
In this paper I will be considering which of the many conceptions of peace should be considered to be the meaning of peace. First, I will review the way the word is used in different discourses and then I will critically evaluate explicit concepts of peace as principally as expounded by John F Kennedy, Michael Banks, Johan Galtung and Pierre Weil. And present some remarks on the subject from Prem Rawat. My argument will be that the way peace is conceptualised should serve a purpose: to facilitate the achievement of peace. I will therefore reject possible meanings that have been found impossible of achievement; I will also reject meanings that are capable of achievement but fall short of qualifying as genuine peace.
My conclusion will be that of all the formulations offered, none pass both tests wholly satisfactorily. None of them both qualify as genuine peace and have evidence of attainability. Pierre Weil’s concept of holistic peace may reach towards a fruitful conception of genuine peace, but fails, in my opinion, through lack of evidence of attainability. Michael Bank’s concept of peace as conflict management has the benefit of attainability, but fails to qualify as genuine peace. So what are we left with? The concept that emerges from my analysis of Michael Bank’s peace as harmony most closely resembles my own view. A view, as yet, unsupported in the literature, but most clearly enunciated by Prem Rawat.
The language of peace
Peace has long been a word of diplomacy: The Peace of Boulogne (1550) and more recently peace talks, peace negotiations and peace settlements. It is a legal word: in time of peace as in time of war is a recurring phrase in the Geneva Conventions . It is also a sacred word (sometimes capitalized to indicate this): the Prince of Peace and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding , from the King James version of the Bible. It is a word (sometimes hyphenated, sometimes conjoined) much used to describe the activities of various military and civil security institutions: peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building. It is a word that at one time appeared frequently in political oratory. In 1963 President John F Kennedy used the word forty-nine times in one short speech at American U using the phrases such as Pax Americana, genuine peace, community peace, institutions of peace and world peace . It is a word adopted by various militaries: the US Air Force named its multiple re-entry MX missile system the Peacekeeper, the Israeli military high command designated its 1982 deployment of forces into Lebanon Operation Peace in Galilee, US Army thinkers now talk of the need to win the peace and their paymasters the phrase peace dividend. It is a word adopted by a certain counter-cultural or non-conformist elements with the peace sign, peace camp and peace movement. With peace gardens and days of peace. And in reaction: the term peacenik. Finally, of course, the word appears in the literature and practice of Conflict Resolution: negative peace, positive peace, holistic peace. The use of the word peace may be going out of fashion in certain spheres; peace to be replaced with security or stability, peace studies with conflict studies and what might have been called the All Party Parliamentary Group for Peace became the APPG for Conflict Issues .
Some would argue that the word peace is sometimes being ‘abused’ here. You can do that with words. Especially evocative words like peace, freedom and love. Some would argue that peace movements are really just rebellious civil unrest movements, that the Peacemaker missile was really a particularly powerful nuclear weapon system. Fair enough. These usages seek to promote one conception of peace at the expense of another. They are a form of advocacy. Their advocates belief that their conception will lead to the prize of peace, however they conceive it.
Concepts of peace
So now it is time to move on from the linguistic to the conceptual. What kinds of peace are there? As shown above there are many different discourses that utilize the word peace. To appraise the merits of the contending conceptions of peace we may consider not only what information about peace is being offered, what is the impulse behind the offering of the conception and the intended effect of the message on the audience. As Russell says, language is used for three purposes: to indicate facts, to express the state of the speaker and to alter the state of the hearer .
John F Kennedy
As a representative of international political discourse addressing the nature of peace, and the best way to achieve it, I have chosen President John F Kennedy’s Commencement Address at the American University given 10 June 1963.
After a jokey preamble he starts by reminding the audience about of the importance of peace. “I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. ” He immediately addresses the issue of the multiplicity of conceptions of peace. “What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? ” Here we are. We need to know what kind of peace, what meaning of peace, so we can find it. He starts by eliminating some misconceptions. “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. ” No comment. “Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. ” Ruling out ideas that nuclear war or surrender to communism could be considered peace. I can hear his voice now, “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. ” So we have a concept of a peace that is not only does the things peace should do, like make life worth living, but is also for everybody and for all time. But the concept is not fully articulated. There is no indication of how we are to reach this desired end state. First, though, he reminds the audience of why we need peace, as though his description is not alluring enough. Indicating, perhaps, that we are going to think the carrot not tasty enough and that the stick will be required too. “I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.” Yes, this is scary but it also implies that genuine peace would be off the table if only Soviet nuclear weapons could be neutralised somehow. That actually Pax Americana is the real peace, but in the circumstances the audience will have to settle for genuine peace. Perhaps he doesn’t really believe in genuine peace, but hopes some of his audience do.
