Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Peace Literacy

The Upcoming Virtual Reality Revolution

New technology makes new forms of waging peace possible. New technology in the form of mass-printed pamphlets, books, and newspapers made the early women’s rights movement possible. New technology in the form of the telegraph and international newspapers made Gandhi’s anti-colonial movement possible.

In the 1950s, new technology in the form of television made the civil rights movement possible. The civil rights movement could not have achieved the victories it did in the amount of time it did without the power of television. In the twenty-first century, new technology in the form of the Internet and social media made the Arab Spring possible.

The Internet has also democratized information, strengthening grassroots causes and allowing people to educate themselves. And the Internet has changed my views toward humanity’s treatment of animals by empowering me to watch Internet videos showing animals being treated horrifically.

Virtual reality for a mass consumer market will arrive soon, and most people have no idea what is coming. When we look at history we think of everything before electricity, and everything after electricity. We think of everything before television, and everything after television. We think of everything before the Internet, and everything after the Internet. When people in the future look at history, they will see everything before virtual reality, and everything after virtual reality. I have tried the HTC Vive virtual reality headset, and words cannot describe what it is like. You feel like you are physically somewhere else. Virtual reality is mind-blowing, and arguably one of the most powerful technologies humanity has ever created. It is a godlike power, the power to create worlds, and then to put our bodies in those worlds, to lose ourselves in those worlds.

New technology makes new forms of waging peace possible, and virtual reality offers this same potential. But all human inventions also have a dark side. A hammer can be used to build a house, or to murder. Writing can be used to spread love and truth, or hatred and lies. Electricity can be used to provide heat in winter, or to torture someone. An airplane can deliver food, or drop bombs. We can use tools to educate and protect us, or enslave and destroy us. People already get addicted to violent video games and Internet porn. Just wait until they play violent video games and watch porn while wearing a virtual reality headset.

Technology has given humanity many gifts. But technology’s greatest gift to humanity is that it will force us to evolve ethically or we will go extinct. If we do not develop the ethics to handle our technology responsibly, we will destroy ourselves and our fragile biosphere, and we will be too lulled to sleep by our technology to stop the forces of injustice from destroying our world.

January 4, 2016
Procession of Nations: Respect and Peace Leadership

At Fryeburg Academy’s annual United Nations Flag Processional this October, each flag-bearer was introduced and asked to say one word in their native language: respect. This event, held in Fryeburg, Maine, was highlighted by NAPF Peace Leadership Director, Paul K. Chappell, who delivered a powerful message of how to avoid conflict through respect.

“Most human conflict,” said Chappell, “is a result of people feeling disrespected. Universally, every culture finds these three things respectful: Being able to listen, being able to recognize someone’s worth and potential, and leading by example”

To end the meeting, Chappell charged all 500 students present, including 145 foreign students, to consider the impact it would have if they could improve in these three areas and how it could change everyone around them: at home, at work, in our community, and around the world.

“Our speaker this year,” said Greg Huang-Dale, advisor of the Fryeburg Academy International Club and ESOL teacher, “captured an essential element of our school’s success in this age: through mutual respect we become better listeners and learners. We become better at sharing our true selves and humanizing others. In the context of our diverse student population, we are breaking stereotypes and the fears that go with them.”

Chappell also spoke at two afternoon sessions with about 130 students each. One special twelve year-old student joined the classes. Fryeburg resident Luke Sekera left his 7^th grade class in town to hear Chappell speak for the third time. Her mother Nickie Sekera, a local water rights activist, had brought him to two different peace leadership events and he asked for special permission to see his friend Paul.

Luke later wrote, “Paul is an easy person to admire because he has the ability to make people comfortable to learn about ‘waging peace’ I also love history and he gives the best history lessons!”

Even in junior high school, Luke saw the value in Paul’s work. “His lessons are important to my generation because it will be up to us to solve big problems such as climate change and armed conflict over resources. It’s never too early or late to learn about peace and how to use it as an educational tool as well as a ‘secret’ weapon for a better world.”

