Peace

Gari Melchers, Mural of Peace, 1896.

Peace may be defined positively or negatively. Considered positively peace may refer to healthy, healed or honest inter-personal relationships, safety or prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare or the acknowledgment of equality and fairness in political relationships. These different senses of the term are related to the word contentment. Negatively, peace sometimes means merely the absence of hostility - either at a social or political level (war). Peace is usually regarded as transient in human life; skeptics regard it as a merely ideal state that cannot be practically achieved. Thus, reflection on the nature of peace is also bound up with considerations of the causes for its absence or loss. Among these potential causes are: insecurity, social injustice, economic inequality.
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The above was lifted wholesale from wikipedia. Call this whatever kind of attribution or citation you need it to be.
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So I miscounted the days left in November back before that holiday with the turkey and now I have an extra day before the 30th with no planned topic. Not one to find an easy thing for the next-to-the-last-day, I will forgo detailed instructions for making Jell-0 or how to plant marigold seeds in a Dixie cup and tackle the formidable subject of peace. (h/t to E. over at phigmint)

Peace has different meanings in different contexts. Peace at the family dinner table is a different thing than peace in the middle east. Peace in one's soul is different from peace between unhappy factions.

Jimmy Carter works for peace, and when he did that as president, it cost him politically. Carter understood that for there to be peace internationally, there must be peace internally within nations. For there to be peace within a nation, there must be peace among the different groups who make up that nation. For there to be peace among those groups, they all must feel that they are both giving and receiving no more or less than they deserve, and neither are any of the other groups. So long as there is enormous economic disparity within a nation, there will be no peace within that nation. Congresswoman Maxine Waters said it best (paraphrasing here) "When there is justice, there will be peace. And not until there is justice, will there be peace."

There are some who see peace as being directly linked to a supreme being. That bumper sticker says "no Jesus? No peace. Know Jesus. know peace." Nice thought, but where does that leave the Muslims, Hindus, Pagans, Wiccans, Jews, and goodness-knows how many other non-christian faiths? I suppose you could change it to "know god, know peace," but that still smacks of "here's my opinion, it's better than yours." I don't like that.

Peace to me means a lot of things. At the personal level, it is a calm inside that is undisturbed by the conflicts of emotions, agendas, or stress. This does not mean that those things do not exist in a person who is at peace, merely that the person has learned how to rise above those distractions and has made a decision to be peaceful, even in the midst of life that is not always peaceful.

Next is peace within a family. Growing up as I did in a dysfunctional sort of place, my concept of what makes for a peaceful family is a bit suspect. But here is what I think it might look like: A peaceful family is one in which none fears for their personal safety, particularly at the hands of another family member. A peaceful family means that everyone has enough to eat, clothes to stay warm, and the support and kindness of others in the unit. The needs of each of the members is being met and nobody feels less than any of the other members. Peace is not without activity, but it is a security of sorts, and a sense of cohesion.

Peace within a community gets more complicated still. Karl Marx visualized a Utopian society with "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need." That sounds really nice, but few in my experience are willing to give up their individualism to live in a communist society, even at the most local of levels. Socialism we seem to support, but communism still gives us all the creeps, and for legitimate reasons.

I think Marx may have had something in that oversimplified quote. In any society there are different levels of participation. There are different levels of skill and ability and education and training. A ditch digger cannot be expected to have the same financial and intellectual goals as a brain surgeon. So there is a sliding scale of sorts.

Some parts of the community have more resources than others, some parts have more power than others, and some parts seem to have more time than others. The key to maintaining peace in a complex community, I think, is to make sure that everyone feels that he or she is a vital and valued part of that community. If the brain surgeon treats the plumber badly when he comes to fix the surgeon's sink, it will upset the peace of the community. No matter how important and high-tech the surgeon's work might be, he still needs the specific skills of the plumber when his sink backs up in the kitchen. Same goes for the gardeners and the domestic staff. If the workers are not treated well and respected for the vital role they play in the community, they go home with resentments that fester. They might be mad at the surgeon, but won't say so for fear of losing their job and the security it brings.

This comes down to the people with the power being just and generous with it. And it comes from respecting each other within the community. If people feel respected, and if their basic needs are met, they are far less likely to go to war. Occasionally they will for theological or political reasons, but that is rare.

On an international level, the scenario is much the same. If people are fed, cared for, sheltered, employed in dignified work, respected and valued, they are basically peaceful. If one nation believes that another nation has some kind of unfair economic advantage, be it trade routes, resources, technology, or what have you, it is often much easier to convince the "disadvantaged" nation to pick a fight. Or if a powerful country (say the US) sees something it wants that another country has (say oil), and that other country wants to demand a higher price than the first country wants to pay, one can reasonably expect the first country to find a way to attack the second country and seize its resources. Not that the US would ever do such a thing, of course. Not us. Just the bad guys do that.

Peace is dependent upon security and economic justice, then. Tada! I have reached a conclusion! Finally, after all these miserably tough topics. Only it is a palindrome of a conclusion. It works the same frontwards as backwards:

There will be peace when there is justice. There will be justice when there is peace.

And perhaps more harshly accurate: Until there is peace, there will be no justice. Until there is justice, there will be no peace. Again, thanks to Ms. Waters.

That is huge. I wonder if the minds that run the nations of this world can grasp this idea. I think Barack Obama can. I think Gordon Browne might have a clue. Mad King George couldn't grasp his dick with his hands if given a flashlight and a map, never mind concepts so high as peace and justice. Kim Jong Ill might know and understand, but is using strife and injustice to keep tensions high and himself in charge. The rest of the world's leaders? I don't know. We'll have to see what happens after January 20, 2009.

