Page 12 - Geopolítica del Mundo Actual. Una Visión Multidisciplinar

GEOPOLÍTICA DEL MUNDO ACTUAL. UNA VISIÓN MULTIDISCIPLINAR:
Cultura de Paz, Conflictos, Educación y Derechos Humanos
approach is mediation;
* For Peace-Past the problem is unprocessed
traumas, and the name of the curative
approach is (re)conciliation;
* For Peace-Future the problem is missing
projects. and the name of the preventive approach is project building.
Put differently: for the peace problems of the present we need to learn mediation, for those of the past conciliation, and for the future project building; three aspects of peace building. The argument is not to educate everybody to become conciliators, mediators and project builders-- as little as we demand training as GPs, nurses, nutritionists and physical educators of everybody.
What is argued would be something more modest that can be practiced by everybody like they do in Health: ability to learn from and handle the past, simple hygiene, exercise, good food habits and the delight at sensing positive health in body, mind and spirit. What could that minimum be, for the field of Peace? Real peace education, today missing, not only anti-war education?
Three simple, teachable rules for conflict mediation:
* learning to see conflict as a problematic relation between parties because of incompatible goals they pursue rather than as incompatible persons, parties, states with Self good-Other evil;
* learning that all parties may have some legitimate goals, and means and--also oneself--some illegitimate goals and means;
* learning how to bridge legitimate goals through creativity. And if it does not work, to
start from the beginning, again!
Simple rules, with great effects. The point is not only mediation but a general culture of mediation, like the basic point in Health may be not so much the health professions as a general culture of health, that health is worth pursuing not only to avoid the suffering of disease, but for ever higher self-realization--the sky being the limit. And the same for Peace, ever higher Self-realization for collectives like couples, social groups, states, regions, for the world. Worth pursuing. And feasible. Equally basic are three teachable rules for project building:
* people want to cooperate, but for mutual and equal benefit, so do to others what you want them to do to you for equity;
* people also want to live in harmony, suffering the suffering of their partner, enjoying their joy, so cultivate empathy;
* projects do not last forever, hence renewal, even new projects. And people know that wounds from the traumas of the past may be the causes of future violence, so again three teachable rules:
* think through what went wrong and what could have been done;
* victims are marred by trauma and perpetrators by having caused trauma, could they cooperate to put the past behind them? * could there even be some joint project for a
future together?
TRANSCEND works on this 3x3 in the European Union supported SABONA project, teaching peace at school. Pleas, join us!
Today there are more than 500 universities with courses in conflict and peace studies; most working in this general direction. Experience from Norway, at the elementary school SABONA project, indicate that children can learn such points more easily than adults who have acquired bad habits, like always wanting to win, to dominate, to be unforgiving, and believing that all it takes is to be nice in thought, speech and behavior. Try to be
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