Читать книгу The Art of Waging Peace - Paul K. Chappell - Страница 11

I experienced a surreal moment while attending a peace conference in Berkeley, California. It happened when one of the speakers had all the participants sing a song that went, “I ain’t gonna study war no more. I ain’t gonna study war no more. I ain’t gonna study war no more.”

I thought this was very odd. To me, it would be like doctors at a medical conference singing, “I ain’t gonna study disease no more. I ain’t gonna study disease no more. I ain’t gonna study disease no more.” If the purpose of doctors is to promote health, then shouldn’t they be experts on disease and illness? And if the purpose of peace activists is to promote peace, then shouldn’t we be experts on war and violence? The only way to cure any sickness is to first study and understand it. Only then can we learn its secrets. Only then can we defeat it. Isn’t the same true for war and violence?

During my interactions with peace activists around America, I have met many who feel no need to study war. I have also met many who want to develop a deeper understanding of war but do not know where to begin. After speaking with a peace group in the Los Angeles area about the importance of studying and understanding war, I received an e-mail that said:

I used to be a “we ain’t gonna study war no more” type, thinking that if we elected to starve the knowledge of how to wage war from ourselves and our society, it would shrivel and die . . . that thinking for me extended to being uncomfortable with militaristic words and phrases being used in peace contexts, such as “fighting for peace” or “choosing your battles” or anything about weapons. In the space of your talk you transformed that for me, where I’m willing to explore that phrasing as a way of reclaiming and reframing it.

I began my reply by again comparing peace activists to doctors, but then I went further by explaining some of the practical reasons to study war as we strive to create peace:

Doctors work to promote health,^* and to do this they must be experts on disease and illness (the things that prevent health), and if our job is to promote peace, we must also be experts on war and violence (the things that prevent peace). Our opponents are war and violence, and we must know our opponents very well in order to defeat them. The key to ending war is not necessarily starving the knowledge about war, but understanding war so deeply that we are capable of seeing through the illusions and myths that keep the war system going and helping others also see through these illusions and myths. One reason the war system persists is because so few people truly understand it, which allows its many flaws to remain hidden, and most of what people know about war comes from Hollywood and television.

This e-mail exchange reveals a lot. The idea that peace activists must study and understand war sounds radical to some in the peace movement, but to many it sounds like common sense after I explain my reasoning. “I ain’t gonna study war no more” is actually a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., but there is more to the quote. Referencing a passage from the Bible, he said, “Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don’t know about you, I ain’t gonna study war no more.”¹⁴ What I think King meant is that we should no longer study war for the purpose of waging it. But what I am proposing is that we must study war, just as doctors study disease and illness, if our purpose is to end it.

During a lecture I gave at a university, someone asked me, “But how do you expect us to study war? We didn’t graduate from West Point and serve in the military like you did.” I reminded the audience that “I have spent most of my life studying war, aggression, and violence, and I hope you can benefit from what I have learned. As a result of this intensive study, which consisted of rigorous research and life-changing personal experiences, I have written several books that dispel the many myths of war.”

To truly understand peace, I realized that I first had to understand war. But before I could understand war, I realized that I first had to understand human nature. As I say in my first book, Will War Ever End?, “Trying to end war without understanding human nature is like trying to go to the moon without understanding the laws of physics.” By uncovering vital truths about war, aggression, and violence, my first three books shed new light on human nature and the road to peace. The Art of Waging Peace, the fourth book in this series, will give us the training we need to make peace a reality.

In the military I learned that training is necessary to accomplish any challenging goal, and I was surprised to learn that so many peace activists have little to no training in how to effectively wage peace. If we compare how much the average twenty-five-year-old army officer knows about waging war and how much the average twenty-five-year-old activist knows about waging peace, there is a big difference. Although I admire their deep commitment to waging peace, many activists have not had enough training in the nonviolent methods that lead to positive change. Many activists have not thoroughly studied the brilliant techniques of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and others who have so much to teach us.

Good intentions are simply not enough. If they were enough, then war, injustice, and oppression would have ended many years ago. To solve our national and global problems, we need more than just good intentions. We must also be disciplined, strategic, and well trained. Civil rights leader James Lawson, whom Martin Luther King Jr. called “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world,” said, “The difficulty with nonviolent people and efforts is that they don’t recognize the necessity of fierce discipline, and training, and strategizing, and planning, and recruiting.”¹⁵

Just as studying painting, writing, or any art unlocks our creativity by giving us the skills to effectively express ourselves, the same is true when we study the art of waging peace. And just as a great artist like Leonardo da Vinci had the discipline to hone his skills through hard work, we must also have a disciplined approach to peacemaking. In the twenty-first century, issues such as war, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction threaten human survival. The stakes are much too high, and the opponents of peace far too strong, for us to not take our passion for peace seriously.

Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, and humanity has spent thousands of years exploring and improving the methods of waging war. In many ways, humanity’s exploration of waging peace has just begun. Gandhi said that his understanding of nonviolence was equivalent to the limited understanding of electricity during Thomas Edison’s time.¹⁶ In our era, the paradigm of war still controls most nations and the minds of countless people. To replace the old paradigm of war with a new paradigm of waging peace, we must be pioneers who can push the boundaries of human understanding. We must be doctors who can cure the virus of violence. We must be soldiers of peace who can do more than preach to the choir. And we must be artists who will make the world our masterpiece.