document.write('<div id="pan_container"><div id="pan_header"><div id="pan_stationAsksImage"></div><div class="pan_pad"><div id="nocodeBridge"><div id=bLink class=bridge><a href="http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/14949" id=bLink class=bridge>Read the whole story</a></div><div id=bHeadline class=bridge>Peace</div><div id=bTeaser class=bridge>The World\'s Alex Gallafent considers peace -- peace as something to wish for and something to strive for.</div></div><div id="pan_tq"><div id="pan_content_title">How do you define peace?</div><div id="pan_content_question">Is it merely the absence of war? How do the personal and political meanings of peace relate to each other?</div><a id="pan_replyImage" href=\'http://action.publicbroadcasting.net/theworld/posts/list/666814.page\' style="display:block;"></a></div></div></div><div id="pan_messages"><div id="pan_commentsTitle"></div><div class="pan_messageContainer"><div  class="pan_messageStats"><div class="pan_pad"><span>Re: How do you define peace?</span> Added: 12/26/2007 1:58:03 PM</div></div><div class="pan_messageBody"><div class="pan_pad">People left alone to live by their cultures and traditions, without attempts to impose/force them to change. There is a reason why God created people differently, and other cultures should respect that. <br/>  <br/> If you can, find a way to trade/interact with them; if not, find your kind.</div></div></div><div class="pan_messageContainer"><div  class="pan_messageStats"><div class="pan_pad"><span>Re: How do you define peace?</span> Added: 12/27/2007 9:50:27 AM</div></div><div class="pan_messageBody"><div class="pan_pad">Thank you for the thoughtful and timely Peace report on Christmas Day.  The honest spirit of inquiry that ensouled the entire report itself exemplified an element essential to a "culture of peace."   The short excerpts from Kiran Sabastian, Donna Blackwell, and Marianne Williamson were on target.  One basic point really comes home to me: we need to stop giving lip-service to peace, as if we all know what we are talking about.  In this sense, the report was very Socratic: it indicated the need to think through definitions, assumptions and implications of peace.  Many of us are, in Ms. Williamson\'s words, entirely too un-sophisticated in our understanding of peace.  It is no wonder then that peace appears anemic and insipid - we can hardly realize something concretely that we cannot grasp intellectually.  The real challenge to peace, clearly, is an internal one. <br/>   <br/> The last statement in the report, however, was disappointing to me.  Alex appeared to be covering his rear end, in the name of "balanced journalism", playing for equal time to a cynical segment of the audience.  He reminded me of the contortions politicians make to avoid appearing "soft."   His rhetorical questioning of the human capacity to make the world better is no little matter, and quite suddenly this little single swipe makes everything during the past eight minutes sound like the mythology of the Easter Bunny.  If we need to be more critical about our understanding of peace, Alex\'s closing comments also show we need to be equally critical about the place of science and empiricism in self-understanding.  Science is descriptive and can say nothing about prescriptions.   No analysis, dissection, or laboratory experiment is going to tell us whether we can make the world better.  This is a matter of existential psychology, the experience of exertion, visualization, effort, deep-feeling, love.  If I am successful at improving my own life in small ways, and if I have participated in groups or communities of human beings who make things better -- then why should I have any doubt that human beings can make the world better?   Aren\'t we intelligent enough to know the future cannot be inferred from the past?  That\'s just bad logic.  Unfortunately, the mesmerizations of applied science, coupled with the philosophical dumbing-down of culture, have created an authority problem.  If people accept cynical dicta handed down in the name of science  -- the real problem is not that intractable helplessness IS true, but that it might BECOME true.   The truth is, there is no possible card that science is going to suddenly play from its deck that will conclusively negate our efforts toward peace.  To believe such a thing merely plays to our fears that the costs of committment may be entirely wasted.  And people who waste time, money and effort are fools.  If we all hold-back in fear of foolishness until science provides conclusive proof that peace and human fellowship are possible, we will never go anywhere.  "The biology of the human animal" will never answer these questions, and does not deserve to have the final word in what is an otherwise informative and inspiring report.  <br/>   <br/> Joseph Miller <br/> Santa Barbara, CA, USA</div></div></div><div class="pan_messageContainer"><div  class="pan_messageStats"><div class="pan_pad"><span>Re: How do you define peace?</span> Added: 12/27/2007 12:34:37 PM</div></div><div class="pan_messageBody"><div class="pan_pad">I\'d say that \'peace\' is not an absence of conflict; rather, an agreement to resolve conflict in a respectful, open style.  <br/>  <br/> This viewpoint is affirmed, I believe, in Ann Weiser\'s small offering, "Agreements of the Open Space", accessible on Google from "Ann Weiser Agreements of the Open Space". Another bit of insight on style can be found as "Strategic Questioning", again on Google. <br/>  <br/> A number of thinkers affirm the usefulness of our acknowledging the inevitability of conflict. Among them is the British Quaker, Adam Curle.</div></div></div></div></div>');