His mother Nickie later posted on Facebook, “So grateful that Paul’s out there showing our youth (and the adults that guide them!) a peaceful way forward. We all have a role to play in moving from a culture of war to a culture of peace.”

November 2, 2015
Peace Leadership in Nuclear-Free Tijuana

Paul K. Chappell, Peace Leadership Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, gave a panel presentation on “Waging Peace Today” to 400 attendees at the Playas de Tijuana inaugural event for the international exhibit, “From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace: Transforming the Human Spirit,” on Thursday, June 18^th, at the Casa de Cultura Playas as part of the Municipal Art and Culture Institute of Tijuana, Mexico. Other speakers included Dr. Jorge Astiazaran, the mayor of Tijuana, and Robert Rios, General Director of Soka Gakkai of Mexico.

“Paul’s powerful message, the seeds he planted, resonated strongly in many hearts and minds,” said exhibit coordinator Susan Smith.

The exhibit highlights the synergy between goals of security for humanity and disarmament, particularly nuclear weapons abolition. Developed by Soka Gakkai International, and hosted by the Municipal Institute of Art and Culture of Tijuana (IMAC) in collaboration with Soka Gakkai of Mexico (SGMEX), the exhibit has been shown in 230 cities throughout four continents, including the parliament of New Zealand, the Oslo City Hall, the Senate of Mexico, numerous universities around the world, and at the headquarters of the United Nations in Vienna and Geneva. The exhibit was created to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons by the second Soka Gakkai president, Josei Toda, on September 8, 1957.

Playas de Tijuana is the northernmost point of the Latin American and Caribbean nuclear free zone protected by the Treaty of Tlatelolco (Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, signed in Mexico City on February 14, 1967).

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI): “On 23 October 2002, the Tlatelolco Treaty came into full force throughout the region when Cuba, the only state which had not ratified the treaty, deposited its instrument of ratification. Currently, all 33 states in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean have signed and ratified the treaty. The Tlatelolco Treaty has served as a model for all future nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) agreements.”

June 29, 2015
Phaeton’s Folly: The Dangerous Reins of the Nuclear Chariot

Pictured above: A mosaic from ancient Rome with the inscription “Know Thyself” in ancient Greek.

Technology and arrogance are a deadly combination. Thousands of years ago, people foresaw the dangers that arise when technology is corrupted by arrogance. In Greek mythology, Icarus and his father, Daedalus, were imprisoned in a tower, but they had a way to escape. Daedalus constructed two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers. Although he warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, Icarus did not listen. Blinded by his arrogance, he flew higher and higher until the wax holding his wings together melted. Icarus’s wings were a technological marvel that gave him a chance at freedom, but his arrogant misuse of this technology caused him to fall into the ocean and die.

Greek mythology also tells us of Phaëton, whose father was the sun god Helios. Phaëton wanted to drive his father’s sun chariot, but this arrogant desire led to a disaster. Helios was a mighty deity with the power to drive his sun chariot on a safe path across the sky, but Phaëton was half human and wanted to do what only a god could do. Unable to handle the reins, Phaëton lost control of the sun chariot and could not stop it from plunging toward the earth. Plato writes that “[Phaëton] burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt [from Zeus].”[i]

A painting by Peter Paul Rubens of Phaëton falling from the sky.

The heat from our sun is generated by a nuclear reaction deep within its core. Our sun’s nuclear reaction is at a safe distance of 93 million miles away, but during the 1940s people began creating dangerous nuclear reactions on our planet. Just as Phaëton believed he could control the sun chariot, many believe we can control the thousands of nuclear weapons around the world. We have narrowly avoided nuclear annihilation in the past, and in the age of terrorism our grip on the nuclear reins is slipping.

