Visualize the world as free from pain. Imagine there was no more dispute, and everyone lived together in love and tranquility. Imagine that nations co-existed in diplomatic oneness. The world would be perfectly peaceful. The fourth verse of the second chapter of the Book of Isaiah describes such a world, where “nations will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; not lift up sword against one another and never again learn dispute.”
Such a world would defend the rights of all minorities, and be perennially just. It would be a happy and blessed world. There would be equality and mutual trust. There would be economic surplus; everyone would have enough to eat and spend on other needs and luxuries. There would be stability, egalitarianism, legal protections, environmental conservation and the advancement of trade, the arts and other multiple humane concerns. There would be enduring respect for human rights, and a ubiquitous advancement of self-hood. It would resemble what the leading organized religions have called paradise, nirvana or simply heaven.
Peace is a universal concept. Different people can imagine for themselves what peace would translate to in concrete terms and, in so far as the term makes sense to them, these individuals can describe their own perfectly peaceful world. My idea of a peaceful world is what I have described. The ideas of a peaceful world for ten different individuals would probably be as many as they are – ten. Yet, there would necessarily be overlap. There would be at least one universal benchmark for what a peaceful world would not have, and this is dispute.
Viewed as the absence of dispute in a simplistic sense, this conception of peace serves to show how the status quo does not yet merit the appellation peaceful, regardless of the capacity of the term to lend itself to subjective definitions. In other words, it is accurate to state that the world today is not as peaceful as it can be, and this is so simply because there are disputes. There is also still despair, poverty, bigotry and deprivation. In short, there is still need for peace. The need is informed by the gulf separating what could be and what is.
Peace is a large concept, difficult to unpack. Yet if peace is ignored there would be continued human suffering. In reflecting on the wars that have plagued humanity historically, the late Pope John Paul II observed in numerous speeches and writings that disputes themselves never bring about peace. He severally asserts that it is negotiation that secures lasting peace. The communicative endeavors that people engage in to try to assuage differences have been seen to be the courses for peace. In other words, it is the understanding reached through talks, referenda and meetings that leads to peace.
Pope John Paul II is a model champion of peace. According to the ABC News documentary released in 2004, entitled Pope John Paul II, His life and legacy, the Pope used his office as global leader of a powerful organization, the Catholic Church, to campaign for human rights, for example by helping to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1989, thus helping to end communism in most parts of the world. He also helped to end the Catholic Church’s previous anti-Semitism. ABC News sees his role in interreligious relations with Jews as deriving from having witnessed the Holocaust as a youth, and his striving to end Communism as deriving from similarly having endured Communist oppression as a youth. His ideas helped the Catholic Church to open itself up to ecumenical avenues to push for international peace, for example by striking out of Catholic Easter Liturgy the words, "The Jews killed Christ." He also toured the world more extensively than any other pope in recorded history. He used his office as "a national pulpit," as ABC News asserts, in his global campaign for human rights, and to secure world peace. He was very instrumental in the advancement of interreligious dialog. His charisma, charm, speeches and other communicative efforts helped to push for global peace and the accommodation of the differences among peoples. I am an avid admirer of his.
There are a number of other individuals that have worked for peace through their speeches and other communicative efforts. Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Yunus, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Junior, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa are notable examples. It is worthy of note that these individuals, except for Mahatma Gandhi, are all recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi nonetheless is referred to as Mahatma, “Great Soul,” because of his efforts at securing civil rights and independence from colonial powers for his fellow Indians. He was also known for his nonviolent methods of protesting injustice, methods which he used extensively in South Africa to mobilize for civil rights for the Indians there.
He was famous as well for his simplicity of living, his concern for the poor and marginalized, and his enduring campaign for egalitarianism. He used his legal training as well as his writing to challenge institutions that were oppressive to marginalized groups in South Africa and in India. One quotation of his that I consider uniquely clever is: “An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.” The Government of South Africa unveiled a statue of him on October 2, 2003, at Gandhi Square in the city center, in commemoration of his work for civil rights.
Muhammad Yunus, an economist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts at providing small loans to poor people with business ideas, where the more traditional banks refused to, owing to the inability of these indigent individuals to provide sufficient collateral. According to the Nobel Institute, Yunus received the Nobel Prize for his efforts at helping individuals gain self sufficiency, as well as by contributing to the emancipation of the world poor. Yunus has explained his incentive to establish the Grameen Bank, a financial institution committed to the social responsibility of alleviating poverty, to be a desire to improve the lives of common folk. According to the Daily Star, the first loan Yunus gave was from his own pocket to 42 village women who were interested in starting small scale businesses. The loan yielded a modest profit.
