Peace’s Image Problem
July 20th, 2007 by Heather
Hi, it’s me again. Heather Roberson, co-author and lead character of the book, Macedonia. Thanks for tuning in.
As I mentioned in the first entry, the purpose of the Smart Peace blog is to show that Peace is not some dreamy ideal, but that it is actually a smart strategy for resolving conflicts and for satisfying the human needs for security, stability, prosperity, and freedom.
However, I’ve noticed a central obstacle to this goal: That is, when conflicts are resolved peacefully — as they were in Macedonia — few people seem to notice. On the other hand, when conflicts escalate into war, people notice little else.
All of this has got me thinking: Are people hard-wired to care about War and not about Peace? Are we doomed to be seduced by stories of death and destruction, rather than diplomacy and cooperation? Or, is it more about the way that War and Peace are portrayed? Is it possible that Peace is suffering from an image problem?
And so, I decided to do a little experiment. I went to Google and conducted a couple of image searches. The first was for “War.”
I pulled up lots of pictures like this one from the American Civil War:
And this one from World War I:
The images of War fascinated me. I pored over them, clicking on them to find out more. I thought, “What’s that guy doing? Where’s that group going?”
Next, I conducted an image search for “Peace.”
I found a lot of images like this:
And a lot like this:
The images of Peace did not fascinate me. I did not pore over them. I did not click on them to learn more. That’s pretty sad, considering that I am already interested in Peace. So, why did the images of War draw me in, while the images of Peace left me cold?
Here’s one theory:
The images of War tend to be images of people engaged in exciting activities. The images of Peace, on the other hand, tend to be images of images. And the images themselves look like something that would only come to you in a dream.
It all adds up to make War look like reality and Peace look like fantasy.
But the fact is, Peace is not made up of images and symbols. It is made up of people. It is made up of very impressive people, in fact, who can take apart the most intractable conflicts and somehow come up with ways to resolve them in a forthright, honorable manner. I look at people like that and think, “Wow, you’re so cool!”
So, if the goal is to show that Peace is not just something people dream, but is in fact something people do, then perhaps the next logical step is to show some of the people who are doing it.
Next week, the first installment of, “Meet the Peacemakers.”
(Stay Tuned.)
July 27th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Heather,
Thanks for writing the book – it was an interesting read and one which I enjoyed a lot, both for the individuality of the story as well as for the political analysis. It’s an achievement for anyone to have a thesis published – but to have succeeded in doing it in this medium seems remarkable. What an interesting idea – to pick a place where peace broke out rather than war and then try to figure out why that was. You’re already moving into fresh territory merely by approaching the subject in this way even before you get on a plane. As you observed, there are many history books on the causes of war but hardly any on the causes of peace, particularly when the latter path is taken in the face of seemingly imminent conflict.
I was still left wondering at the end what it all meant – graffiti lurks on a wall: a cross looms over a city; why did these people take this particular route? I began reading it on July 4th as they were reading out the declaration of independence on NPR – it seemed appropriate to be reflecting on the nature and origins of the Constitution as I began to follow your journey; a document forged from a belief in the power of reason pulled from the furnace of Europe’s religious wars. But, of course, the uses to which it has been put have not always been pretty: it took another hundred years and a civil war and more amendments before it was deemed robust enough to support the rights of all those whom it should protect.
I enjoyed your second blog about whether we are hard wired for war but actually I think that misses something: which is that even if are hard wired for war it is difficult to make as strong an argument that we are hard wired to fight war with machines. Once the two words “machine” and “gun” came together, something changed irrevocably. On the wall of my apartment hangs a photograph of my grandmother’s family in New Zealand. Within five years the two eldest were lying dead in the trenches of the first world war. We now seem to be even further down that road: in an era where governments think that they can fight war by remote control: if war was ever necessary then the consequences of that insight have become startlingly stark. To the extent that it is entwined with our evolutionary development (and therefore arguably had some use in resolving conflicts) our culture has now distorted that usefulness beyond reason by the development of technology.
So if we are hard wired for war then we are in deep trouble – we need a certain sort of wisdom which is hard to come by – one which is vigilant enough to guard our psychic tendencies and compassionate enough to recognize the significance of our fragility. The first prayer is for protection. If you go onto a maternity ward it is often striking how quiet it is: but maybe even at this young an age we are already aware of danger and we shut up. And if think we are threatened in the long run we learn how to defend ourselves by any means necessary. But the problems caused by this inheritance could not be more urgent: if we are this poor at getting along with each other then what chances have we got of preserving our wider environment? We are the most adaptable species on the planet and now we seem intent on making the planet adapt to us.
What struck me about the Macedonian story is that I noticed some sense of that wisdom – a country recognizing its fragility and the need to answer that quality with peace and compromise rather than war. Imagine the US giving up its army because it happened to find itself sandwiched between hostile neighbors. It’s impossible.
On September 8th, 1939 Harold Nicholson, an English writer who is not so well known on these shores, wrote an interesting piece in a UK journal ruminating on the causes of war. In the piece he tells an interesting story which I’ll re-tell here because it seems pertinent, not just for the geographical context given the nature of your own book but because of the insight into human nature that it seems to give.
