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• The Alternative - Developing Culture of Peace
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The Alternative - Developing Culture of Peace

*This article was submitted by Dr. Dalia Steiner, Founder and International President, WICO Women's International Coalition for Culture of Peace, Non-Violence and Empowerment of Women

If there is no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another.

Mother Teresa
The culture of peace concept has been developing for 10 years at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and the United Nations (UN) since it was first described at Yamoussoukro in 1989. It calls for a transformation and development of alternatives to the values, attitudes, and behaviors that are necessary and sufficient for the preparation and
elaboration of the culture of war and violence: the concept of power as force; the image of an enemy that does not have the same rights as you; authoritarian social structure,secrecy, and armaments. The UN, in its recent Declaration and Program of Action on a Culture of Peace, has called for a global movement for a culture of peace.

Here it is, it's very simple ... The most important thing:

YOU can do to manifest World Peace. Believe in peace. Once we have a vision of peace, we are able to move to the next step of actually believing peace.

Culture deals with people's way of life, which is influenced by their philosophy, historical background, traditional beliefs, and vision of the future. Such a culture may lead to peace or to war among us or with others. The choice is in our hands since we are given the option to choose actions that may lead to peace or to war. In creating a culture of peace we are setting the stage for a future generation to choose harmony over dissent and to embrace peace over war.

A culture of peace is not something that happens overnight. We have to work hard to create it and make it permanent. The patriarchal society in which we live has based its solution to problems
it encounters on wars, already for a period of six thousand years. In fact, the strength of a nation has been always measured in terms of its military might and its ability to annihilate other nations with the speed of light. It has rarely been asured in terms of the strength of its people in character and personality, in terms of the outstanding virtues people demonstrate to have in alleviating millions of fellow brethren from so much misery and suffering. This is due to the culture of war that we have inherited. Soldiers are trained to kill other people mercilessly, to destroy the housing facilities,which serve as shelter to millions of people, and to wipe out our cultural heritage, which we inherited over several centuries and millennia. In their training in our culture of war, our young men and women learn to help each other and to sacrifice themselves for each other. But they never learn how to demonstrate
mercy and love for their enemies and how to work closely with those they may dislike for a common
end and benefit. In view of this, we need to rely on several civic, educational, and religious groups if we want really to develop and establish a culture of peace.

One thing we know for sure is this. The future governments of every nation will be composed of the children of today for whose education we are responsible for. The elderly members of our community have put to work everything they learned at a younger age. The philosophy they developed as children was reflected in their words and actions as responsible members of the community later on. If we were to give a rapid glance at the books of history we will soon find out that they are all centered on wars. Everything else becomes marginal, including the inventions and discoveries made that were so beneficial to the entire human race.

All this will have to change if we really want to create a culture of peace that will enable our children to live at peace with one another in harmony and rosperity.

The world has always been lucky to have people that worked silently and effectively in the areas just mentioned. We need to educate whole masses of the population from early childhood to be altruistic and to realize that the art of living is the art of giving.

As Frank Sinatra said in one of his songs:
" Make someone happy and you will be happy too".

Some 2,400 years ago, Confucius gave us the recipe of the culture of peace when he exhorted us saying: "Do not do to others what you do not like others to do to you". Culture of peace is something from which everyone without exception is bound to benefit. It is a culture based on the universal welfare of all people without exception to the exclusion of no one.

Einstein said that you can't solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created the problem.

It is important right now to release any feelings of anger or pain, by shining the light of your present. ... more

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