10 Preventive Activities
Talk directly
Assuming that there is no threat of physical violence, talk directly to the person with whom you have the problem. Direct conversation is much more effective than sending a letter, banging on the wall, throwing a rock, or complaining to everyone else.
Choose a good time
Plan ahead and allow yourselves enough time for a thorough discussion. Don’t start talking about the conflict just as the other person is leaving to make dinner, for example. Try to talk in a quiet place where you can both be comfortable and undisturbed for as long as the discussion takes.
Plan ahead
Think about what you want to say ahead of time. Explain what the problem is and how it affects you.
Don’t blame or name-call
Antagonizing the other person only makes it harder for him or her to hear you and understand your concerns. Don’t blame the other person for everything or begin the conversation with your opinion of what should be done.
Give information
Don’t interpret the other person’s behavior. “You are blocking my driveway on purpose just to make me mad!” Instead, give information about your own feelings: “When your car blocks my driveway, I get angry because I can’t get to work on time.”
Listen
Give the other person a chance to tell his or her side of the conflict completely. Relax and listen; try to learn how the other person feels.
Show that you are listening
Although you may not agree with what is being said, tell the other person that you hear him or her and are glad that you are discussing the problem together.
Talk it all through
Once you start, get all of the issues and feelings out into the open. Don’t leave out the part that seems too “difficult” to discuss or too “insignificant” to be important. Your solutions will work best if all issues are discussed thoroughly.
Work on a solution
When you have reached this point in the discussion, start working on a solution. Two or more people cooperating are much more effective than one person telling another to change. Be specific: “I will turn my music off at midnight” is better than a vague “I won’t play my music anymore.”
Follow through
Agree to check with each other at specific times to make sure that the agreement is still working…then really do it!
(10 preventive activities on https://www.clackamas.us)
10 Ideas to Avoid War
The recent reckless skirmish between the U.S. and Iran held a deep irony. Neither side wanted to go to war, and yet neither side could talk to each other except in terms of war. Language and action go together. If you are stuck in the metaphor of war, with its winners and losers, revenge, enmities that last for generations, and the macho image of the warrior, you can never end war even though you want to.
There is no clean end to war once you are in a war mentality. Winners in one war become losers the next, and combat runs into a quagmire in which it is obvious that neither side will be able to claim victory, war thinking keeps stubbornly drilling home the same metaphor of war. As history teaches us from World War I to Vietnam and now Afghanistan, wars are at once pointless, relentless, and endless. War heroes on one side are war criminals on the other.
There is a way to end war, and one sees signs of the solution appearing wherever people realize that we share the same goal, to achieve a prosperous, healthy, sustainable planet. War doesn’t serve this shared goal, and the question is how long it will take for a positive global purpose to overshadow the metaphor of war that is embedded in nationalism, tribalism, racial and ethnic divides, and the other fellow travelers of war. All of these divisions are mind-made. They exist because we constructed them, and the secret is that whatever you made you can unmake.
In the face of so much blood and death, it seems strange to root war in a misguided concept. What William Blake called our “mind-forg’d manacles” are a form of self-imprisonment. Change your concepts, and only then will the manacles fall off. Here are some of the replacements for the whole concept of war:
1. De-escalate the concept of enemy. An enemy can be reframed, in progressive order, as an adversary, competitor, partner, teacher, and finally your equal.
2. Treat the other side with respect. Otherwise you lose them before you start.
3. Recognize that there is the perception of injustice on both sides. This is a point of agreement adversaries can join in.
4. Be prepared to forgive and ask for forgiveness. Here forgiveness means letting go of your desire for retribution and revenge. This is an act of true courage. Even if you believe that the other side doesn’t deserve forgiveness, you deserve peace.
5. Refrain from belligerence. It will be taken as bullying and arouses renewed antagonism.
6. Use emotional intelligence, which means understanding the other side’s feelings, giving them value, and making them equal to your feelings.
7. Reach out to understand the other side’s values, both personal and cultural. The fog of war descends when two adversaries know nothing about one another. The result is a war based on projections and prejudice. The goal is mutual acceptance. At the deepest level we all want the same things.
8. Refrain from ideological rhetoric over politics and religion.
9. Recognize that there is fear on both sides. Don’t be afraid to express your anxieties and to ask the other side what they are afraid of.
10. Do not insist on being right and proving the other side wrong. Give up the need to be right allows you to focus on what you actually want.
