Serious about Peace

A workman is known by his tools. Over the years they will accumulate a great number of tools associated with their trade. The same is true in the world of peace building. If we are serious about peace building we will rely on tools that provide the greatest possibility of success.

But the tools of peace building are not physical; they are conceptual. A mechanic must not only use the tools of his trade, he must also rely on the concepts of his trade. The same is true for every other workman.

Every problem humans have ever solved has been solved by finding appropriate models in nature. The same is true with peace building. Our best intentions will fail us if we depend on the wrong models.

Nature has no models for peace building, but it has models of conflict and violence. We need to find the model that best fits our situation. I have identified three models of conflict and violence and I will briefly introduce them here. A more extensive treatment will be attempted later.

The first model is also the best known. It is associated with the food chain or food web. It is there that we see all of the violence of nature. Lions chase and eat gazelles. Octopuses consume small fish. Spiders trap flies in their webs. Cows and other herbivores eat grass. The violence of nature is ubiquitous. This violence is associated with differences between the species of the predator and the prey and occurs only at meal time. The rules are clear. Today's diner becomes tomorrow's dinner.

The second model moves from the species to the individual organisms in each species. Each organism has an immune system that defends it from foreign pathogens. This is its standing army. The work that the immune system does each moment is best understood by observing what happens when life ceases and the immune system no longer operates. The foreign pathogens move in and in quick time reduce the organism to dust. A major difference between this model and the first is the fact that the species do not have a standing army. This is because the relationship between prey and predator is a cooperative one. Predators are not intent on driving their prey to extinction. This risk does not exist.

The third model moves further in. In this model the natural process of cell division causes mutations in the organism's DNA that may result in cancers or auto-immune diseases. Cancerous cells continue to divide past the Hayflick limit, exerting negative forces on the rest of the body and can lead to the death of the organism if not arrested. In an auto-immune disease the body's standing army receives flawed information regarding the organism's enemies and begins to view the organism itself as the enemy.

Only one of these three models represents the present human condition. Solutions that are applicable to the other two will not work in our quest for peaceful coexistence. Which model do you think applies?