If we lose control of the nuclear chariot we will suffer the same tragedy that befell Phaëton. And if any survive they too will write about how we “burnt up all that was upon the earth.” The story of Icarus tells us that some technology, like flight, must be used responsibly or we will get ourselves killed. The tragedy of Phaëton tells us that some technology, like a nuclear weapons arsenal capable of destroying humanity, is a disaster waiting to happen in the hands of fallible human beings.[ii]

The ancient Greeks probably could not foresee weapons as destructive as nuclear weapons, but they were well aware of human imperfection. Our fallibility as human beings is what ultimately makes nuclear weapons so dangerous. According to John F. Kennedy, nuclear holocaust can result from accident, miscalculation, or madness, which are all products of human fallibility.

In ancient Greece, the words “Know thyself” were inscribed at the temple at Delphi. Today many people use this saying to emphasize the importance of introspection, but in ancient Greece this saying meant something different. Back then “Know thyself” meant that you should know what kind of creature you are.[iii] Know that you are not a god. Know the limitations that result from being human. Know that you are mortal and fallible. The ancient Greeks realized that human beings who don’t know themselves in this way, who believe they are god-like, are extremely dangerous.

The only reason nuclear weapons are dangerous is because we are fallible. If we were infallible, perfect, and truly godlike, nuclear weapons would not be a problem. In fact, humanity would not have any problems.[iv]

Humanity’s arrogance as a species is understandable. In religions throughout history, the sun has been depicted as either created by God, or the embodiment of God. Before Albert Einstein created his equation E=mc², nobody in the world knew how the sun shined. What kind of fuel source could allow an object to burn so brightly for so many eons? It was a great mystery. Many people reasoned that the sun must be using a fuel source much more powerful than wood, oil, or coal, but what could it be? Einstein’s equation revealed that the sun’s fuel came from a nuclear reaction that converted matter into energy. By learning this secret of the sun, humanity gained an ability that seemed god-like. In religions and mythologies around the world, only gods could control solar fire. By unlocking the mystery of solar fire, humanity gained control of the nuclear chariot, and with it we gained Phaëton’s ability to annihilate ourselves and all those around us.

The story of nuclear weapons did not begin in 1945 with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. The story of nuclear weapons began ages ago, because it reflects a deeper story about the human condition. It is a story about our timeless struggle to reconcile the reality of our fallibility with our desire to be god-like. Since no human is perfect, who can be trusted with weapons capable of annihilating most life on our planet? As John F. Kennedy realized, all political leaders are vulnerable to accident, miscalculation, or madness, which are all products of human fallibility. If political leaders were not vulnerable in this way, they would not be human.

Every religion, philosophy, and scientific school of thought recognizes that human beings are fallible and imperfect. Every technology and system we have ever created is also fallible and imperfect, just like us. There has never been a car, computer, or any human invention ever made that is perfect, invulnerable to error, and incapable of breaking. Nuclear weapons and the system that sustains them are imperfect, just like every technology and system that human beings have ever created.

Humanity’s arrogant belief that it can control a vast nuclear weapons arsenal may lead to violence on an unprecedented scale, in the form of a nuclear holocaust. The word “hubris” was a Greek term that referred to wanton violence resulting from arrogance. In Greek mythology, the female deity Nemesis punished those guilty of hubris. If humanity loses control of the nuclear chariot, it will not just be nuclear weapons that cause our world to burn with solar fire. If the nuclear chariot wrecks our planet, it will also be because of fallibility, hubris, and the metaphorical goddess Nemesis. Nuclear weapons are a symptom of much deeper problems, such as the myth of nuclear deterrence and the confusion about what it means to be human.

[i] Plato, Timaeus, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html.

[ii] This piece is adapted from my book Peaceful Revolution.

[iii] Classical Mythology, Lecture 16, The Teaching Company, 2007, DVD.