He then talks of world law and world disarmament, but essentially rejects these as visions of a peaceful world because the Soviets won’t play ball (I paraphrase). He then makes a nod to peace education and his version of looking inward “… every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward, by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the course of the cold war and towards freedom and peace here at home. ” This is a conception of peace through thinking about peace. But he doesn’t want the audience to think about the wrong things. “I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will which some fantasies and fanatics dream ”. Rejecting pacifism and revolution as paths to peace.
Now he sets out the vision of peace he thinks the audience should adopt. “Genuine peace, must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process – a way of solving problems. With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. ” It is ‘practical’, ‘attainable’ but is it the genuine peace he held out to the audience before? It sounds a lot like coexistence to me.
By any standard this speech was a tour de force, matching Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s seminal speech World peace is the desire of all peoples from August 1959. Pedagogical in tone, he was addressing students after all, it is a brilliant piece of rhetoric advocating a difficult course of action in dangerous times. The use of references to peace are both truly inspiring and, arguably, grossly manipulative. It suggests that Kennedy had already concluded that genuine peace was not attainable and sets out to draw support for his pragmatic approach using the concept of genuine peace as a lure.
Michael Banks
Michael Bank’s analysis of conceptions of peace has the benefit of simplicity, clarity and honesty. His proposes four alternative conceptions of peace. Peace as harmony, peace as order, peace as justice, peace as conflict management. He judges each as to its efficacy in promoting a better future for the world: the pragmatic, social-scientific approach.
His successful candidate conception is peace as conflict management. Selected because ‘traditional views of peace are inadequate, especially for the purpose of conveying to students of conflict resolution a clear impression of what it is that they are trying to achieve. ’ To critically consider the validity his selection, and its implications for the meaning of peace, one must first review the rejected conceptions of peace.
First let us consider peace as justice . The argument runs that without justice there is grievance, with grievances unresolved there can be no peace. The problem, interestingly, is that concepts of justice, and entitlement to it, are so much more contested that those of peace. When those who use violence say: we will give you peace, if you give us justice, it is immediately known what the peace part the bargain entails, but it is so much more debatable as to what the justice part might entail. One is tempted to say that while peace is hard to find, justice is impossible. So Banks says that those interested in promoting peace should not take sides or become emotionally involved in claims for justice. Receiving justice is highly to be desired, but it is different from peace. And justice certainly is not the meaning of peace.
Peace as order . This is, in a sense, the other side of the coin from peace as justice. This is the cry of those who want to maintain the status quo, because to some degree they benefit from it . Banks says ‘a conception of peace merely as the product of an ordered international political system can never help to achieve a future for the world which is substantially different from the past.’ It is hard to disagree. It has been said that it is a sign of insanity to do the same thing in the same way and expect to achieve different results . The implication of this definition would be that anything that threatens the interests of the powerful can be suppressed in the cause of peace . This is not to say that physical security is not a good thing, but that it is not the same thing as peace. Why? Is it because peace is a feeling and without that feeling no amount of physical security of itself can bring a feeling peace? If this is true of individuals, is it also true when the will of those individuals is reprocessed as the will of the state. The consequences of a state, essentially a military formation, ‘feeling’ insecure are well-known: arms races, aggressive alliance building, war .
This allusion to ‘feeling peace’ brings us on to Bank’s other conception of peace: peace as harmony . The one he dismissed with the most ease and the least words. I have a problem with his analysis here, though it provides much material for discussing the meaning of peace. In fact, in this section, rather than giving fair and informed consideration to this conception, he seems to dismiss it in the most trivial terms. It deserves deeper consideration. Before we do this we must first eliminate the material from his argument that is irrelevant, inaccurate or merely tendentious. To call something ‘utopian’ is simply a stock jibe indicating a foolish fantasy. What does that term represent? Not the Utopia of Thomas More, which belonged clearly the peace as order realm . Banks would have been better off citing Voltair’s Candide. Of course, one understands why there is a repugnance to idealized visions of a peaceful society. Attempting to realise them has been blamed for most of the bloodshed of the 20th Century: the imagined end state of a Marxian revolution justifying millions of killings; the dream of a world made peaceful through the abandonment of weapons and the adoption of pacifist principles complicit in the tragedies of appeasement and isolationism .