In the following years, he progressively became a channel of credit from the more established banks to individuals with business ideas, but without capital to float them. In this way, the Grameen Bank got a head start, and endures to the present day. In a speech he gave to the University of California, Berkeley, Clinton called Yunus a “great Bangladeshi economist” who “long ago should have won the Nobel Prize. I’ll keep saying that until they finally give it to him.” He showed how Yunus’ ideas can help to lift up entire communities from poverty and help to make the world a more level economic playing field for all peoples everywhere.
Desmond Tutu is a South African bishop of the Anglican Community. He was an instrumental voice in challenging the segregationist policies of the Apartheid Government of South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace prize in 1984 for his peace efforts, and has received countless other awards, such as: the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986, the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987, the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999, the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2005 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Martin Luther King Junior, according to the Nobel Institute, was a noted civil rights leader, and a “Negro leader of the first rank.” Schlesinger, political scholar and biographer, says of Martin Luther King that: “He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Martin Luther King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964.
Nelson Mandela was leader of an egalitarian South Africa from 1994 to 1999. According to the Nobel Foundation, he was instrumental in bringing about the fall of apartheid. He was a leading member of the African National Congress, on whose ticket he ran to become president of his country after his release from a 27-year incarceration. He won the Nobel Prize jointly with Frederick de Klerk in 1993, three years after his release from prison in 1990. He perennially mobilized for racial equality and human rights, and deserved the appellation by the Nobel Foundation as “the most significant black leader in South Africa.”
Mother Teresa, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, of Albanian descent. She became an Indian citizen and founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. Although she began her religious life as a teacher, she was progressively drawn to the plight of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, and described her inspiration to help them as a “call within a call.” She was beatified by the late Pope John Paul II, and given the name Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Furthermore, Mother Teresa excelled in conflict resolution and humanitarian services. For example, she once rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas, at the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982. She was accompanied by Red Cross workers, as she traveled through the war zone to the devastated hospital to evacuate the young patients. More so, Mother Teresa set up 517 missions in more than 100 countries by 1996 and through these missions was providing food, medical care and dying support for the large numbers of people that availed themselves of her Order’s services. She received the Nobel Peace prize in 1997.
Influenced by all these champions of global peace, I choose today to reflect on global peace. Like everyone, I have grappled with the issue of dispute. I am aware of the potential for resentment among peoples; I am aware of the potential for dispute to develop, and for situations to be misconstrued based on the differences of outlook among the participants in those situations. Simply put, I have struggled with understanding how opportunities for peace can easily be lost when individuals do not take the initiative to seek it out in spite of human differences.
In Sometimes in April directed by Raoul Peck, ethnic discord between Tutsis and Hutus led to genocide which lasted for months, until the intervention of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) by Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In the movie, Augustine played by the British actor, Idris Elba, remarks that haunting emptiness descends on his heart “sometimes in April,” following the genocide. He says he recalls “how quickly life ends,” and bitterness builds. He bemoans the loss of innocence and the lasting grief occasioned by the loss of his wife and children and his resultant estrangement from his brother, Honore, played by another British actor, Oris Erhuero.
In the movie, God on Trial, a heart-wrenching story is told of a young gentile boy that befriends a Jewish boy at a nearby work camp at Auschwitz. They meet frequently across a barbed-wire fence, through which the gentile boy gives his newly found friend food and company. Soon, the gentile boy dares to sneak past the fence and wear the work-camp uniform. He however does this on an unfortunate day. Unknowingly, he is led along with those slated to die to the gas chamber and is similarly killed. His father, a soldier in the Nazi Authority, is struck by the hurtful irony.
Reflecting on his own experience many years later, in an exclusive tour-interview at Auschwitz with Oprah, Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate and author of the best-selling Night, bemoans the unimaginable cruelty of hatred and bigotry. He says of the Nazis: “They intended for their crimes to be unthinkable.” He reveals how the Nazis so tortured and tormented the Jews that even reflecting on the Holocaust alone is sufficient to benumb anyone: shaving the heads of the Jews for winter clothes; conducting pseudo-scientific tests on Jewish people to add lie to eugenic theories; confiscating Jewish property, including boxes and children shoes, all in the war effort – Elie Wiesel told Oprah he could not even begin to make sense of it all. He said it made him want to “shout.”
Furthermore, Elie Wiesel exclaims: “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” This statement dramatically and quintessentially captures what conflict does do to a human soul. It “murders God and soul.” As a religious person myself, if my God and my soul were murdered, the very desire to live would be similarly murdered, and would inevitably lie in the same grave as did they.
The Cambodian Genocide is another example, which I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that history is not lacking in number of conflicts experienced. Dispute is not the preserve of one race or nationality or continent or class – it is a human phenomenon. It has led to universal human suffering, loss of life and property. Yet, as Pope John Paul II has averred, dispute has never resulted in tangible good. For it needs be recalled that the late Pontiff did state that peace has historically been brought about only by positive communicative actions, especially as done by the champions of peace we have mentioned, most of whom have received the Nobel Peace prize.