[iv] In Greek mythology not only are human beings fallible, but the Greek gods are also fallible because they can be fooled. To see oneself as god-like in a Judeo-Christian sense means seeing oneself as infallible, but unlike the Judeo-Christian God, the Greek gods are not infallible. However, they are much less fallible than human beings, because they have the gift of prophecy. The ancient Greeks considered it dangerous to see oneself as an immortal and mighty Greek god. To see oneself as infallible would mean being more than a Greek god.

June 2, 2015
Why We Need Peace Heroes

Developed for the Dayton International Peace Museum, Dayton, Ohio, for their 2015 Peace Heroes Walk as The Little Book of Peace Heroes.

The Most Difficult Art Form

Imagine if your city had a high school with a 100 percent illiterate student population. Would this high school, where not even one student knows how to read, gain local media attention? Actually, it would probably gain national media attention. Today our society recognizes illiteracy as a problem, because we understand that reading is the foundation of education. Furthermore, just trying to navigate through the modern world without the ability to read signs, menus, e-mails, and the Internet puts us at a major disadvantage in the struggle to succeed at life.

But imagine traveling back in time three thousand years. This was around the era when the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans took place. In Homer’s depiction of the Trojan War, known as the Iliad, none of the characters know how to read. The Greek and Trojan societies are almost completely illiterate.[i] Not even kings such as Agamemnon and Priam know how to read.

A better term to describe these ancient illiterate societies is “preliterate,” because they did not yet understand why literacy was an essential step in their society’s evolution. Imagine trying to convince the ancient Greeks and Trojans in the Iliad that they should learn how to read. This would be a seemingly impossible task, because they had no reference point to understand why reading is important.

Today we know reading is important, because there is a reason why American slave owners made it illegal to teach slaves to read. And there is a reason why dictators ban books and the Nazis burned books. To oppress any large group of people in a society, a system must first oppress their minds, and reading offers us a way out of ignorance. Literacy also made it possible for humanity to organize ideas in new ways, allowing us to create intellectual disciplines such as science, history, philosophy, psychology, biology, and much more.[ii] Science is one of many subjects that cannot exist without literacy.

What if our society is being held back by another form of illiteracy, which most of us today are not aware of, similar to the ancient Greeks and Trojans who were not aware of the importance of reading? In what way is our modern society illiterate? To understand this, we must first recognize the most difficult art form.

There are many challenging art forms. To play the violin well, a person must get training. Sports are also art forms that require people to hone their craft, but to play any sport at a high level, we must be trained. If a person wants to write, paint, sculpt, practice martial arts, or make films to the best of their ability, training is also critical. But what is the most difficult form of art? What art form is far more challenging than playing any instrument or sport? The art of living.

Living is certainly an art form. The Roman philosopher Seneca explained: “There exists no more difficult art than living . . . throughout the whole of life, one must continue to learn to live and, what will amaze you even more, throughout life one must learn to die.”[iii]

Essential Life Skills

Just as we must learn any art form, we must also learn how to live. But unlike other art forms, the art of living transforms us into both the sculptor and the sculpture. We are the artist and our life is the masterpiece. [iv] As a child I was never taught the art of living. For example, I was never taught how to overcome fear. Wouldn’t this be an incredibly useful thing to know? In fact, overcoming fear is one of the most important life skills we can have. Nor was I ever taught how to calm myself and other people down. This is another essential life skill.

As a child I was never taught the many essential life skills that are part of the art of living. I was never taught how to resolve conflict, make the most of adversity, listen deeply, focus my mind, inspire people to overcome seemingly impossible tasks, lead from a foundation of respect rather than intimidation, develop empathy, be a good friend, have a healthy relationship, challenge injustice, be happy, find purpose and meaning in life, develop my sense of self-awareness so that I can critique myself honestly, and help humanity create a more peaceful and just world.

Some children learn these skills from their parents, but many parents do not know how to listen well or handle conflict without yelling, causing children to learn bad habits. When people watch cable news, reality shows, and other forms of media entertainment, how often do they see someone who listens well and resolves conflict calmly and respectfully? More people in our society are taught to resolve conflict through aggression than through the power of respect.