But he doesn’t use these arguments. Instead he associates the idea of ‘peace as harmony’ with the bad but easily attainable ‘self-absorption’ of ‘mystical existences’, fashion, psychotropic drugs and the ‘self-indulgent diversions’ of dropping out, self-sufficiency and subsistence farming. I fail to see the connection. True, in the popular mind these things are remembered together as part of the sixties and seventies. But does he show any evidence at all that ‘peace as harmony’ cannot exist perfectly well without any of these vices. He goes on to say that “Peace interpreted as personal tranquillity does, of course, form a plan of life for that distinguished minority of people who are able to retreat to a monastery. It may perhaps be just within reach of persons who were born to sainthood or who have benefited from first-rate psychotherapeutic care.” Quite the expert. But where is the evidence that you need to be distinguished, in a monastery, born to sainthood or have benefited from first-rate therapeutic care to experience ‘personal tranquillity’ of the most profound and life-enhancing kind.
Having now eliminated the trivia from his argument against ‘peace as harmony’ , what is left? His first substantial argument is to equate ‘peace as harmony’ with the absence of any form of physical or mental conflict and then to assert that, as this is all but impossible in real life, ‘peace as harmony’ is non-runner. That ‘peace as harmony’ needs the absence of conflict is, surely, just an assumption. What if there is evidence to the contrary. As a final clinching argument he asserts that even if ‘peace as harmony’ were possible, it would not be desirable because “In the language of social science, conflict itself is functional, but its but its functional benefits can and sometimes are accompanied by dysfunctional costs: hostility, rigidity, violence and destruction .” We know where is going to go with this. ‘We need a practical approach to resolving conflict’. Fine. But because his previous argument fails, so must this one. Where is the evidence that ‘peace as harmony’, the personal experience of ‘inner peace’, requires the absence of problems, of physical conflict, of mental conflict? Absent evidence, the jury must remain out.
This is not to say that when Banks moves on to his conception ‘peace as conflict management’ it is not with the highest possible motives. The world needs people who help people solve their problems. It is essential work. To stop people shooting each other, though, is a ceasefire; to stop them hating each other so much is reconciliation and to teach them to avoid problems is education. But is ‘peace as conflict management’ worthy of the title ‘the meaning of peace’?
Johan Galtung
A pioneer in the field, his analysis is truly awesome. He names a hierarchy of types of peace; a typology . Principal division: negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace being the absence of violence of all kinds. This includes structural violence (racial, sexual or economic oppression). Positive peace can be sub-typed as natural peace (co-operation, not struggle), direct positive peace (kindness, love), structural positive peace (freedom, dialogue, integration, solidarity, participation, harmony of mind, body and spirit) and cultural positive peace (legitimation of peace in society and the relaxation of self-repression personally).
This appears to be an excellent agenda for social and personal change. Is it peace? Certainly, if people behaved the way that Galtung wants them to behave and felt the things that he wants them to feel, it would come very close to genuine peace. Is peace thus conceptualised attainable? Galtung’s mediation work, surely, must have done much to facilitate the resolution of inter-communal strife. His writings must have inspired the hearts and educated the mind of many students. But is his concept succeeding in bringing about genuine peace? Is it capable of bringing about genuine peace? From where will the ‘transformative impulse’ come from? With the best will in the world, there must be many doubts. There have been plenty of social changes before and they may have improved some peoples lives, but they did not manage to bring genuine peace. As for the idea of personal change, in the manner Galtung describes, can we really hope that his ideas will succeed ? With regret, I must reject Galtung’s hypothesis as noble, but unattainable by the means implied by the concept.
[It is unfortunate that I did not receive a copy of the Arbinger Institute’s Anatomy of Peace in time to properly critique their conceptions of peace. On a preliminary scan I think I would be putting their ideas into the ‘useful’ but not really ‘peace’ category.]