In 1908 the Austrian government made up their minds to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before doing so it was necessary to square both Russia and Germany. The Russian foreign minister was therefore invited in September of that year to Count Berchtold’s shooting box at Buchlau and was assured that if he would consent to the annexation he could count on Austria’s support in his dream of securing the freedom of the Straits. The acquiescence of Germany was more difficult to obtain. Austria could scarcely embark upon so dangerous an adventure without previous consultation with the German government, yet it was almost certain that if the German government were consulted in advance they would restrain Austria from such reckless and provocative action. Baron Aehrenthal, the Austrian foreign minister, therefore devised a plan by which he could inform his ally of his intentions without arousing their anxiety or suspicions. The German ambassador at Vienna was Herr von Tschirschky. One evening, at a diplomatic reception, Baron Aehrenthal took the German ambassador aside and addressed to him the following proposition:
“My dear Tschirschky; you loathe this sort of function as much as I do, and I want a heart-to-heart talk. Let us both play truant next Sunday and escape to Wiener Wald where I know of an excellent little restaurant. We shall lunch there quietly together and I shall sample with you some bottles of Brauneberger Auslese which I have just received.”
The Ambassador accepted this invitation and the following Sunday saw them sampling the Brauneberger among the pine trees. There were many bottles and before long Baron Aehrenthal began to manifest unmistakeable and increasing symptoms of intoxication. The Ambassador was acutely embarrassed by these signs of self-indulgence on the part of the Foreign Minister of his ally. Baron Aehrenthal began to rave and rant. “It is time,” he shouted, “that we taught these Serbians a sharp lesson. My patience is exhausted. I warn you, my dear Tschirschky, that I am contemplating drastic methods. I shall be driven to do something violent. I shall annex Bosnia-Herzegovina on 6 October, next. You mark my words, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Trusting that the waiters had not observed this strange conduct on the part of the Baron, the Ambassador helped him towards the car and they returned to Vienna. And when, on 6 October, Baron von Aehrenthal actually did annex the provinces, his notification to the German government began with the words: “On 1 October last, in a confidential interview with the German Ambassador, I informed His Excellency that it was my intention….”. Herr von Tschirschky could neither deny that he had, in fact, received this information nor explain publicly how it came that he had attached no importance to it at the time and had in fact failed to pass it on to his government.
What strikes me re-reading that anecdote (I have no idea whether it is accurate but it sounds plausible enough given the period – Nicholson merely says that he has been told it “on very good authority”) is how brutally casual the proponents seemed, as if they were settling scores in a school playground and using all the tricks they could to get ahead of their peers. This was international diplomacy played out amongst the royal families of the great European empires – and a fat lot of good it did them. It makes the blood boil – all those lives snuffed out by the petty squabbles and inappropriate ambitions.
One week before Nicholson wrote his piece, an English poet sat in a bar on 52nd Street in New York and also wrote in a poem that has since become far more famous than Nicholson’s. Ruminating on how the low, dishonest decade of the 1930s was drawing to a close he grimly remarked that “we must learn to love each other or die”.
What did Auden mean by that? It sounds obvious but it isn’t. You searched for symbols of peace and found them boring – I agree, given what you posted. However, I also think that you seem to be narrowing your vision of peace: it seems to be a peace which is rescued before war has pre-empted it: one which still looks to war for its context. But to me an image of peace would be of everyday life – two people arguing in a café about matters great and small: maybe you and your professor at Berkeley at the start of the book. One of the reasons that war seems exciting is that it is abnormal - peace is far more often the normal state of affairs. But that’s the problem: peace can seem mundane - the daily grind of work, the search for some sense of meaning, the petty resentments that can afflict us. But with imagination – and by that I mean the ability to see the world through the eyes of others – surely our appreciation of even the most mundane matters can be illuminating and enchanting. This sounds easy but it isn’t – we have all been in individual relationships where we make assumptions about the motivation and nature of the other person which are inappropriate; it can come about as much through misplaced sympathy as through hostile misunderstanding.
There, I guess, is the rub – ordinary life and ordinary relationships are hard work. We can’t help but project our own beliefs and perceptions onto others but we have to let those beliefs and perceptions drop away when we realize that, in fact, it is we who have misunderstood rather than the other person. Of course, once those projections are shared by entire communities then we see racism, nationalism and all manner of bigotries which are hidden from view until it is too late and some lunatic of a diplomat or leader has landed its people in another war.
Personally I think that it’s because ordinary life is just too damned hard – but it’s beautiful too and maybe we could all make a better fist of appreciating that.
August 1st, 2007 at 9:34 am
Peace is a smart strategy to resolve conflicts???
Are you sure?
Well, I mean war is one way to resolve a conflict by forcing one’s political objectives on”other side” by the “legal” use of violence…
And peace does not resolve conflicts per se: see Kosovo - been at peace for the past 7 years and nothing is resolved.
Again, finding ways to resolve conflicts “peacefully” - that is without the use of violence - is better, of course.
There you see that “conflict prevention” is a fuzzy concept: conflicts are part of any society and can be resolved indeed trhoughout negotiation. The key issue is to prevent the use of violence to solve conflicts. That was not the case in Macedonia btw: the UCKM and the Macedonian army, plice and security forces did shoot and shell each others…
What was avoided was a escalation from low intensity fighting to full-scale civil war…
March 13th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
In Hebrew the word peace is related to fullness.
Many images of peace are compelling. We just don’t think of them as peace. Look at a picture of a mixed race couple with their child. That is a picture of peace.