These ideas work in any negotiation, whether between nations or in a family. When we lack these ideas, we cannot turn them into coping mechanisms. War is the worst of all coping mechanisms, yet in many cases conflict is the first response we make when we feel resistance, obstacles, and pushback. When people don’t know how to cope, nations don’t either. The basis of peace is peace consciousness in individuals. Even though you and I can’t change how nations interact, we have the choice to be units of peace consciousness and to put the ideas listed above into daily practice. The survival of the planet depends on as many people hearing the call in the shortest possible time.
(10 ideas by Deepak Chopra on https://choprafoundation.org)
10 Steps to World Peace
The pressures on our world are serious, and expected to grow.
Humankind must ditch the military habit – and tackle conflict at its roots.
1. Start by stamping out exclusion
Evidence shows that conflict happens in places where people can’t trust the police or get access to justice, and their prospects for a decent life are stolen by corrupt elites. Governments everywhere need to stop the neglect, abuse and stigmatization of their own people. Media and others that promote ‘them-and-us’ thinking must be challenged to stop spreading hate.
2. Bring about true equality between women and men
The larger a country’s gender gap, the more likely it is to be involved in violent conflict, according to research in Valerie Hudson’s Sex and World Peace (2012). Gender inequality trumps GDP, level of democracy or ethnic-religious identity as the strongest push factor for both external and internal conflict more likely, and being the first to resort to force in such conflicts. In contrast, when women participate in peace processes, peace is more likely to endure.
3. Share out wealth fairly
According to a World Bank survey, 40 per cent of those who join rebel groups do so because of a lack of economic opportunities. Relative poverty is just as important, with more equal societies marked by high levels of trust and low levels of violence. Economic fairness when it comes to public resources, taxation and tax evasion is also key. The systematic transfer of wealth from rich to poor – instead of the other way round – improves security for everyone.
4. Tackle climate change
Ecological stress from global warming is proven to exacerbate conflicts over resources such as land and water, particularly in East Africa. For all its shortcomings, the UN climate agreement is evidence that the world can tackle and mitigate crises by co-operation, instead of war. A functioning climate deal ‘is the greatest peace deal the world could have,’ according to Dan Smith, from the leading arms-control thinktank SIPRI.
5. Control arms sales
The promotion of arms sales and heavy spending on aggressive military capabilities is heightening global tensions. The proliferation of arms drives conflict and makes violence more likely. Arms treaty signatories must be held to their word, as we build evidence of violations and hold sellers accountable. We can also build support for a groundbreaking new convention that bans nuclear weapons and makes it illegal to possess or use them.
6. Display less hubris, make more policy change
A look at the track record of counter-terrorism, the ‘war on drugs’, stabilization and state-building efforts and colonial wars ‘shows a pattern of largely very sobering failure’ says Saferworld’s Larry Attree. Humility and willingness to atone for past aggression on the international stage is essential – as is an end to the self-serving and counter-productive policy in the Middle East.
7. Protect political space
If governments expect young, marginalized people to embrace an open society rather than pursue more violent and vengeful paths, they must allow public dissent. Across the world – and the political spectrum – this space must be defended from repressive tools such as ad hoc administrative regulation, misuse of anti-terrorist measures, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, even torture and murder.
8. Fix intergenerational relations
Much conflict can be understood as a youth revolt against established corrupt systems run by, generally, older men. In countries with strict age hierarchies young people can’t voice their frustrations, which creates a dangerous dynamic, explains researcher and peacebuilder Chitra Nagarajan. This is compounded by classic victim-blaming, in which young men are treated as a ticking time bomb.
9. Build an integrated peace movement
Short-term anti-war movements have taken the place of active and permanent peace movements. We need to promote nonviolent alternatives and successes; peace campaigner Phyllis Bennis believes peace must be woven into other social movements, giving the example of the Poor People’s Campaign in the US last March, which attacked the war economy and linked it to poverty at home.
10. Look within
Peace starts with you. Ordinary citizens can make a difference. When’s the last time you said sorry? Think about who loses when you win. Are the people around you heard and respected or marginalized, ignored and left out? Make a decision to care about what happens to them. Start a constructive conversation with someone you disagree with. Challenge ‘them-and-us’ thinking in yourself as well as in others. Every one of us can choose to make society more just and peaceful, or more unjust and warlike.
(10 steps by Hazel Healy on https://newint.org)
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