Presented here, for comment and discussion, are the five developmental stages toward Active Peace.

[0. 'Surface' -- conformity without question. Unconsciousness, unawareness, denial, or opposition to issues of social conscience involving violence, oppression, subjugation.]

1. 'Aquiescence' -- You know there is something wrong, but take no action, or it doesn't affect how you live your life. Your response is to remain 'quiet' to others and within yourself. "Things have always been this way ... there is nothing that I or anyone else can do to change them."

2. 'Pacifism' -- You are no longer quiet within yourself. Your discomfiture with violence, oppression, etc. begins to affect how you live your life. You might turn the other cheek in a fight, for example. You are likely to witness to others (and to yourself) that organized violence and oppression is wrong.

3. 'Passive Nonviolent Resistance' -- Many or all of your private decisions become influenced or governed by conscience. 'Conscientious objection'. You make changes in your own behavior by reasons of conscience but are not necessarily social about it, or don't publicly, systematically cite your actions or your reasons for them. It's also akin to the concept of 'standing aside' or of 'abstaining' on a vote.

4. 'Active Nonviolent Resistance' -- You take social leadership in attempting to thwart the forces of violence, oppression, and subjugation, or join with others who do, publicly, and attempting to spread the word about the initiative and get others to take part.

5. The triad of 'Active Peace':

5A. 'Peacemaking' -- the transformation of conflicts away from violence, oppression, and subjugation by social and political means. Mediation, conferencing, circles peacemaking, and kindred 'encounter' forms. 'Workshop' methods such as AVP can also be effective. There are hybrid forms (encounter/workshop) such as HROC, a spinoff of AVP in Rwanda.

5B. 'Peacekeeping' -- Nonviolent Accompaniment. Need not be organized or public in its motivations, but is more effective when it is done publicly, and the reasons are publicized. [Not what the UN does with guns and uniforms, though they call it that.] Most well-know exemplars are Nonviolent Peaceforce, the proposed Canadian Civilian Peace Service, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Muslim Peacemaker Teams. "Why are the missiles called peacekeepers when they're aimed to kill?" -- Tracy Chapman

5C. 'Peacebuilding' -- Sustainable Development -- providing for human needs so that the associated conflicts involving sustaining life (land, water, food, health care, etc.) are ameliorated or eliminated. Fair Trade as opposed to '"free trade". Local economic initiatives. Local alternative currencies. Barter economies. 'Organic' agriculture. Methods of redistribution of wealth, including economic stimuli, may be useful on the way to more synergistic outcomes where the weal is more naturally held and distributed in common.

One interesting aspect of the five-stages theory seems to be that the next one only becomes visible or understandable to you once you have attained the one before. In this way, each stage represents a 'perspective', both individual and social, and social 'organisms' can be said to progress through the stages as well as individual ones.

Another dynamic is that, for various psychological reasons I won't go into here, people or social groups can vary in how they move through the stages, and sometimes regress. However, my understanding is that one one has a firm purchase on a stage, retrogression becomes much more unlikely. Human beings and social organizations are very complex, however, so there is still much more to learn about how to bring everyone into higher stages. Education about these things is both inevitable and necessary.

Of the five stages, only Active Peace -- stage V -- can accurately be interpreted as 'the ocean of light flowing over the ocean of darkness.'

Congratulations and acknowledgements go out to Gray Cox for first writing about Active Peace, and to Johan Galtung for his work in refining the development of the triadic theory -- peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding. Incidentally, many peace studies and conflict transformation programs throughout the world use these terms interchangably, and therefore inaccurately and misleadingly. Of those who do, the ones most likely to do so are those influenced by governmental or corporatist entities and agents.

It is crucial that these terminologies be used accurately and consistently in order that humanity as a whole might progress toward Active Peace -- or alternatively (as some see it) recover Active Peace as our natural state.

=========================================
COLLEGIUM IUSTITIÆ ÆQUITATEM RESTITUENTI
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John Woolman College (of Active Peace) [JWC]
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217 High Street, Brattleboro, VT, USA 05301-6073
01-802-254-2826 Skype/Yahoo: johnwilmerding
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"... where Quakers and revolutionaries join for life ..."
-- Laura Nyro, from 'New York Tendaberry', 1969
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To join (or leave) the College's email list, send an
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Replies to This Discussion

Thanks a lot for this work.
Cordially
Interesting reading. I believe I would currently be in stage 3, but "testing the waters" in stage 4.
The Theory of Active Peace Makes sense to me. Thanks for sharing it -- I will give it more readings and thought. Jo Ann
John,

Thank you for sharing this theory. I would love to have you join us at the Global Brain Application discussion.

