My Fight for Peace

“Peace hath higher tests of man-
hood than battle ever knew.”
(John Greenleaf Whittier)

Few have the foresight to see more than a few weeks or months into the future. But glancing back over one's shoulder at the road already traveled, it becomes clear that there has in fact been a process, and patterns emerge to make sense of all the hustle and bustle of daily life. This experience can be a bitter-sweet one, because alongside the delight at finding progress and achievements, there is the dismay at seeing so much time wasted and so many opportunities lost. The latter, however, I will spare my reader, for it is the former that provide vision and hope for the next stages of the journey.

What follows, then, is a sort of peace bio that outlines what I feel has prepared me most for what I have come to feel is my overriding passion and central mission in life: to promote a culture of peace and mutuality, and to refute theories and beliefs that support the present mainstream culture of violence, conflict and adversarialism.

Early Beginnings

My father and mother –he a teacher and she a social worker– set the stage for me in both word and deed. One of their greatest sacrifices for peace must have been when my father freely chose a prison sentence over going to war, thus missing the birth of his first child. After studying Cooperativism under Morris Mitchell, they went on to co-found the Macedonia Cooperative Community in rural Georgia, which became a flagship of the cooperative movement.[1] With time, they discovered that community cannot be based solely on economic principles, but must have a broader spiritual grounding.[2] The ensuing search lead them and many other Macedonians to join the Brüderhof, an Anabaptist ‘peace community’ based on the ideas of Jacob Hutter (1500-1536) and Eberhard Arnold (1883–1935) and the conviction that private property is anathema to living the Sermon on the Mount.[3]

That is how, in the late 50's, I came to be born in Loma Hoby, one of three Brüderhof communities nestled deep in the Paraguayan Chaco, where my parents had gone to serve.[4] Back in the USA by the time I was three, we lived in the Brüderhof until, due to both a leadership crisis and my parents’ inner struggles, we moved away for several years.[5] Still, my five siblings and I were raised in the community spirit of pacifism, service to others, voluntary poverty, avoidance of television, movies and commercial radio, and lots and lots of singing songs that conveyed an inner message of love and joy.

This loving, giving, peaceful way of life contrasted sharply with the strange new world into which I had been thrust, so full of greed and competition, anger and hatred. I could not understand why people would act this way if it only made them unhappy. When I heard of the ‘American Dream', at first I thought it referred to high ideals such as justice, equality, brotherhood, and peace, and remember feeling appalled to learn that it was limited to materialistic aspirations: a good income, a house, and all the comforts of American middle-class life. I remember clearly how, sometime during elementary school, I decided that all those around me were accomplices to a grand scheme to trick me into thinking that this is the way the world was, when it really wasn’t like that at all!

Growing up in the 60's was a time of activism in the peace movement, including everything from participating in demonstrations against the war at a nearby Air Force base to exploring varied aspects of pacifism and peaceful lifestyles. Our daily bread was authors like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Henry David Thoreau, who said, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” [6]

Since my family was radically pacifist, I was taught never to fight but always to turn the other cheek. This gained me a reputation as a chicken among the school bullies, who subjected me to continual harassment in plain sight of teachers and staff. One year during summer camp, another pacifist friend and me got tired of being bullied and decided to stand up for ourselves. We had never fought before, but did not fare too badly, and the camp counselors wisely let the fight continue until both parties had had enough. Later that day the bullies approached us again, but this time it was to shake our hands, congratulate us on a good fight, and offer their friendship. It was then that I learned that sometimes the use of force was necessary in order to achieve peace.

During this period, my father's active support of the Civil Rights Movement almost got him killed. My older brothers did community service as ‘conscientious objectors’ instead of participating in the Vietnam War. One of the most stimulating and inspiring influences of this time came from participating in many of the extracurricular activities at the Wilmington Quaker Community College, across the street from our home. In high school I started writing for the school journal about my values and against what I perceived to be the ills of contemporary society.[7]

It was during early adolescence that I began investigating the Bahá'í Faith, which was particularly attractive to me due to its teachings on universal peace, the oneness of humankind, the elimination of all forms of prejudice, the essential unity of all religions, and the independent search for truth.[8] The latter two were entirely unacceptable to the Brüderhof, whence we had returned, and this eventually lead to my abandoning that life at age 15 and beginning my active participation as a member of the worldwide Bahá'í community.