I forget who it was, but I heard a guy speaking on a program broadcast on National Public Radio. He was talking about economic injustice, entrenched behaviors, and the caste system in India. Hundreds of thousands of people in India work every day carrying away human excrement from non-flushing toilets and latrines all over the nation. Lacking adequate indoor plumbing and waste water treatment facilities, many people in India still rely on untouchables to carry away their waste. The untouchables are doomed to a life of ostracism and filth because of the status of their birth and the work they are forced to perform. With proper plumbing, the guy argued, there would be no need for the caste of untouchables, who could then be educated and allowed to participate fully in Indian culture and society. With education, he said, comes dignity and opportunity. How many brilliant minds are born each year into this doomed group? How many potential Nobel scientists never learned to read because of the status of their birth? It is shameful to consider.

To find peace, at least on a large scale, we must work carefully toward the mutual goals of peace and justice. Like the yin and the yan, they revolve around each other. Peace and justice on a large scale will happen when there is peace and justice on a national level, and peace and justice on a national level will happen when there is peace and justice at the regional level, the community level, the family level and the individual level. And unlike that palindromic example above, peace at the personal level does not require that there is peace at the global level. Peace at the personal level can be a decision made by a person - you or me - to be at peace, to not take the bait when it is offered, to share and live peace every day. If each of us makes a small effort to be more peaceful within our selves, our families and our communities, imagine how quickly we might affect change at the regional, national and global levels.

Peace.

Justice

According to those genius-types over at Wiki, Justice is:

Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, fairness and equity. A conception of justice is one of the key features of society. Theories of justice vary greatly, but there is evidence that everyday views of justice can be reconciled with patterned moral preferences (Konow, 2003).[1].

Wiki then goes on to explain the origins of a variety of concepts of Justice, dating back to the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. About halfway through the reading, I decided that this was beginning to feel like a marathon of term papers and not a blog, which (at least in my experience) involves prose pulled straight from my posterior. It seemed, well, like homework. Huh. Can't have that. Distributorcap NY can do that research - he writes smart stuff all the time. Here, you get what I think, reality-based or otherwise.

Well, it turns out that there are lots of kinds of justice. Like the kind that says that justice means fairness and that everyone is treated the same. Then there is the one that says that justice is a natural law (think John Locke). Hobbes argued that justice was law that was imposed by an authority, and in an article called The Theory of Justice, John Rawls argued "you'll never find (bum bum ba bum) as long as you live, (bum bum bum) someone who loves you (bum!) like I dooooooo....." Oh wait, that's Lou Rawls. Damn. Thought this might be going somewhere fun. John Rawls said something about justice being a social contract that allowed for an impartial distribution of goods. See why I liked Lou better?

My favorite definition comes under the meritocratic version of justice and is attributed to Karl Marx: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Wiki says: "According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good."

Now that makes sense to me. To me, justice is about fairness. It is about people who work hard should get rewards and people who slack should freeze outside with the grasshopper while the ants are warm and fed.

Justice seems almost like it is about karma. And natural consequences for our actions. Be nice to people and people will be nice to you. Help others and others will help you. Be a raging shit to others, and they'll probably return the favor. We can only hope something awful is headed toward Crawford, Texas for the next eight years.

Ah, but that is retribution. Is retribution justice or is it revenge? Revenge does not seem like it is terribly just, merely punitive.

Justice, somehow seems like it should not be dealt out by a human hand. It ought to be handed down by nature or the market or fate or whatever god one cares to believe in. On the other hand, I grew up hearing "God's gonna get you for that!" Again, it sounds punitive, not to mention petty.

I guess justice would be for a bad person to understand just what kind of damage they have done sometime before they die (remember, I am not an adherent to the concept or belief in an afterlife. What you get here is what you get.) I would like to know that just once, Dubya will comprehend the grave errors he has made and the lives he has ruined. I would like to know that Alan Greenspan feels guilty, if only for a moment, before he dies.

Justice eludes me sometimes. I would have liked to see my own version of justice for Ronald Reagan, whom I hold personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of my peers from AIDS. My own version of justice would have been for him to linger for another 20 years, coherent for seconds each day, during which time he is nursed and cared for by gay male nurses. Who treat him well. And for those 30-second bursts of lucidity each day, he feels absolutely horrible. I have often said "Dig him up, I'll kick him! I'm not done with that bastard yet!" And it is true. I saw a T-shirt once in Washington, DC. It said "all I want is a cure and all my friends back." Yeah. Justice missed the boat there as far as I can tell.

Who knows, though. He may have had some kind of moment of enlightenment and remorse before he died. It gives me some small comfort to consider it.

But that is the kind of justice that is punitive, and probably not entirely just. I'd like to think that justice is like that of Solomon - wise but merciful.

But nowhere in the descriptions and articles that I read did I see anything about mercy. Is justice its own thing devoid of mercy? Somehow that does not seem right. Justice, I guess is a combination of the golden rule, the old testament and the new testament all rolled into one. Reward for effort, punishment for crimes, and leniency for humanity.

I am glad I am not in charge of meting out justice. I fear I would be too heavy-handed with the retribution part and not kind enough with the dispensation of mercy. I am glad also that whatever powers that do mete out justice thus far have seemed to spare me much of the retribution I have probably earned while doling out some extra credits in the mercy department. Perhaps that is what justice is after all? That those who feel remorse are shown mercy, and those who are unable to recognize their own errors and thus feel remorse, well, I don't know what happens to them.

I thought I knew where I was going with this one when I started and all I have managed to do is talk myself in circles and get lost. So much for research.

Perhaps my conclusion here should be that a definition of justice, much like the concept itself, is elusive.