In conflict we often forget, that life is about possibility, about choice and that it is our reaching from the present to the future that makes life possible; moving beyond the nihilism of hate, retaliation and destructive conflict, by ‘hoping’, this will be the focus of our discussion, how the imagination, how imagining as an act can facilitate and create peace.
This is an exploration, and as such, we are not simply making a case for the applicability of visualisation or imaging techniques in contributing to peace processes but in doing so, we’re also going to illustrate the necessary connection between the imagination and the act of making peace. This act of believing, of having faith in something better, in the future, in a ‘peace’ this volition of the imagination we believe is what is generally termed ‘hope’; it is our aim to explore the experience of this ‘hope’, and how it can be utilised as an active means of spreading and creating peace through such mediums as visualisation and imaging techniques. However, we must first qualify the notion of peace as a deeply personal experience, making the function of individual hope and thus, individual imagination relevant and paramount. In doing so, we also seek to illustrate how the very act of ‘hoping’, of imagining a future, is an act of peace in and of itself, a volition to live in and of itself. Just as the act of believing in the possibility of peace, of imagining peace, is also an act of moving forwards.
From there, we will move on to illustrate the phenomenological link between ‘hope’ and imaginative volition and visualisation, illustrating how this can help build peace particularly at the grass roots, but also at the macro level. We will likewise look at the shortcomings of such an approach and try to examine where it in fact may be inappropriate if at all. At large, our discussion will be theoretical, though referring frequently to practical and applied techniques and case studies. It should also be noted, that the techniques we are to explore, though relevant on the micro and macro level, are recommendations we put forward in the context of unofficial mediation and other non-official peace building initiatives.
This is not to say that they should not be carried out on the official level, sanctioned by state authorities, but it should be noted that the context of such processes involves a variety of different factors, including political pressure, public opinion etc. on a higher level when state actors are engaging with and through other state actors. These hindrances, are not as prevalent in an unofficial context, where actors are engaged by facilitators who lack any hard-power and thus can pose no threat, allowing for a greater level of freedom in engagement, whilst it may also make it easier for local-level stakeholders and actors to engage, trusting that facilitators are participating without pursuing their ow agendas, and as such are truly ‘listening to what the protagonists have to say. It is in this capacity and its uncertainty that we will examine the potential of visualisation.
To make the case for the applicability for ‘imaging’ in building peace, we have to first consider what we mean when we refer to the notion of ‘peace’. We will not discuss such notions as Galtung’s (2007:14-35) understanding of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ peace; the latter referring to an absence of violence, whilst the former referring to a substantive, structural and institutional state of justice. However, we argue that such notions of peace, be they negative or positive, whether they equate with justice, development, with a lack of dynamism or a void, I believe that though they may describe what peace may appear to be, its characteristics and functionalities, they cannot possibly hope to describe what it ‘is’ and neither can we. Where these explanations fail is that they actually seek to concisely define peace when it is in fact a highly dynamic, complex and subjective concept. Thus, we argue that the popular understanding of peace is based on an understanding of the amicable or of what peace could supposedly bring about: social justice etc. our discussion will follow on the basis, not on what it is, nor on what it appears to result in, but rather how it ‘behaves’, and in doing so make it possible to refer to it on an experiential, phenomenological level.
The Global Peace Index quantifies various forms of inequity when trying to ‘measure’ peace in contrast to violence, conflict and discord (Vision of Humanity: 2012). We will not only argue that conflict is not in antithesis to peace but if expressed in a certain way, can be constructive (Linder: 2009), that peace as a quantifiable substance is not what should be of paramount importance with regards to the application of imaging and visualisation techniques. This is not to say that Galtung’s explanation of ‘positive peace’ as the absence of structural and institutional inequity isn’t important, on the contrary as Burton (1990) illustrates, structural harms such as poverty, oppression, exploitation and discrimination, cannot be ignored, and require attention because of their affect on basic human needs, because of their generation of misery, discontent and hate, significant ‘structural changes’ are necessary to combat suffering and work towards a ‘just peace’; as Webel (2007: 5-6) states, we often identify peace based on its absence because in the very least it’s a “..precondition for our emotional well being”.
However, our focus will be on that ‘misery’, ‘discontent’ and ‘hate’ created by very real suffering and on the world views, perceptions and ideas generated as a result and in tandem with them, as Curle (1995) argues, though material circumstances may be capricious, it is in human perception that conflict and concord alike are created and waged, as the UNESCO (1945) constitution states: “Since war begins in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”, in the perceiving, experiencing and feeling human imagination subject to both hope and despair, it is this capacity for perception, which creates what Hamber (2006: 207) called “the politics of person”, because it is on the micro level, in our minds and hearts that all experiences gain significance, because we are there to experience. Stewart and Strathern (2006), propose similarly that terror produced of despair originates in the perceiving mind just as the ‘peace’ of the hoping mind. This feeds into a notion purported by Richmond (2012), that even in circumstances of severe discord, destruction and terror, people still live on, people still pursue normalcy for themselves and their loved ones, if that’s taking their children to school, cooking food, taking care of the elderly or just talking; they create through their act of living, what Richmond calls an “everyday peace”, fuelled by perception, by ‘faith’, or ‘hope’.
As such, we are to use Webel’s (2007: 7-8) ‘dialectic’ understanding of how peace behaves conceptually, that it is not an absolute substance, that it is not a static, unchanging constant, but is dynamic, changing and deeply personal, but is necessarily an anticipation, a wish, or a ‘hope’, into the future from the present. Peace is in “flux”, it is a matter of “ethical transformation”, a non-absolute truth, a “hope”, it is a dialectic, not a tangible ideal, but a deeply personal and “intangible” pursuit;
“The means and the goal are in continual, dialectical evolution, sometimes regressing during periods of acute violent conflict and sometimes progressing non-violently and less violently to actualize political justice and social equity.”
This dialectic understanding of peace in-turn supports our earlier assertion that conflict can be constructive, as this process of ‘hoping’, of believing and aspiring on a personal level requires the constant dynamic of interacting, contradicting and synthesising ideas. It is this creative process we argue, that should be directly utilised in peace-making processes and activities, to utilize the human imagination fully in its act of hoping and create alternative visions of life and of action, building on Galtung’s (2007: 28) approach of engaging actors on the “reality” or ‘peace’ they seek rather than focusing purely on their hatred and rage against the other, moving their energies to a more positive focus, away from the perception that war or violent conflict is necessary, as “Once we believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy” (Kucinich 2009) and in doing so, help parties explore what they truly hold dear and the world they want those things to exist in; illustrating that one of the most astounding faculties of the human imagination is its capacity for hope and that in-turn its capability to make peace by imagining futures.
That process will be undoubtedly difficult, but we will assert that no conflict is intractable in the face of the human imagination and its capacity to hope and that it can even help facilitate a dialogue of engagement within what Rambostham (2012) calls a ‘radical disagreement’, instances when different world views are irreconcilable. However, this is not to say that the imagination cannot be utilised to create a third world view congruent with the latter two, or at least aid the two with coming to terms with one another’s existence, rather, in any conflict expressed constructively, there will be an opportunity or ‘point of transformation’ (Glouberman 1989: 297), as well as an experiential and process-based resolution – “…a clarification of a confused picture that has a kind of rightness about it.” Glouberman (ibid.) goes further too to state that as such: “Another word for point of transformation is hope. Another word for resolution is peace.” (ibid.).
As both Burton (1990: 266-7) and Curle (1995) agree, that there is a deep need for a significant paradigm shift in mass perception and that likewise, as the current paradigm of violence began in the human imagination, so too does a paradigm of hope.
Series to be continued.