Life in the “Two-Thirds World”

Not content with mere membership, as soon as I graduated from high school I volunteered as a Bahá'í 'pioneer' to Ecuador. There I spent one and a half years doing awareness-building and training, mostly among marginal urban and rural communities in several parts of the country, on such issues as universal basic education, gender equality, freedom from substance abuse, work in a spirit of service, participatory decision making, community building, alternative administrative approaches, among others. It was this early experience that inspired me to seek a career in education, and over the following five years I continued with that work on a part-time basis while completing my undergraduate studies at the Catholic university, which culminated in my being certified as a high-school teacher and guidance counselor.

Feeling that my studies up to that point had been aimed at maintaining the status quo, which I believed education should help to question and change, I returned to the USA to complete a master's degree in education from the University of California at Davis. There I sought to study as broad a range of educational subjects as possible, and continued to speak and act on matters aiming to promote human understanding. My thesis was the result of intense inquiry, far beyond my regular courses, into our nature as human beings and the consequential purpose of education.[9]

Upon my return to Ecuador, I taught at the Education Department of the Catholic University, directed its Centro de Asesoramiento Psicopedagógico, and collaborated with the Salesian publishing company "Editorial Don Bosco" as a high school textbook writer and editor, where I concentrated on eliminating adversarial content and replacing it with mutualistic messages.[10] I also helped to establish a new private school, Santana, and as its first headmaster introduced several elements aimed to promote a culture of peace among students, teachers and parents, as I later continued to do as a teacher trainer and consultant for other schools.

On a volunteer basis, I founded the "Centro de Estudios Bahá'ís" for the purpose of documenting, studying and disseminating Bahá'í approaches to contemporary social issues such as human rights, equality of men and women, elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty, international peace, interfaith understanding, etc. I also edited and wrote for the Study Center's annual publication "Reflexiones", spoke at public meetings on several of the topics that were researched, and organized national forums on subjects relating primarily to education and peace.

I had the opportunity to serve as a member of several local, regional and national Bahá'í institutions over the years. One of the most challenging and rewarding was my appointment to the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Counselors, which primarily entailed training local agents of change and empowering them to arise in service to their communities. I also had the honor of serving for several years as a member of the Bahá'í National Assembly of Ecuador, which steers the development of local communities, directs the activities of regional institutions, and oversees the management of various educational institutions and socioeconomic development projects throughout the country.

Social and Economic Development

The economic instability of Ecuador, coupled with the financial pressures of raising a family, forced me to seek more lucrative pursuits, which is how I ended up working primarily as a translator/interpreter for the next twenty plus years. This change of occupation, however, had the unexpected effect of galvanizing my commitment to promoting a culture of peace, as it put me into direct contact with the fascinating – albeit controversial – world of social and economic development, identified by UNESCO as one of the crucial aspects of building a culture of peace.

Of particular importance in this process was my work with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and its sister UN agencies; international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, IADB, and their various projects; the Organization of American States (OAS) and several of its agencies and programs; the Ecuadorian presidency and different ministries of its cabinet; international cooperation entities; major development agencies such as World Vision, C.A.R.E., and Foster Parents Plan; plus a long list of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).[11]

In an attempt to get a better grip on the theory, practice and perspectives of development, especially its social aspects, I enrolled in the post-graduate Programa Latinoamericano de Desarrollo Social (PRODES), offered by the Núr University of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in the Rural University headquarters near Cali, Colombia.[12] There, with a highly diverse group of students I explored the relationships between development and education, health, gender, culture, science, religion, leadership, administration, economics, and environment.

I found that socioeconomic development was to a society what education was to the individual, provided that both were understood correctly, and that the two were powerful instruments (for better or for worse) of sociocultural change. As a result of this program, I was able to offer development consultancy and training to organizations, and better serve the institutions of which I was a member.

Training Agents of Social Change

This contact with the Núr University took me to Bolivia and Honduras to study its magnificent "Moral Leadership" program designed to train educators and other local leaders as effective agents of change in the communities where they live and/or work. Its twelve modules seek to challenge inherited mental models and build new conceptual frameworks of moral leadership, a learning approach to development, community participation, training of adults, team building, participatory action research, strategic planning for development, project design and management, and evaluation for collective learning.

Back in Ecuador, I initially organized a two-year training program with 75 participants in three regional centers, preparing them both to implement moral leadership in their own activities and to replicate the program among diverse sectors of society, including educators, parents, children and youth, businesses, NGOs, local governments, etc. I then worked alongside several of those participants as instructors, monitors and administrators for a masters program implemented by the Núr University and financed by the World Bank, which trained 1000 educators in ten universities throughout Ecuador using the same materials plus four modules on empowerment through education.

In order to carry on this work after the masters program concluded, I co-founded the Agencia Nacional de Intervención Social mediante el Aprendizaje (ANISA) with some of its most outstanding collaborators. ANISA offered moral leadership training for empowerment through education and development, primarily for schools, NGOs, municipal governments, and business enterprises. I also assisted in the establishment of its sister organization, ANISA-Colombia, with similar aims and activities. Much of this work has since been carried forward by Fundación Horizonte of Ecuador.[13]

Search and Discovery

During International Peace Year, I had participated actively in a campaign to present the Bahá'í statement “The Promise of World Peace” to authorities at all levels and to the public at large.[14]  I had especially been intrigued by its observation that “so much have aggression and conflict come to characterize our social, economic and religious systems, that many have succumbed to the view that such behavior is intrinsic to human nature and therefore ineradicable.” It claimed that “uncritical assent is given to the proposition that human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive and thus incapable of erecting a social system at once progressive and peaceful, dynamic and harmonious, a system giving free play to individual creativity and initiative but based on co-operation and reciprocity.” Overcoming this barrier to peace would demand a “reassessment of the assumptions upon which the commonly held view of mankind's historical predicament is based,” which, “far from expressing man's true self, represents a distortion of the human spirit.” This would enable all people to “set in motion constructive social forces which, because they are consistent with human nature, will encourage harmony and co-operation instead of war and conflict.”

Throughout subsequent training and consultancy endeavors, I repeatedly came across this same obstacle. Every discussion of world unity, justice and peace, was invariably countered by at least one participant who claimed that these aims were impossible or utopian on the grounds that human nature is inherently selfish and aggressive, conflict is endemic to society, there always have been and always will be wars, man as the wolf of man, the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest, social dialectics and social entropy, homo economicus and self interest, politics defined as power struggle, and so on and so forth. I came to realize that there is no greater hindrance to building a united, just, peaceful world than the belief that it is not possible based on such notions regarding the nature of human beings and society.

Seeking to understand the theoretical underpinnings of these claims and identify any research that might serve to question them, I enrolled in the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).[15] There, however, I was frustrated at finding only vehement support for those views, disparagement at any suggestion that things might be otherwise, and unawareness of any alternative studies. We were living in a cruel world. That's the way it always had been and always would be, and instead of wishing it were otherwise, we would be best advised to learn how to cope and make the most of it, or better yet learn how it operates and make it work to our advantage. Social scientists were not to be activists for any cause, but rather limit themselves to 'objectively' providing the information and tools necessary for policymakers to do their jobs, for better or for worse.

That is when I found Michael Karlberg's wonderful book "Beyond the Culture of Contest - from Adversarialism to Mutualism in an Age of Interdependence".[16] Soon my frustration turned to amazement as those locked doors flew wide open and I began eagerly importing and reading the works referenced in Karlberg's generous bibliography. I began to see the deep flaws that persist in the massive body of traditional, mainstream human and social theory that currently supports and promotes the culture of contest or adversarialism, and how it is gradually being replaced by a new body of research that suggests alternative ways of looking at and restructuring society towards a culture of peace or mutuality.

Some Major Findings

Most of the theories according to which human beings were inherently selfish and violent by nature were formulated a hundred years ago or more. Many of them were not actually ‘theories’ in a scientific sense, but mere speculations from behind a desk. Some of them did not even qualify as hypotheses, as they were plagued with fallacies such as not being falsifiable, and few if any had been tested out through scientific research. Rather, both field and laboratory research had concluded quite the opposite: that human beings were not only capable of peaceful, altruistic attitudes and behaviors, but even show a certain predisposition towards them from early childhood.

I found, for example, that the old 'law of the jungle', traditionally defined as conflict and competition for limited resources, had been replaced by ecology with a new concept of inter-species cooperation, mutual aid, symbiosis, and generation of abundance within an ecosystem.

I discovered that the ‘survival of the fittest’ had NOT favored the most aggressive, conflictual, greedy men, but rather more adaptive behaviors like cooperation, altruism, tolerance, reconciliation, and the ability to live together in peace, which had enabled the human race to survive and progress in the face of great natural hurdles and our lack of natural defenses.

