'The greatest tool for peace'

INTERVIEW / Dom Marcelo Resende

Prior of the Mosteiro da Anunciação do Senhor na cidade de Goiás (GO), in Brazil's huge cattle raising state of Goias, the Brazilian heartland, Dom Marcelo Resende was the only Brazilian guest speaker at the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)  Congress held this past October in South Africa.

With degrees in Philosophy and Theology, and a PhD in Education, Dom Marcelo has also published four books on peace education in Brazil. Dom Marcelo spoke to Comunidad Segura on the cultural construction of both war and peace. It is his belief that both are "learned behaviours" and that if our concern is peace building, we should know that "The great great tool for communication is the word". " We need to teach people the basic skills of peace," said Dom Marcelo, in this exclusive interview.

You say there will be no peace, unless it become part of education. Does that mean that peace is a skill one learns?

Peace has many aspects. Part of it has to do with the economy. One of the most powerful industries today is the weapons industry. We spend over a trillion US dollars a year on military spending today. Peace as political and social as well as cultural aspects. In other words, notions of war and peace are learned.

We are neither violent nor peaceful by nature. The truth is that we build ourselves up as violent or peaceful. These are cultural constructs. We learn to go to war, to be violent, just in the same way as we learn peace.

And where do we learn these things?

I think we pick it up everywhere. Today we have a social production of violence that leads us to learn to justify it, accept it and understand it as a natural ingredient in society. This comes across in various levels, in children’s nursery rhymes for example, in traditional songs such as “Atirei o pau no gato” e “Marcha soldado”.

Society is militarized to a point that is imperceptible to our eyes, and that is replicated in songs, in jokes, this is also true of schools and families. We accept smacking in our families as part of educating, for example. These forms of violence are tolerated, but there are those forms that are considered unacceptable.

What will it take to take a culture of peace into families, schools and communities?

That is where peace education becomes important, we need an organized environment in which people can learn to discuss peace. Where people learn the ABCs of a culture of peace.

I believe that peace education is a bit like a map that will show people where peace is. Today people look for peace, they desire it, but they cannot find it.

Is there a system to teaching peace? Who guides the process?

Normally educators ought to lead the process, but first things first, we need to teach peace to our educators. This is the largest obstacle in peace education nowadays.
People want to learn the language of peace, they even say a few of the words, but there must be environments where these skills are taught in a systematic manner. It is not something that will happen spontaneously. That is why I say that there will be no peace unless we educate for peace.

What is peace? It seems to me that it is merely the absence of war.

True, the notion of peace is still a very slippery one. It is a negative notion because it tells us about what we do not want, it is too subjective because it has lost its sense of inter-subjectivity, being confined to inner experience, of the individual. It is still theoretical, and not social. The notion is still linked to one culture, it is not multicultural. Finally, peace is seen as a state, and not a process. But this notion of peace changes aswith the growing numbers of people, places and groups.

The explanation still seems very subjective...

My proposal is that we create culture circles, or groups, to bring people together to discuss certain topics with the help of a facilitator. Groups could be assembled in schools, that would have a priviledged role in bringing students and the larger community together. Schools are perfectly positioned to perform this role. In my opinion there are ten areas of knowledge that are the foundations of peace, and must be discussed at all levels of society. These discussions must be open to all: Violence, peace, conflict, power, disarmament, human rights, the environment, gender, culture and the future.

We are not doomed to violence. What is a peaceful society, what would a peaceful city look like? We need to retrain our ways of seeing to perceive reality in novel ways.

And what about churches?

Churches are also legitimate as agencies to promote culture groups. There is a pacifist force in the Gospels. The thing that happened to Cristianity is that it has lost its pacifism. From the 5th century Cristianity has begun to accept the possibility of using violence in certain cases. We need to recover Cristianity's lost pacifism.

The concept of peace  also means accepting difference. How can you build a culture of peace if for example, Gays are yet to be accepted?

Here is something to think about: no one is exempt. There is ambiguity all of us and there is violence mixed up among us. There is no perfect solution. All solutions have a degree of potential and have their limitations. The issue falls within the scope of discussion of the institution, institutions must ask themselves how they help to promote peace, and how they help to make violence legitimate.

How can we help institutions be self-critical of their relationship to violence?

Peace education has two main goals: The first is to carry out this exercise in self-criticism as far as violence is concerned. Like Ghandi said to the English authorities: “It is not your weapons that dominate us, but we let ourselves be dominated”, in the same way, we are responsible for sustaining this culture of violence. Violence does not belong exclusively to criminals. We have to evaluate ourselves, how far do we reproduce, sustain and even produce this culture of violence? We need to withdraw our support for this culture of violence. And it is a slow process, as it is with all that has to do with education.

That is why peace education must be approached systematically. It cannot be taught as a class, because that would mean there would be one teacher for peace and it would leave the others free from that responsibility. Peace education must be cross cutting.

Neither is there such a thing as neutral science. Take, for example, physics problems taught in the classroom. A cannon shoots a ball at x meters per second towards a target that is y meters away. How long does the cannonball take to reach its target? Is this science neutral? No, its pure warfare. And it leads to legitimizing war and violence.

How do communication and new technologies relate to peace education?

They are present in the other goal of peace education that is to put people in contact with the great movement for peace that is already in place – even if still somewhat rudimentary and not fully articulate. The media and new technologies would take the role of helping people become aware of this movement.

Take one example, the media portrays the conflict between Israel and Palestine modeled on the suicide bomber versus the Israeli oppresor. There are today over one thousand Israeli army officers under arrest because they refused to take part in repressive actions. There are also schools where Israeli and Palestinians study together.

How does one change this kind of media coverage?

We can create peace culture groups with journalists, for example.

You say that violence is mute, but it speaks loudly through guns. How can we silence them?

When I say that violence is mute, it is because often violence happens because people cannot make themselves heard. Violence happens when people do not voice their opinions and one way to reduce violence is to make sure people speak up against it.

As far as guns are concerned, one of the elements of peace education is educating to disarm. Firearms are legitimated through, among other things, gender issues. Masculinity today is an identity built around guns. The legitimacy of guns is far more encompassing than we imagine. War toys for example, play a role in building masculine identity.

You see peace education as resting on three pillars, could you explain?

One is to create a pacifist community – peace is not an individual experience, it is experienced in a community. We need to connect people to the notion of peace. I think that this is one reason behind our failure to spread a culture of peace. Peace must be experienced inter-subjectivities, not intra-subjectivity. Education starts by forming ties, community relations must be established.

Another is to say the word peace – to help people say it and to say it to each other. When people cannot express themselves, they resort to violence, and they find it difficult to hear what another has to say. The great instrument for peace today is the word. We cannot deny our conflicts, we have to deal with them, and the word is the medium to deal with conflics. When we are able to say something to the enemy, he stops being an enemy and begins to be an interlocutor.

Thirdly, an experience of non violent action, this is also important, peace education is not merely theoretical. One must experience non violent actions such as public action, for example, (protests, forms of public engagement) to take part in reality through peaceful demonstrations.

The United Nations had announced the year 2000 as the International Year of the Culture of Peace, what changed over the past 8 years?

Culture of peace  topic has entered the public agenda, but it is still a novel concept – it was first used in 1990. There are a number of organizatons working with this concept today, both in governments and in civil society.

In Brazil we have examples of public initiatives directed towards a culture of peace. One must think of public policy addressing a culture of peace so as not to overburden our moral shoulders. To do one's own part is a necessary but not sufficient condition. It is also important that we conceive of public policy that addresses a culture of peace for schools and also for cities.

Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi