Читать книгу The Art of Waging Peace - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 10

I grew up surrounded by conservatives in Alabama, and during high school I listened to conservative talk-radio religiously. For much of my life I believed war was the best way to solve conflicts between countries and violence was an effective way to solve problems between individuals. My views have changed dramatically since leaving high school, but this does not mean that I now call myself a liberal.

When people first hear about my personal transformation from war to peace, they usually assume that I converted from being a war-mongering conservative to a peace-loving liberal. But what really happened is far more complex, and far more useful for anyone who wants to understand peace, conflict, and how the human mind truly works.

As my views changed dramatically during my time in the military, something occurred that I did not expect. Instead of becoming alienated from my conservative upbringing, I began to feel more empathy for people who call themselves conservative. As I journeyed on the road to peace, I realized that we have been deceived into thinking that conservatives and liberals are so different from each other. I also saw how our shared humanity transcends our various political views. Most importantly, I learned how to communicate with people on a deeper human level, instead of demonizing those who disagree with me.

This book will not only shatter stereotypes about soldiers and peace activists, but also conservatives and liberals. The purpose of this book is to teach us not only how to create peace in our hearts and peace between countries, but peace within our own country. The division in America is so severe that many conservatives and liberals cannot even speak to each other in a respectful way, let alone have a productive conversation. As each side demonizes the other, I will show how much they really have in common. As each side seems less willing to listen to and dialogue with its opponents, I will show how we can not only dialogue with those who disagree with us, but transform how they think. To do this, I will teach you a new form of combat.

Where do our societal problems come from? What is the underlying cause of war, racism, sexism, injustice, oppression, environmental destruction, and poverty? All these problems come from the human mind, from how people think. To solve these problems, we must get to their root by understanding how the human mind works, why people think the way they do, and how to transform people’s views about controversial issues.

To transform how people think about controversial issues, I have spent years developing a mental martial art that allows us to engage in combat not in the physical world, but in the realm of ideas. What is the realm of ideas? It is the battlefield where the idea of universal human freedom fought against the idea of state-sanctioned slavery, where the idea of women’s equality fought against the idea of gender inequality, and where the idea of peace is now fighting against the idea of war.

Earlier I said that it would be political suicide for any American politician to say, “We should bring back slavery and segregation, and women should not be allowed to vote or own property.” But two hundred years ago nearly all American politicians openly supported slavery and the oppression of women. This book will explain how the changes in our understanding of these issues did not happen by accident. Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others were powerful warriors in the realm of ideas. They knew how to do more than preach to the choir, and they were black belts in the mental martial art of transforming how people think.

The mental martial art is the art of waging peace. I call waging peace a martial art to break the stereotype that peace activists are passive and weak. True peace activism is more than meditating alone in a quiet room. It is a fight. But instead of attacking people, waging peace attacks the ignorance and misunderstandings that hold people hostage. Waging peace is not physical combat with bombs and bullets, but mental and spiritual combat against hatred, greed, deception, and apathy.

Is it possible to fight for peace? It depends on how we define the word “fight.” If we define it not as violence but as struggle, then we must fight for peace. Waging peace is certainly a struggle. Bernard Lafayette, a civil rights activist who helped desegregate Nashville, Tennessee, explained: “Unfortunately, the concept of nonviolence for many people is that you get hit on one cheek, you turn the other cheek, and you don’t do anything. But nonviolence means fighting back, but you are fighting back with another purpose, and other weapons. Number one, your fight is to win that person over, and that is a fight, that is a struggle. That is much more challenging than fisticuffs . . . We were warriors in that sense.”⁸

Some peace activists might criticize my use of martial arts metaphors. A peace activist once commented on an article I wrote by saying, “No, what we need is to stop using militaristic language at all. Period . . . Could you imagine Gandhi, or Martin Luther King using militaristic metaphors to define themselves or their movement?”

Actually, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were the ones who taught me to use militaristic metaphors. Gandhi said, “I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace. I know the value of discipline and truth.”⁹ King described the civil rights movement by saying, “We did not hesitate to call our movement an army . . . It was an army that would move but not maul . . . It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortresses of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination . . . The battle hymn of our movement [was] ‘We Shall Overcome.’”¹⁰ King also said, “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”¹¹

At one time I was so bitter toward the army that I rejected all militaristic metaphors, but Gandhi and King taught me how useful and powerful these metaphors can be. As I will show throughout this book, not only are martial arts metaphors extremely effective at helping us understand how waging peace works, but martial arts philosophy and waging peace have far more in common than most people realize.

To understand why waging peace is more effective than bombs and bullets at solving our national and global problems, Henry David Thoreau tells us: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”¹² Waging peace is a sword that strikes our problems at their root, because it gives us the power to transform how people think about important issues. I call this transformation ideological change.

Societal, spiritual, and ideological change are deeply interconnected, and when one form of change is blocked the others also suffer. Peace is like a beautiful human body, and societal change is the blood, spiritual change is the heart, and ideological change is the brain. If the heart of spiritual change ceases to beat with compassion, the blood of societal change cannot flow and our society’s progress will end. If the brain of ideological change does not transform how people think about important issues, the health of our society and spirit in each person will fade, even perish. And if the blood of societal change is poisoned by political and media propaganda, this deception will also poison the heart and brain in the beautiful body of peace.

The three forms of change make other forms of change, such as scientific change, possible. During the seventeenth century, Galileo Galilei offered scientific evidence showing the earth revolved around the sun. Threatened by his new evidence, the Roman Catholic Church gave him the choice of recanting his ideas or facing execution. Even if he recanted, the church would ban Galileo’s books and put him under house arrest for the rest of his life. At this time freedom of speech did not exist, and Galileo recanted his ideas in order to avoid being killed.¹³

But today if someone said, “People who say the earth revolves around the sun should be executed,” that person would sound insane. All scientific change depends on the three forms of change, because societal change gives us the freedom of speech to express new ideas, spiritual change makes us more open to new ideas, and ideological change has transformed the once radical idea that the earth revolves around the sun into an accepted part of our modern ideology.

I am living proof the three forms of change are possible, and I have realized how we can all help create the positive change our world so desperately needs. By learning and practicing the art of waging peace, the heart of spiritual change will beat stronger in each of us, the brain of ideological change will empower us with the strategic thinking to do more than preach to the choir, and the blood of societal change will flow into those places where it is needed most.