I learned that the evolution of the species through ‘natural selection’ was not necessarily a competitive process, and that a much more significant mechanism than genetic mutation had been ‘symbiogenesis’, generating new species by combining and integrating diverse beings into more complex organisms through a process of cooperation and mutual aid.

I realized that normal human beings have neither a ‘killer instinct’ nor a ‘violent brain’, but rather that we seem to be wired to recoil from doing harm to our fellow beings and actually prefer to help them. Despite the tremendous efforts made in boot camp to turn young men into killing machines, research has shown that most soldiers never shoot their weapons in battle or else miss on purpose, and that when they actually do kill, many are traumatized by the experience.

I found that the belief that “there have always been wars and always will be” arose because we are taught history as a long series of wars, leaving out the long periods – years, decades, centuries and even millennia – of peace, prosperity and happiness, which according to some authors made up more than 90 % of human history; that war is not a normal condition of humanity, but rather represents a disease that can occasionally attack a healthy body politic.

I discovered that, despite the wide-spread myth that human beings are inherently selfish, greedy, and motivated primarily by immediate personal interests, actual research points to an innate capacity for prosocial, altruistic, generous attitudes, and motivation primarily by intrinsic factors such as justice, excellence and belonging.

I learned that competition, defined as a win-lose relationship, is NOT more productive than cooperation, understood as a win-win situation; that cooperative games and sports, in which everyone wins and nobody loses, can be at least as challenging and fun as competitive ones; that competition does NOT build character but rather damages it; and that in the classroom and the workplace, cooperating in teams is preferred by most over competing among peers.

I realized that ‘politics’ is NOT a power struggle by definition, but rather the science and art of properly managing public affairs, and that perhaps one of the worst ways of managing public affairs is to turn them into a power struggle; that relations of domination–submission CAN be transformed into relationships of reciprocity and mutualism; that ‘power’ means capacity, which is not necessarily exercised over or against others, but in many cultures is exercised with and in favor of others, in a relationship of mutual empowerment.

I found that unity does not necessarily imply uniformity, that diversity does not necessarily lead to division, but that unity in diversity is a fundamental law that governs all systems, from human bodies to ecosystems, and from the scientific enterprise to the functioning of markets; that unity does not necessarily require a loss of identity, but rather that the process of moral maturation means identifying WITH ever broader units – family, community, state or province, country, and finally the world as a whole.

I discovered that in the 19^th Century, people still believed in the possibility of building their utopias, but that during the 20^th Century, following the horrors of two world wars, the excesses of various dictators, holocausts, atom bombs, and economic meltdowns, people came to doubt any vision of a better world and began instead to expect a total collapse of society or even the complete annihilation of the human race. I realized that we urgently need to recover the capacity to dream and to build our utopias, because “where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Finally, I learned that all of these theories and beliefs were no more than cultural constructs that have been naturalized and reproduced from generation to generation; that they do not serve the best interests of the whole of humanity, but only the short-term material interests of a small minority that benefits from win-lose relations in economics and politics and makes a hefty profit from the military industry to the detriment of the wellbeing and tranquility, the peace and security of humankind as a whole.

Through this research, I realized that there is nothing in the nature of human beings or of society as a whole that could be deemed an insurmountable obstacle to achieving a culture of peace, cooperation and mutualism. The only real challenge is the actual existence of the present culture of violence, fighting, competition, and contest. And the good news is that cultures are not engraved in stone; nor are they static pieces in a museum; they can change, do change and, in this case, must change!

Participating in the Discourse

With a thrill of discovery, I felt that I was witnessing the unfolding of a veritable scientific revolution or paradigm shift of which many appeared to be mostly oblivious. This research was not being studied in most universities, much less permeating the popular culture. Rather, most seemed bent on repeating the old, unquestioned assumptions ad nauseum, despite the fact that science had already gone beyond them. This, of course, was serving the best interests of the status quo, but not those of humanity as a whole.

In an attempt to promote awareness of the overall features of this transformation, I began doing deeper bibliographical research into the subject and making my findings available in Spanish on the Web[17] and in the fourth edition of the Moral Leadership textbook.[18] I spoke at different organizations and public forums such as Quito's renowned cultural center, the "CafeLibro",[19] and gave talks and classes on the subject at various universities in Quito and other towns of Ecuador. On an international level, I spoke on the matter at an academic conference on “Rethinking Human Nature” in Vancouver, Canada, and at another on Socioeconomic Development in Orlando, Florida, and included it in a Masters-level course on Moral Education for BIHE, the virtual university for students ousted by religious persecution in Iran.[20]

The response was amazing. People came up afterwards and thanked me for validating through science what they had always suspected to be true but had never dared to admit for fear of ridicule. Others said they felt a new freedom to even consider that there might be other ways of thinking and doing things. As a result of this experience, I became convinced that the time was ripe for significant change, at least in Latin America, towards a culture of peace, mutualism and cooperation.

