Avoiding human self-destruction: Creating a Culture of Peace as absolute necessity

by Dr. Charles Mercieca

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.

Culture of Peace in Perspective

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 measured 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.

That is why the superpowers in every era of history could never give birth to a culture of peace. They all searched for the right solution to encountered problems in the wrong place. The military exists to wage war and not to wage peace. 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 that would make war obsolete like the dinosaurs. 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.

The elderly members of our community have put at work everything that 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.

Work Involved in Peace Work

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 prosperity. Among the several challenges we face for the eventual creation of the culture of peace, we find the following:

1. Finding effective ways to eradicate the problem of hunger in very country;

2. Taking good care of the sick in any condition they present themselves;

3. Making it a point to comfort the lonely and the rejected ones;

4. Bringing to an end slavery that still exists under various forms;

5. Avoiding the further exploitation of people especially the helpless;

6. Counselling those in need under any condition imaginable;

7. Reaching those in poverty and to provide them with anything they need;

8. Listening to the needs of people as to do something constructive to them;

9. Protecting people from injustice and prejudice of any kind;

10. Alleviating the suffering of all people in any way conceivable.

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. And 400 years later, the Master Teacher of Nazareth said the same thing expressed more positively: Do to others what you like others to do to you.

In English we have a proverb, which says: What goes around comes around. This means, in essence, the same. If we do beneficial things we will reap benefit and if we perform evil we experience evil. In conclusion, the 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 with out exception to the exclusion of no one.

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