Such a world would defend the rights of all minorities, and be perennially just. It would be a happy and blessed world. There would be equality and mutual trust. There would be economic surplus; everyone would have enough to eat and spend on other needs and luxuries. There would be stability, egalitarianism, legal protections, environmental conservation and the advancement of trade, the arts and other multiple humane concerns. There would be enduring respect for human rights, and a ubiquitous advancement of self-hood. It would resemble what the leading organized religions have called paradise, nirvana or simply heaven.
Peace is a universal concept. Different people can imagine for themselves what peace would translate to in concrete terms and, in so far as the term makes sense to them, these individuals can describe their own perfectly peaceful world. My idea of a peaceful world is what I have described. The ideas of a peaceful world for ten different individuals would probably be as many as they are – ten. Yet, there would necessarily be overlap. There would be at least one universal benchmark for what a peaceful world would not have, and this is dispute.
Viewed as the absence of dispute in a simplistic sense, this conception of peace serves to show how the status quo does not yet merit the appellation peaceful, regardless of the capacity of the term to lend itself to subjective definitions. In other words, it is accurate to state that the world today is not as peaceful as it can be, and this is so simply because there are disputes. There is also still despair, poverty, bigotry and deprivation. In short, there is still need for peace. The need is informed by the gulf separating what could be and what is.
Peace is a large concept, difficult to unpack. Yet if peace is ignored there would be continued human suffering. In reflecting on the wars that have plagued humanity historically, the late Pope John Paul II observed in numerous speeches and writings that disputes themselves never bring about peace. He severally asserts that it is negotiation that secures lasting peace. The communicative endeavors that people engage in to try to assuage differences have been seen to be the courses for peace. In other words, it is the understanding reached through talks, referenda and meetings that leads to peace.
Pope John Paul II is a model champion of peace. According to the ABC News documentary released in 2004, entitled Pope John Paul II, His life and legacy, the Pope used his office as global leader of a powerful organization, the Catholic Church, to campaign for human rights, for example by helping to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1989, thus helping to end communism in most parts of the world. He also helped to end the Catholic Church’s previous anti-Semitism. ABC News sees his role in interreligious relations with Jews as deriving from having witnessed the Holocaust as a youth, and his striving to end Communism as deriving from similarly having endured Communist oppression as a youth. His ideas helped the Catholic Church to open itself up to ecumenical avenues to push for international peace, for example by striking out of Catholic Easter Liturgy the words, "The Jews killed Christ." He also toured the world more extensively than any other pope in recorded history. He used his office as "a national pulpit," as ABC News asserts, in his global campaign for human rights, and to secure world peace. He was very instrumental in the advancement of interreligious dialog. His charisma, charm, speeches and other communicative efforts helped to push for global peace and the accommodation of the differences among peoples. I am an avid admirer of his.
There are a number of other individuals that have worked for peace through their speeches and other communicative efforts. Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Yunus, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Junior, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa are notable examples. It is worthy of note that these individuals, except for Mahatma Gandhi, are all recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi nonetheless is referred to as Mahatma, “Great Soul,” because of his efforts at securing civil rights and independence from colonial powers for his fellow Indians. He was also known for his nonviolent methods of protesting injustice, methods which he used extensively in South Africa to mobilize for civil rights for the Indians there.
He was famous as well for his simplicity of living, his concern for the poor and marginalized, and his enduring campaign for egalitarianism. He used his legal training as well as his writing to challenge institutions that were oppressive to marginalized groups in South Africa and in India. One quotation of his that I consider uniquely clever is: “An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.” The Government of South Africa unveiled a statue of him on October 2, 2003, at Gandhi Square in the city center, in commemoration of his work for civil rights.
Muhammad Yunus, an economist, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts at providing small loans to poor people with business ideas, where the more traditional banks refused to, owing to the inability of these indigent individuals to provide sufficient collateral. According to the Nobel Institute, Yunus received the Nobel Prize for his efforts at helping individuals gain self sufficiency, as well as by contributing to the emancipation of the world poor. Yunus has explained his incentive to establish the Grameen Bank, a financial institution committed to the social responsibility of alleviating poverty, to be a desire to improve the lives of common folk. According to the Daily Star, the first loan Yunus gave was from his own pocket to 42 village women who were interested in starting small scale businesses. The loan yielded a modest profit.
In the following years, he progressively became a channel of credit from the more established banks to individuals with business ideas, but without capital to float them. In this way, the Grameen Bank got a head start, and endures to the present day. In a speech he gave to the University of California, Berkeley, Clinton called Yunus a “great Bangladeshi economist” who “long ago should have won the Nobel Prize. I’ll keep saying that until they finally give it to him.” He showed how Yunus’ ideas can help to lift up entire communities from poverty and help to make the world a more level economic playing field for all peoples everywhere.
Desmond Tutu is a South African bishop of the Anglican Community. He was an instrumental voice in challenging the segregationist policies of the Apartheid Government of South Africa. He won the Nobel Peace prize in 1984 for his peace efforts, and has received countless other awards, such as: the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1986, the Pacem in Terris Award in 1987, the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999, the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2005 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Martin Luther King Junior, according to the Nobel Institute, was a noted civil rights leader, and a “Negro leader of the first rank.” Schlesinger, political scholar and biographer, says of Martin Luther King that: “He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Martin Luther King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1964.
Nelson Mandela was leader of an egalitarian South Africa from 1994 to 1999. According to the Nobel Foundation, he was instrumental in bringing about the fall of apartheid. He was a leading member of the African National Congress, on whose ticket he ran to become president of his country after his release from a 27-year incarceration. He won the Nobel Prize jointly with Frederick de Klerk in 1993, three years after his release from prison in 1990. He perennially mobilized for racial equality and human rights, and deserved the appellation by the Nobel Foundation as “the most significant black leader in South Africa.”
Mother Teresa, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, of Albanian descent. She became an Indian citizen and founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. Although she began her religious life as a teacher, she was progressively drawn to the plight of the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, and described her inspiration to help them as a “call within a call.” She was beatified by the late Pope John Paul II, and given the name Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Furthermore, Mother Teresa excelled in conflict resolution and humanitarian services. For example, she once rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas, at the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982. She was accompanied by Red Cross workers, as she traveled through the war zone to the devastated hospital to evacuate the young patients. More so, Mother Teresa set up 517 missions in more than 100 countries by 1996 and through these missions was providing food, medical care and dying support for the large numbers of people that availed themselves of her Order’s services. She received the Nobel Peace prize in 1997.
Influenced by all these champions of global peace, I choose today to reflect on global peace. Like everyone, I have grappled with the issue of dispute. I am aware of the potential for resentment among peoples; I am aware of the potential for dispute to develop, and for situations to be misconstrued based on the differences of outlook among the participants in those situations. Simply put, I have struggled with understanding how opportunities for peace can easily be lost when individuals do not take the initiative to seek it out in spite of human differences.
In Sometimes in April directed by Raoul Peck, ethnic discord between Tutsis and Hutus led to genocide which lasted for months, until the intervention of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) by Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In the movie, Augustine played by the British actor, Idris Elba, remarks that haunting emptiness descends on his heart “sometimes in April,” following the genocide. He says he recalls “how quickly life ends,” and bitterness builds. He bemoans the loss of innocence and the lasting grief occasioned by the loss of his wife and children and his resultant estrangement from his brother, Honore, played by another British actor, Oris Erhuero.
In the movie, God on Trial, a heart-wrenching story is told of a young gentile boy that befriends a Jewish boy at a nearby work camp at Auschwitz. They meet frequently across a barbed-wire fence, through which the gentile boy gives his newly found friend food and company. Soon, the gentile boy dares to sneak past the fence and wear the work-camp uniform. He however does this on an unfortunate day. Unknowingly, he is led along with those slated to die to the gas chamber and is similarly killed. His father, a soldier in the Nazi Authority, is struck by the hurtful irony.
Reflecting on his own experience many years later, in an exclusive tour-interview at Auschwitz with Oprah, Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Laureate and author of the best-selling Night, bemoans the unimaginable cruelty of hatred and bigotry. He says of the Nazis: “They intended for their crimes to be unthinkable.” He reveals how the Nazis so tortured and tormented the Jews that even reflecting on the Holocaust alone is sufficient to benumb anyone: shaving the heads of the Jews for winter clothes; conducting pseudo-scientific tests on Jewish people to add lie to eugenic theories; confiscating Jewish property, including boxes and children shoes, all in the war effort – Elie Wiesel told Oprah he could not even begin to make sense of it all. He said it made him want to “shout.”
Furthermore, Elie Wiesel exclaims: “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” This statement dramatically and quintessentially captures what conflict does do to a human soul. It “murders God and soul.” As a religious person myself, if my God and my soul were murdered, the very desire to live would be similarly murdered, and would inevitably lie in the same grave as did they.
The Cambodian Genocide is another example, which I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that history is not lacking in number of conflicts experienced. Dispute is not the preserve of one race or nationality or continent or class – it is a human phenomenon. It has led to universal human suffering, loss of life and property. Yet, as Pope John Paul II has averred, dispute has never resulted in tangible good. For it needs be recalled that the late Pontiff did state that peace has historically been brought about only by positive communicative actions, especially as done by the champions of peace we have mentioned, most of whom have received the Nobel Peace prize.
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