I decided that helping to disseminate this new body of research among both the academia and the general public would be a strategic way to contribute. Vague statements of lofty ideals and good intentions have been expressed for centuries, but have achieved limited change in the foundational structure of society. The 21st century demands clearly grounded scientific evidence before committing to such a profound transformation of thought and action. Failure to act now could very well delay processes of change that are desperately needed throughout the region or, worse yet, might leave the door open to extremist ideologies that would only serve to exacerbate the present situation.

As next steps, we need to expand the scope of action, further systematize the research and make it available to students, teachers and researchers. Further research is required into the needs and possibilities for sociocultural change towards a more mutualistic society. Such work would especially benefit from Participatory Action Research (PAR), in order to build that new culture from the bottom up and the inside out. Combining research and consultancy through PAR would enable immediate implementation of findings among NGODs, school systems, governmental and international organizations, and others. Through this work we need to answer questions such as these:

·      How can we understand today's pervasive adversarialism, not as predetermined by human nature, but as a cultural construct, and what is needed to change it?

·      How and why did this culture come about, to what extent can it be described as a cultural hegemony, who are its beneficiaries, and who pays the price?

·      What popular beliefs and theories feed the current myths underpinning the culture of violence, and how can they be deconstructed and replaced with alternative theoretical frameworks?

·      How is the culture of conflict reflected in and reproduced through the socio-structural and psycho-cultural elements of the modern world, and what proposals exist to replace them?

·      What referents are available of alternative socio-cultural constructs, whether among preindustrial societies, intentional communities, social movements, parallel subcultures, and the mass phenomenon of everyday, anonymous heroism?

·      What are the historical reasons for our current disenchantment with utopia, what alternative futures are being proposed, how to decide which are feasible, and how to recover humanity's courage to dream and ability to work towards a common vision?

·      What can be done here and now, at each level of society, to build a new culture of mutualism, cooperation and peace, and how can we as agents of change in all walks of life promote this?

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Notes:

1. See Orser, W. Edward, Searching for a Viable Alternative - The Macedonia Cooperative Community, 1937-58. New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1981.
2. See Newton, David R., "The Macedonia Community," Politics (Winter 1948): 27-30.
3. See Arnold, Emmy, Torches Together: The story of the Brüderhof Communities - their life together, sharing all things in common. New York: Plough Publishing House, 2nd edition, reprinted in 1991.
4. See Wagoner, Bob & Shirley, Community in Paraguay - A Visit to the Brüderhof. Pennsylvania: Plough Publishing House, 1991.
5. See Mow, Merril, Torches Rekindled - the Brüderhof’s Struggle for Renewal.  New York: Plough Publishing House, 1989.
6. Thoreau, Henry David, “Walden”, 1854, Chapter XVIII.
7. E.g., Newton, Peter, "The Eagle," "Where has all the freedom gone?", "The Blue Ridge Mountains." Artes, Vol. 8, Spring 1972, pp. 1, 21, 29.
8. See Hatcher, William S. and Martin, J. Douglas, The Baha'i Faith: The Emerging Global Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984.
9. Newton, Peter, "In Search of Purpose in Education: Implications of the Bahá'í Writings", unpublished M.A. thesis, University of California, Davis, 1985.
10. See, for example, L.N.S. English Method Books 4, 5 and 6. Ecuador: Edibosco, 1989.
11. For further information regarding the author’s translation / interpretation services, see: http://translator.peternewton.biz.
12. See http://www.nur.edu/50821/wp_m00c0.asp.
13. See http://www.fundacionhorizonte.org.ec.
14. See http://bahai-library.org/published.uhj/world.peace.html.
15. See http://www.flacso.org.ec/.
16. Karlberg, Michael, Beyond the Culture of Contest - from Adversarialism to Mutualism in an Age of Interdependence. Oxford: George Ronald, 2004.
17. See http://cultureofpeaceprogram..org.
18. Anello, E. and Hernández, J. “Liderazgo Moral”. Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Núr University, Fourth Edition, 2010.
19. See http://www.cafelibro.com.
20. See http://www.bihe.org/.