Imagine if you watched a basketball game, but nobody on either team had ever been properly taught how to play basketball. It would be a mess. Imagine if you listened to an orchestra play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but nobody in the orchestra had been taught how to play their instruments. It would also be a mess. Since living is far more complicated than playing basketball or Beethoven, when our society is filled with people who have not been taught the art of living, life becomes a lot messier than it needs to be. Living will always be somewhat messy because it is the most difficult art form, but when we are trained in the art of living we gain the tools to prevent unnecessary conflict, violence, misunderstanding, suffering, and trauma. And we become empowered to solve these and other problems when they arise.

Preliterate in Peace

The art of living requires us to understand what it means to be human, because the art of living works with the medium of our shared humanity, just as painting works with color and music works with sound. The art of living also requires us to learn the art of waging peace, because peace is the process and product of living well. Instead of saying our society is illiterate in peace, a more accurate phrase is “preliterate in peace.” Three thousand years ago, there were many brilliant Greeks and Trojans who did not understand the importance of becoming literate in reading. And today, there are many brilliant people in our society who do not yet understand the importance of becoming literate in living well, waging peace, and our shared humanity.

Because environmental destruction, nuclear weapons, and war can drive humanity extinct, this new kind of literacy I am describing is necessary for human survival. Just as people today recognize that illiteracy in reading is a serious problem, we must create a future where people recognize that illiteracy in the art of living and the art of waging peace is also a serious problem. To take their society to the next level, a civilization such as the ancient Greeks had to prioritize literacy. To take our global society to the next level, we must prioritize literacy in living well, waging peace, and our shared humanity.

The 2009 U.S. Army Sustainability Report lists several threats to national security, which include severe income disparity, poverty, and climate change. The U.S. Army Sustainability Report states: “The Army is facing several global challenges to sustainability that create a volatile security environment with an increased potential for conflict . . . Globalization’s increased interdependence and connectivity has led to greater disparities in wealth, which foster conditions that can lead to conflict . . . Population growth and poverty; the poor in fast-growing urban areas are especially vulnerable to antigovernment and radical ideologies . . . Climate change and natural disasters strain already limited resources, increasing the potential for humanitarian crises and population migrations.”³²

When the U.S. Army says that “greater disparities in wealth . . . poverty . . . and climate change” are dangerous, these were among the same concerns expressed by the Occupy movement. When the U.S. Army and Occupy movement agree on something, I think we should pay attention. However, none of these problems can be solved by a single country. In addition, none of these problems can be solved by waging war. During the twenty-first century, protecting our national security requires us to develop the skills necessary to work together as a global community. During the twenty-first century, protecting our national security also requires us to develop the skills necessary to create a new vision of global security.

Many people who learn the art of living and the art of waging peace may not use these skills to participate in a paradigm-shifting global movement, just as many people today who have learned a written language may not read paradigm-shifting books. Many people today use reading simply for e-mails, the Internet, signs, menus, and articles. In a similar way, many people in the future may use the art of living and the art of waging peace simply to better their relationships, become happier, gain more purpose and meaning in their lives, and resolve conflicts with their friends, family, coworkers, and strangers. Every ounce of peace adds to the wellbeing of our broader human community. When we know more about the art of living, which includes understanding how our human vulnerabilities can be exploited by written and visual propaganda, we also become harder to manipulate.

What Is a Peace Hero?

Why must we learn the art of living? Why aren’t we born with all the knowledge necessary to live well? The reason is because our brains are so complex. An oak tree knows how to be an oak tree. It doesn’t need a mentor or role model to guide it. A caterpillar knows how to turn into a butterfly and thrive in the world. It doesn’t have to take a class or read a manual. But human beings, more than any other species on the planet, must learn to be what we are. We must learn to be human. This is why children in every culture need role models and mentors to guide them, such as parents, teachers, community members, or even religious icons such as Jesus and Buddha. This is why people in every culture need an ideal to strive toward, an ideal that represents our highest human potential.

