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COPYRIGHT 2007 Professors World Peace Academy
The paper investigates some major steps for achieving peace through a better knowledge of ourselves and of our neighbors. For a positive dialogue with people of other cultures and civilizations, we have to start listening to each other, never speak about past misdeeds, respect others' opinions, tolerate differences without contrasting values unnecessarily. This leads to a better understanding of others, for it is very important to understand cultures without stereotypical misuses of history, and we need attitudes toward real reconciliation through a forgiveness not disconnected from truth and justice.
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Peace is a field of general interest. We all are interested in peace because, as the classics have said, pax optima rerum. But to love peace is not enough. To achieve it we have to know what we people can do to make it possible: to deepen our knowledge of ourselves, of our neighbours, and of other cultures and, consequently, to look for a better dialogue among people of other civilizations. What steps to follow in this dialogue will be the topic of the present article.
To achieve peace and concord there is nothing better than communication and personal contacts. Dialogue is a way of peace, quite suitable for solving interpersonal, national and international tensions. Peace and prosperity depend on increasing interaction with others, building bridges with other civilisations. And for this, dialogue is essential. The main problem is that most of us still do not know how to talk openly about race, culture, religion, and so on with members of other civilisations. We cannot understand each other, nor can we build a more moral, just and secure society, until we learn to talk with and listen to each other. (2) For a true dialogue, as Whaling says, "you have to penetrate within the skin of the other." This means to enter, as much as possible, into the personal and religious experience of the other, whether he is a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, or whatever.
We also have to encourage consideration that there is an indispensable interdependency between different social groups. All have a common destiny, a happiness that can not be reached unless we all have a reciprocal co-responsibility in our effort, individual and collective, for achieving peace.
None of the many strategies to achieve peace is the best one in absolute terms. The value of each alternative depends on the particular conditions of each situation. Consequently, it is convenient to get enough information about the possible factors affecting a conflict, about their contexts, as well as the eventual steps to achieve the peace.
NOT TO SPEAK ABOUT PAST MISDEEDS WHICH MAY ELICIT FUTURE REVENGES
The first step should be trying to prevent future revenges, forgetting past quarrels and mutual bad memories about misdeeds and misunderstandings. It is what we doctors recommend to our patients: "Don't pick the wound, but let it heal."
This kind of strategy is nothing new. A contribution of archaeology to contemporary debates about what's going on in places where peace is being sought has been made by archaeologist Jonathan Haas of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. The Semai people of Malaysia never fight. Whenever two tribe members have a conflict, it is resolved with words. The village leader calls a meeting to discuss the dispute. When the talking finally stops, the village leader makes a ruling. Then he orders everyone present never to speak of the dispute again, and that is the end of it (3). It is no secret that the vast majority of the world's societies are nothing like the peaceful Semai. But it is rewarding to realise that we are able to be like them, as stated by the Seville Statement on Violence, almost a quarter of a century ago.
Peace seems to conflict with justice; the one deletes the past, the other acts on it. Simple justice would be revenge masqueraded as justice, perpetuating bitterness and divisions, civil war. South Africa attempted to find a middle way, neither trying to wipe away the past nor prosecuting the guilty. Its Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up by President Nelson Mandela after apartheid, in terms of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No 34 of 1995. The mandate of the Commission was to bear witness to, record and, in some cases, grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations, reparation and rehabilitation. It sought truth and then reconciliation and politically established a transitional government based on national unity. Fortunately, whatever problems the country has now, the revenge that many predicted has not happened. South Africa TRC heard statements from over 20,000 victims and perpetrators of apartheid. A study of nearly 4,000 people, published by the SA Institute for Justice and Reconciliation found that 76 percent of black respondents believed that TRC had done a good job, but only 37 percent of whites agreed; and 72 percent of blacks approved of amnesties for crimes committed under apartheid, while only 39 percent of whites did. Are blacks more magnanimous in their forgiveness, or just more naive in relation to TRC achievements because of having lower education or more ill information about the topic? But over half of all blacks thought whites untrustworthy, half found it hard to imagine having a white friend (only a fifth said that they had ever eaten a meal with a white person), and roughly a fifth thought...
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