My own analysis indicates that 1 - 5B derive from an understanding of the world as a competition among groups for control of scarce resources. When we move to 5C, we begin to understand that we are all in this together - there is a single pattern of flows through the system . . . I describe the first as two dimensional thought and the 5C level as three dimensional. In three dimensions, WE create the world through the choices we make -

there is no one else responsible,

resources are not scarce, and

the market cannot take us all the way to where we want to go,

Which is systems of production that heal nature and produce abundance.

Anyway, I would love the opportunity to discuss these issues with you further.

David.
I really appreciate these distinctions of peace and how to be with peace, each level needing a greater level of consciousness and accountability and responsibility. And to your great point about needing to have a firm grasp - or perhaps, living out - the early stages of peace before we are able to truly experience the higher stages of peace, as we move from "reflection" into "action" and from the "internal/individual" arena into "the public/social" arena, we are being guided and "funded" by a higher, more conscious state of peace. Very cool.

I would like to share this in our Offerings blogspace on "Women & Politics: A New Conversation" and offer this theory there, if I may? With the proper credit, of course, as we'd like for our community to seek out this work and develop themselves and their endeavors in it. Many thanks!

Teresa
Je n'aie pas vu que le commerce équitable éxistait, moi!
Equitable pour qui ? bonne idée mais sur les petites entreprises alors .
Je joint une vidéo que quelqu'un m'a servit un jour!je ne sais plus qui est-ce. bises
Very interesting ! Thanks for sharing... ;o)
John,

I love you.



Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
(541) 343-3808


Namaste.
OM Shantih.. Shantih...Shantih, that is, May Active Peace prevail in Thought, Word and Deed!
Here is "God's abundance", the Peace-Thought which carries clarity and precision - the entry has hit the bull's eye - and one cannot resist going to the roof-top to shout with the peak voice : YES, HERE IS A BETTER THEORY FOR BETTER PRACTICE!
It is crucial that these terminologies be used accurately and consistently in order that humanity as a whole might progress toward Active Peace -- or alternatively (as some see it) recover Active Peace as our natural state.

There are four competencies possible, a reference to which I thought is relevant here.

i) Unconscious incompetence. This is the level of impulses.
ii) Conscious incompetence. This indicates awakening.
iii) Conscious competence. This points at deliberate effort towards progress.
iv) Unconscious competence. This is the state of spontaneity.

To achieve the natural state of spontaneity it is necessary to avail oneself all resources - natural, human and anything beyond, if any - and share it with all for the benefit of all. In this direction my esteemed friend David S.Devor has already done phenomenal work by providing the scientific frame work of ACCELERATED THOUGHT. Lovers of Science are requested to go to the website : http://www.projectmind.org

I am associated with PMF as one of its founding associates. To David I have mailed the link to iPeace.me and to this discussion stating that I have used the PMF logo here(it depicts the burning tree in human face format) at the top.

Cheers!

Well, active peace as our "natural state"?

I would surmise that since the beginning of life on earth, there has always been inter and intra-species competition.


At the risk of understatement, the human species has taken the latter to the point of ridiculousness.

Like in the Bhagavad-Gita, they are poised for war, but decide not to have it. That's where we need to start and begin dis-arming as we allocate resources to efforts of mutual cooperation and welfare (i.e wage peace).

I'm a Work kin for peace and cooperation.


With much love and care,

Mike Morin
It appears to b equite well thought out. It surely will facilitate discussions about peace and guide peace activists in their work. I will like to share this work with others for further discussion.

Pritam Rohila
5D is to ask the question of What Is Peace?
see Yvette Dubel's artist attempt to asking this question
http://comfusion.pbwiki.com/Project:what-is-peace
best regards, Ron
ps see also my blog "How i made friends with my ego"
http://woepwoep.blogspot.com/2006/07/attn-how-i-made-friends-with-m...

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