In our culture, this ideal is known as the “hero.” In ancient Greece, heroes were not moral, but exceptional. The Greek heroes included Achilles, Odysseus, and the greatest Greek hero of them all, Heracles (better known by his Latin name, Hercules). Achilles was the mightiest warrior alive, Odysseus was a brilliant tactician and talented speaker as well as a powerful warrior, and Heracles was the strongest man in the world.

Unlike the ancient Greek heroes, the “peace hero” is not admired for being physically exceptional, but morally exceptional. Peace heroes such as Jesus, Buddha, Lao-tzu, many Jewish Prophets, Lucretia Mott, Mahatma Gandhi, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King Jr., Wangari Matthai, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Malala Yousafzai, and many others are not exceptional killers like Achilles or exceptionally strong like Heracles, but exceptionally moral in the ways humanity must emulate if we are going to survive during our fragile future.

One of the early peace heroes was Socrates. Socrates, similar to later peace heroes such as Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, St. Francis of Assisi, General Smedley Butler, and Leo Tolstoy, had been in the military. Socrates went from being courageous on the battlefield to courageously challenging injustice in his society, replacing the weapons of war with the weapon of truth. Historian James A. Colaiaco tells us: “Socrates carried out his mission without fear of death. But he contradicted the traditional notion of the hero . . . For him, vengeance is unjust, and honor is won only in the pursuit of moral virtue, even at the expense of violating the values of the community. The new hero that Socrates represented was not one who excelled on the battlefield or one who surrendered his life unthinkingly to the polis [city-state], but one who remained steadfast in his commitment to justice.”[v]

A peace hero is not something we are, but an ideal we reflect in our daily lives. Honoring peace heroes lifts up this ideal higher so that more people can see this vision of what it means to be human, a vision that humanity needs to survive during our fragile future. One characteristic peace heroes all share in common is that they reject vengeance. Could you imagine Jesus, Buddha, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Malala Yousafzai embracing vengeance? If they did, they would not be the people we admire. Instead of embracing vengeance, peace heroes promote justice.

Another characteristic peace heroes have in common is that they understand our interconnectedness, and how their work is built on the efforts of countless others. As a result, people who reflect the peace hero ideal are often embarrassed when anyone praises them as heroes. Frederick Douglass, who dedicated his life to ending slavery and furthering women’s rights, said: “We never feel more ashamed of our humble efforts in the cause of emancipation than when we contrast them with the silent, unobserved and unapplauded efforts of those women through whose constant and persevering endeavors this annual [anti-slavery] exhibition is given to the American public.”[vi]

Commenting on the unsung heroes of peace and justice, Albert Schweitzer said, “The sum of these [actions from people who aren’t famous], however, is a thousand times stronger than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. The latter, compared to the former, are like the foam on the waves of a deep ocean.”[vii]

Protecting Our Fragile Future

There are many concepts of what it means to be a hero, because people can be admired as heroes not because they possess exceptional moral virtue, but exceptional wealth, ruthlessness, or cunning. Which heroic ideal we admire will shape our future. If our society idolizes heroes who embrace vengeance and violence, our political system, way of viewing the world, and approach to solving problems will reflect this. If our society studies heroes who promote peace and justice, our vision will be expanded, allowing us to see new possibilities for solving problems and being human that we did not notice before, but were there all along, waiting to be discovered.

Through literacy in the art of living, the art of waging peace, and our shared humanity, we will become empowered to reflect the ideal of the peace hero, solve our most serious human problems, and protect our fragile future. Through this new kind of literacy, human beings three thousand years from now may look back on us the way we look back on people living during the Trojan War. Because our modern problems threaten human survival, this new kind of literacy can help us ensure that three thousand years from now humanity will still exist.

