| Peace is a Need - Passions Presentation
August 2007
Villa Julie College
One of my current passions is the idea that "peace is a need." I first came to hear this statement when studying with Herbert Brun. It re-emerged for me after September 11, 2001.
By the way September 11, 2001 was International Peace Day. This year International Peace day is September 21st. An artist friend of mine is sponsoring a postcard peace project.
Right after 9/11/01 the Villa Julie community organized a college dialogue at which faculty, students and staff were invited to speak about the events of September 11th. At the very end someone said: "We should just go over there and kill them all."
This passionate statement provoked students in my humanities class to decide to focus their projects on peace. That reminded me of Herbert Brun and his idea peace is a need.
Have you noticed the peace pole on Villa Julie's Stevenson campus in the quad? It's a consequence of one of the students of that class, Sasha is her name. She decided a peace pole at Villa Julie College would be her class project.
On the peace pole peace is a need is engraved in four different languages, as well as symbols representing a variety of human needs such as: food, water, shelter, companionship and peace.
In order to understand the concept "peace is a need," it is useful to distinguish between needs, wants and desires.
Needs - if not met I won't need them anymore I will die.
Wants - even though I want it, I will survive without it.
Desires - designing with awareness of this distinctions
Needs are conditions that have to be met so that they can happen again. They are one description of life. Needs must be met so that they can happen again.
When Peace is a need by Herbert Brun
Note, cultural sensitivity includes awareness of accents (including one's own) and a desire and the ability to understand a variety of them.
.... If you investigate the sentence structure of our daily discourse including the media, as well as our schools you will find, every time the term PEACE is mentioned as a consequence of doing something. Peace is described as something that has to be achieved.
Imagine we would say the same thing about hunger.
What do you do in order to have hunger? Eat. People who are not fed will never be hungry again. In order to have hungry people you have to give them food.
If we could declare peace to be one of the needs, like hunger which has to be met by food, thirst which has to be met by drink, tiredness which has to be met with sleep (so that one can do something to become tired again) then a new language may arise.
When peace is a need it offers us a different language. We would understand that we need peace and that since we need peace, we must meet it with our conflicts, our differences, our arguments, so that there not be war, but that the need for peace be satisfied.
Peace is not to ward off conflicts or to avoid controversy, quite the contrary. So, we have learn, create a language that does not assume peace as a reward but as a condition for conflict. Hence the desirability of conflict is celebrated so that it can be peace.
When peace is a need we will
realize that like:
food satisfies hunger, sleep satisfies tiredness,
conflict satisfies our need for peace.
We will know we have peace when we resolve our conflicts without violence.
How will I know peace is a need? (video)
Woman 1: In your analogy, tiredness is met by sleep and hunger is met by food. Both of these examples involve physiological aspects yet when peace is a need does not. So how would I know when peace is a need?
How will I recognize peace if I just has it?
Brun: That is a club I would like to open up and find out. What I say is what has to be, I have not said that I have it, and I want YOU to join me in wanting it.
It has not been accepted in this society and in this language that peace is a need. Instead it is accepted that peace is a reward for some good behavior. Have you ever find out that you have to do something in order to be happy? Everything is a reward-oriented hierarchy we live, everything is a reward-oriented hierarchy in this society. Sometimes it is sweet situation, sometimes it is a lousy situation BUT it is never not a reward-oriented hierarchy that is why we are all climbers, always climbing because there some reward.
Imagine if we were to start with happiness what we could build?
Woman 1: But how will I recognize peace if I just has it?
By saying it to one another. Truly this is the answer at the moment, all that we say to one another - that we have peace - now we can fight. And say that with everything lip, tongue and teeth. And body, our biological existence, make it part of what we do. As we just sometimes say "I love you" or "I hate you." Why can't we sometimes say "It's peace, come, let's have it out.
Woman: Yet in this society we have associated peace with disagreement. So we need another definition for peace.
Brun: Yes that might be so and it would be wonderful if we could work that out together rather than one here and one there so that it becomes an intellectual exercise only -- and then it spoils.
I would like it [peace is a need] to be introduced into all the issues that occupy us in various intensities and in various places. They all can't stand this little item as a spice.
Today, when there is disagreement, some conflict, some injustice, some bad feelings, whatever it is, you know it I don't have to say, but they all are trying to remove the enemy. They are not trying to invite the enemy to a peace, so that conflict may happen at last and not be only a nagging thing like a toothache.
Woman 2: So we would know we had peace when we saw there was conflict.
Brun: Say that again.
Woman 2: So we would know there was peace when we saw there was conflict.
Brun: Yes, that is what we need with a loud speaker. Then I could tell you "come let's have it out."
Woman 2: Then we would know we were in peace together. Because we can only argue with each other when we are in peace. Otherwise we will have to kill each other.
Brun: That is what I want.... If you think this was a little idea over night it's not. I'm not saying this is my best idea or last. It is on the way, I want to avoid giving authority to a higher power. That is what I don't want anymore.
And I would like to be able to retard the decay of knowing that I am a human being.
Woman 1: Would you then discuss the concept of peace in a dialectical relationship?
Brun: Yes.
Woman 1: Would you then say that peace is the conclusion or the evolution of dialectical relationships?
Brun: I would say it is the premise.
Woman 1: Okay.
Brun: For the time being I would say it is the premise. If we get a little further and relavate the language all together then we will have to have an investigation between found premises and deliberately stipulated premises. And I, would like them both to have equal rights. And that, we can only have when peace has become a playground.
I know how difficult this is so please have patience with me.
I think I have said what I have to say.
Maturana: Maybe one is in peace when one can argue with each other and generate a conspiracy without mutually denying each other. This is what I am going to do.... I am going to present the other side of the coin. Now, the other side of the coin is not necessary in opposition. The coin is a totality that has two sides. They are not opposing each other they are just two sides.
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From wikipedia: the aim of a dialectical method, also known as dialectic or dialectics, is to resolve a disagreement through rational discussion and to eventually generate truth. truth
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