Pierre Weil
Pierre Weil is firmly in the UNESCO camp of peace conceptualisation. For if it is agreed that war begins in the mind of man, then surely it is in the mind of man that peace must be implanted. His conception is explicit both as to the nature of peace and the way to achieve it. He says that the established paradigm can be changed through education. The established paradigm is described thus : “Peace seen as an external phenomenon. On the external level peace is seen: 1. As the absence of conflict and violence. Many theories: cultural, judicial, socio-economic, military, religious. 2. As a state of harmony and brotherhood between people and with nature. 3. On the Inner level peace is seen as the absence or result of dissolution of intra-psychological conflicts, known as a state of Inner harmony. There is a lack of integration of these various points of view.” Thus he assembles the body parts of peace, but now he must somehow breathe life into them.
He proposes that they may be synthesized them into an Holistic Paradigm and that in this synthesis they will come alive. His formulation is “Peace seen as an external and internal phenomenon. Peace is the result of a convergence of measures relating to inner ecology, social ecology and planetary ecology. In which the principal theories of the established paradigm are taken into consideration and find their place in an integrated manner. This convergence results in a transpersonal state of consciousness, of which peace is one of the manifestations. ” This is a wonderful theory. His formulation is surely as complete as one can imagine, having the strength of being prepared to incorporate any and all useful aspects of the understanding of peace. But is it destined to remain just a theory? While the education offered may make people better people, does it in fact bring them peace. Can peace be obtained from a concept however noble?
Prem Rawat
Where can peace be found?
“It is within every individual. And it is up to each individual to say, “I want peace in my life.” Societies do not have peace. Societies do not exist; governments do not exist—just people. Peace is a simple thing. It can be felt by the individual. When we forget the meaning of being at peace and only grab onto formulas for creating peace, we have problems. ”
“Try it all, try it all, I say. Anything that works for the purposes of peace is a good thing .”
Conclusion
At the start of this paper I said that conceptualising peace, saying what its meaning is, is only useful if it provides an indication of how humanity can achieve peace. In the course of the paper I have dismissed various contenders because whilst achievable, what was going to be achieved was not worthy of the name of peace. Other contenders have been eliminated by the contributors cited as being unattainable and justly so. There is just one contender left. The concept that emerged from my arguments against Michael Bank’s dismissal of peace as harmony. This is the concept of true peace as a inner experience. As with any of the concepts they are largely useless if not acted upon. In the case of this concept the requisite action would be to have that experience. Finis.
Bibliography
Arbinger Institute, The Anatomy of Peace, San Franscisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006
Ashdown, Paddy, Swords and Ploughshares, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007
Barash, David P & Weber, Peace and Conflict Studies, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc., 2002
Banks, Michael, Four Conceptions of Peace, 1987 from Sandole, Dennis, Conflict Management etc.
Burton, John W, Conflict: Resolution and Provention, London: MacMillan Press, 1990
Crocker, Chester, et al, Turbulent Peace, Washington: USIP, 1996, 2001
Francis, Diana, Rethinking War and Peace, London: Pluto Press, 2004
Ignatieff, Michael, Blood and Belonging, London: Vintage, 1994
Kennedy, John F, American University Commencement Address, 1963, (MP3 and transcript)
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html
Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, 1532 Oxon: OUP, 2005
McNamara, Robert S, In Retrospect, New York: Random House, 1996
More, Thomas, Utopia, 1516, London: Penguin, 2003
Orwell, George, 1984, 1949, London: Penguin, 1966
Poole, Steven, Unspeak, London: Little, Brown, 2006
Ramsbotham, Oliver et al, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005
Rawat, Prem, At Rotary, Malmo, Sweden (DVD), Los Angeles: TPRF, 2006
Rawat, Prem, Peace Within, 2007 www.tprf.org/Maharaji_on_peace.htm
Ricks, Thomas E, Fiasco, London: Penguin, 2006
Russell, Bertrand, An Enquiry into Meaning and Truth, 1950 Oxon: Routledge, 2002
Sandole, Dennis & Ingrid, Conflict Management and Problem Solving, London: Francis Pinter, 1987
Schlesinger, Arthur, A Thousand Days, London: Andre Deutsch, 1965
Schweitzer, Albert, The Problem of Peace, London: A & C Black, 1954
Silverman, Kaja, Semiotics, New York: OUP, 1983
Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace, 1869, London: Penguin, 1978
Weil, Pierre, The Art of Living in Peace, Paris: UNESCO, 2002
Stay tuned. More to come. Some stuff about peace-keeping and humanitarian intervention from this week and whatever is yet to come.
Any comment on the essay? I'm happy to debate. I would really like to get these gentlemen on TV with David Dimbleby: A Question of Peace. Finis.
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