What have you done recently to take action for peace?
What have you done in the last week? The last month? The last year?
As the issues of dealing with the military occupation of Iraq have gotten complicated, I’ve seen a lot of people drop off from anti-war activity. It’s created an absence, a vacuum into which the pro-war opportunists have been able to act decisively and the spineless war wallflowers that supported the Iraq War before they opposed it have been able to justify their mushy political identities.
Getting tired of demanding change and having the government not respond, I’ve seen a lot of peace activists retreat into peace therapy, a kind of self-help replacement for true activism. Instead of working for peace in the world, they work to cultivate inner peace. They pursue mindfulness of their bean sprouts, and seek purity within themselves so that some time, later, they’ll be ready to stand against war… once everyone else is ready and enlightened too. They put pinwheels for peace in their front lawns, and feeling confident that they’ve done something, they go back inside and take out the yoga mat.
Well, doing something isn’t enough. Pinwheels for peace really don’t count as activism. The character of what we do counts. Action, when it isn’t practically focused, doesn’t help.
I have a proposal of eight practical things to do for peace. Start out doing just one.
Your commentary states: “How does painting pinwheels support the cause of peace in the world? It doesn’t, really. It makes people feel nice, if they like pinwheels, but that’s it. The idea behind the project is that if enough people feel nice, war will stop.”
You seem to have missed the point of the project – it is NOT an anti-war protest/project, it is not political. The project is meant to bring an AWARENESS to the idea of peace. “Peace doesn’t necessarily have to be associated with the conflict of war, it can be related to violence/intolerance in our daily lives, to peace of mind. To each of us, peace can take on a different meaning, but, in the end, it all comes down to a simple definition: a state of calm and serenity, with no anxiety, the absence of violence, freedom from conflict or disagreement among people or groups of people.”
No, Ann, you seem to have missed the point. When the idea of peace is diluted down to the idea of just feeling nice, it ceases to have any significant meaning.
Furthermore, when people substitute feel-good peace activism for genuine, practical action to bring about peace in a time of rampant warmongering, the cause of peace suffers.
How can you seriously claim that peace is not political?
How can you advocate people focusing on just not feeling anxious, when there’s a war on? What if going shopping gives someone a state of calm and serenity? Is that what Pinwheels For Peace advocates?
Peace does NOT take a different meaning for anyone. George W. Bush says that he’s promoting peace by sending the American military over to Iraq. Peace does NOT mean what he says it means.
This mushy-headed linguistic relativism is downright Orwellian.
Ann, you’re missing the point.
While you actually advocate a mindset shift from ignorance and into calm enlightenment and not a political message, Peregein is trying to say that’s not a valid thing to do (and besides the “Giving up America”, I actually like most of those points you have). Instead, his point is that we should be against all war. Specifically, we should be against the war in Iraq, since it should be A-OK with us that millions of Iraqis will die if we suddenly remove our troops, and then Iran will turn Iraq into a puppet, and oppress countless more.
But hey, we should remove our troops, and never fight a war. Let the other countries do that, since we’ll never raise a gun to stop them.
As for those ideas that were criticized on the link, I personally have thought about them before and like them. I cannot say I subscribe to them, simply because as much as I know and realize that if a vast majority of people in the world subscribed to them, humanity could live in happiness and harmony, I also know that’s never going to happen when there are dictators with troops and guns who would rather oppress and rob people for their own wealth. Those ideas though, are far better than protesting the war in Iraq.
Maybe the reason the protestors stopped is because they finally realized that withdrawing from Iraq suddenly is NOT a viable option?
Let me tell you why “pinwheels for peace” is such an excellent project for children.
Students retain:
10% of what they read
20% of what they hear
30% of what they see (like pictures)
50% of what they see and hear (like a video)
70% of what they say (giving a presentation)
90% of what they say as they do something
Does anyone really believe you can go into a school and teach children that x, y, and z policy in opposition to the government is correct? And the kids are supposed to write letters to their reps and senators parroting whatever the teachers tell them is wrong with the Iraq war? Kids who aren’t old enough to vote or to even understand the issues? All that proves is that you are able to manipulate children or that you have enough power over their grades or futures to get them to temporarily do what you want.
On the other hand, who knows what issues of war or peace the children will have to confront in their own time. What better way to prepare than to have them visualize peace and write something down about what peace means to them personally and share the wish all over the world. There is strength in numbers and in visualizing an outcome.
Every time I see a child in my neighborhood wearing camouflage I cringe. In the Middle East kindergarten children are taught to march with wooden guns. At Eid they play in the streets of Jerusalem with plastic machine guns.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the pinwheel children started to set an example for the camo children? And when they grew up maybe they could continue setting an example.
No, the pinwheels are not a waste of time at all.
I think that if the pinwheels are openly shown as pinwheels for peace, they are as effective as a lawn sign — which is to say, they don’t directly change policy, but they do affect a community by advertising, “Here is one person who supports peace in our world.” I think that kind of action is important. I don’t think it’s all that should be done, but I think it is an effective action (as long as it’s clear that it involves public promotion of peace, and isn’t just pretty pinwheels without an apparent message) as the three of the 8 items Peregrin identifies that involve public proclamations of preference.