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Nuclear time wemake peace with islam3/15/2023 ![]() Nonviolent holy peace communities do exist as minority presences in the major religious traditions. The weak are cared for and trouble-makers reconciled. Women and men share with one another, as brothers and sisters, each person equal to every other. It is a gift from the Creator, or Creative Principle. In the holy peace culture, by contrast, love is the prime mover of all behavior. The social structure of patriarchy continues to mold generations of the major religious traditions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Often headed by a patriarchal warrior God, it typically demands the subjection of women, children, and the weak to men, the proto-patriarchs. The holy war culture is a male-warrior construct based on the exercise of power. ![]() The Culture of Peaceīecause religious traditions and teachings are important shapers of societies, it is important to identify two contrasting themes in religions: holy war culture and holy peace culture. Understanding the wide range of alternative approaches to conflict in this way can help to clarify choices. Toward the far end from war is cooperation, integration, and, at the greatest remove from extermination, union. One then comes to arbitration, mediation, negotiation (exchange), and mutual adaptation. At one end lies war in its various forms: extermination of the other, limited war, threat systems, and deterrence. We might think of problem-solving behavior as a continuum. It is socialization, the process by which society rears its children and shapes the attitudes and behaviors of its members of all ages, that determines how peacefully or violently individuals and institutions handle the problems that every human community faces in the daily work of maintaining itself. It cannot be said that humans are innately peaceful or aggressive. The balance may change over time, with periods of more peaceable behavior following periods of more violent behavior. Each society develops its own pattern of balancing the needs for bonding and autonomy. Usually, we find coexisting clusters of peaceableness and aggression. Purely aggressive cultures, in which everyone is actively defending his/her own space at the expense of others' needs, also exist they are not common either. They may be found among some, but not all, indigenous peoples, and in faith-based communities totally committed to nonviolence. Although peace cultures exist as separate, identifiable societies, they are not common. It can be defined as a mosaic of identities, attitudes, values, beliefs, and patterns that leads people to live nurturingly with one another and the earth itself without the aid of structured power differentials, to deal creatively with their differences, and to share their resources. At the same time, we need autonomy, our own space - room enough to express our individuality.Ī peace culture maintains creative balance among bonding, community closeness, and the need for separate spaces. Children who do not experience this caring have trouble dealing with others throughout their lives. We need to be part of a community we need others to care for us we need to care for others. ![]() Every human being needs to bond with others. The explanation lies in the two opposing needs for bonding and autonomy. Even though it is reasonable to ask why we do not fight constantly, given our differences, much of the time we do this work peacefully. Each of us sees, hears, and experiences the world uniquely, and we spend our lives bridging the differences between our perceptions (and the needs and wishes they generate) and the perceptions of others. Since every human individual is different from every other, conflict is a basic part of any social order. The creative management of differences is at the core of peace culture in other words, it is not a culture without conflict. She is currently writing a book on the culture of peace. Among her publications are: Children's Rights and the Wheel of Life, 1979 Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World, 1990 One Small Plot of Heaven: Reflections of a Quaker Sociologist on Family Life,1989 Underside of History: A View of Women Through Time, 1992 and, with Kenneth Boulding, The Future: Images and Processes, 1994. Peace culture, neither a fantasy nor accident, is as central to human nature as war culture.ĮLISE BOULDING was Professor Emerita of Sociology at Dartmouth College and former Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association.
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