Newsletter #9 |
|
Newsletter #9 |
|
#9 - Proof That Humans Can Live Without War (July 2008)Abolishing War
"Activist women-the suffragists-of the late 1800s and early 1900s and the men who supported them-struggled to give women the vote. Activist women of the mid-1900s and the men who supported them struggled to give women equal legal protections and access to jobs and educational opportunities. And what of the next great women's movement? Is the job finished, nothing left to do? For this generation of activist women and the men who support them, the task and challenge can be to abolish war." ~ Judith Hand, La Jolla Rotary, June 2008 If we don't embrace the goal of ending war, we certainly can't achieve that objective. And if we don't abolish war, we certainly can't create a future of peace: Wars and World Peace are diametrically opposed. Critical to embracing the goal is to believe abolishing war is possible. Unfortunately, if asked, the vast majority of U.S. citizens don't think it is. This gloomy view likely characterizes thinking of people around the globe. Therein lies our biggest barrier to progress, because the things we believe are true tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. ![]()
"So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable." ~ Christopher Reeves This newsletter shares information refuting this debilitating assumption. It also provides a link to an essay addressing the frequent lament that no one else has ever been able to abolish war. Why should our time be any different? Well, our time, and opportunities, are radically different in ways that open a wide window for success.
We need hope to nourish our efforts. We need ammunition to convince others that not all humans live with the violence and the waste of war, that war isn't an inevitability-something "in our genes,"-but rather a consequence of something wrong about the way we live. You'll find both hope and ammunition in this newsletter. ![]() We Humans Have NOT Always Been Engaged in Wars
In his book The Human Potential for Peace (2006), anthropologist Douglas Fry began debunking the belief that war is inescapable. In its pages he offers an exhaustive review of many cultures, including very insightful comparisons of nomadic hunter-gatherers and settled hunter-gatherers. In his latest, somewhat less technical book, Beyond War, he continues his exploration in an accessible, finely researched, occasionally humorous manner.Beyond War is a must read for anyone who wants to break down skepticism about abolishing war. Fry reviews and rebuts the work of writers who have argued that man is warlike and always has been and, because it's "in our genes," always will be (Lawrence Keeley, Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, and others). He then looks across many cultures to explore cases where war is absent and cases where the society is best characterized as without violence or having extremely low levels of it. He explores the reasons why these cultures-some familiar but many of them little-known-are so different from the violence-prone dominator cultures with which we're familiar. AFWW provides a detailed review of Fry's important contribution, written for the bulletin of the International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE). Fry Book Review - Beyond Wa ![]() Twenty-Five Peaceful Societies
Another must-explore for anyone wanting to know if it's possible to live nonviolently and without war is the website Peaceful Societies.org.. Here you'll find fascinating profiles of twenty-five peaceful societies, from the Amish to the Nubians to the Zapotec of La Paz. You'll find references to books about peaceful societies, articles on current events affecting them, and links to related websites. As the website stresses, these are NOT UTOPIAS. The people living in them are not perfect. They are human beings with all of our innate assets and liabilities. What knowing about them does make clear, in the stunning variety of their ways of living, is that plenty of humans have lived without violence and war. Visit www.peacefulsocieties.org ![]() Map of Nonviolent Cultures
A picture can be worth a thousand words. AFWW has created a world map on which are plotted the centers of distribution of over sixty peaceful societies. Each dot represents one culture. The data used comes from The Human Potential for Peace (2006) by Douglas Fry. Fry assembled a list of seventy-one societies anthropologists classify as non-violent and non-warring (Box 7.1, p. 92).Many, in fact nearly all, of these cultures live in isolated places protected, at least until recent times, from the dominator, warring cultures that have spread across the globe. Readers of this newsletter might recognize a few names: e.g., Hopi of North America, Amish, Nubians, Laplanders (Semaii), and the Norwegians. Take a look at the picture of the distribution. You might want to download it as a visual reminder to share with others. Map of Nonviolent, Nonwarring Cultures |
Quotable Quote
"A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes." - Mohandas GandhiA Good Movie Iron Jawed Angels. - a superb HBO special film showcasing the struggle of U. S. suffragists in the early 1900s. For an example and model of how we can mount a campaign to bring an end to war, we need look no further than the suffragists who fought a 71-year campaign to secure for U. S. women a constitutional amendment guaranteeing their right to the vote (from the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 until passage of Equal Rights Amendment ratified in 1920). A Future Without War Believe in it. Envision it. Work for it. And we will achieve it. QuickLinks How Long Ending War Would Take Why Women Are the Key to Security The Nine Cornerstones AFWW Newsletter Archives The AFWW Cornerstones |