BIO:

Paul K. Chappell serves as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He graduated from West Point in 2002, was deployed to Iraq, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. He is the author of the Road to Peace series, a seven-book series about waging peace, ending war, the art of living, and what it means to be human. The first four published books in this series are Will War Ever End?, The End of War, Peaceful Revolution, and The Art of Waging Peace. Lecturing across the country and internationally, he also teaches college courses and workshops on Peace Leadership. He grew up in Alabama, the son of a half-black and half-white father who fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and a Korean mother. Growing up in a violent household, Chappell has sought answers to the issues of war and peace, rage and trauma, and vision, purpose, and hope. His website is www.peacefulrevolution.com.

[i] There is one possible reference to writing in the Iliad. In his introduction to the Robert Fagles translation of the Iliad, Bernard Knox says, “In Book 6 [of the Iliad], Glaucus tells the story of his grandfather Bellerophon. Proetus, king of Argos, sent him off with a message to the king of Lycia, Proteus’ father-in-law; it instructed the king to kill the bearer. ‘[He] gave him tokens, / murderous signs, scratched in a folded tablet . . .’” This reference is so vague that it is unclear whether these “murderous signs” were part of a written alphabet. Whether these scratched markings represented a written alphabet rather or just coded symbols, they seemed so mysterious that they are described by characters in the Iliad as signs and scratches.

[ii] Classical Mythology, Lecture 1, The Teaching Company, DVD. In the first lecture, professor Elizabeth Vandiver discusses how literacy makes intellectual disciplines possible.

[iii] Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1959), xiv.

[iv] In his book Man for Himself, Erich Fromm discusses living as an art. I first heard this idea from Erich Fromm and Seneca.

[v] James A. Colaiaco, Socrates Against Athens (New York: Routledge, 2001), 133.

[vi] Philip S. Foner, ed., Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1992), 11.

[vii] Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, trans. Antje Bultmann Lemke (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 90.

March 17, 2015
From Peace Leaders to Peace Heroes

When Paul K. Chappell, Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, visited the Dayton International Peace Museum in Dayton, Ohio, for a week’s worth of events, the museum made a request. Could Paul put down his thoughts about peace heroes that they could use in the spring campaign for their first annual peace heroes walk?

Paul wrote a 2,500 word essay now called “The Little Book of Peace Heroes” published on the museum’s website and soon to be available as a pamphlet to be distributed nationwide to schools and concerned organizations. Paul will also give a presentation at Dayton’s Neon Theatre on peace hero ideals to the museum’s peace hero team captains on Sunday, April 19.

Paul’s Dayton February events included the Wright State University Peace Club, a one day peace leadership training, lectures at Sinclair Community College and Wilmington College, and a peace leadership training for faculty and college staff from throughout the Dayton area.

“Paul is a skilled and knowledgeable presenter whose engaging style appeals to a broad audience,” said Museum Director Jerry Leggett. “His approachability and practical responses to tough questions played well with the university students and faculty who represented the largest percentage of his audience.”

Chappell will return to the Dayton area in late April for another series of events, including as featured speaker at a Regional Rotary Conference at the Hope Hotel in Dayton. The Hope Hotel, located at the No Pass Entrance to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, was the location for the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the 3 ½ year-long Bosnian War.

February 26, 2015
NAPF Peace Leadership Program: 2014 Highlights and 2015 Preview

As part of a busy year with more than 50 separate events, the NAPF Peace Leadership Program in 2014 expanded globally, across the country, and into the American heartland, with special keynotes, trainings, and lectures that brought new inspiration to high school and college students, veterans, activists, college professors, and concerned citizens.

Winter and spring 2014 saw NAPF Peace Leadership Director Paul K. Chappell sharing peace leadership training among First Nation members in Nova Scotia, Canada and war-weary survivors in Gulu in northern Uganda.

In June he delivered the keynote address on “Why World Peace Is Possible” at OLMUN 2014 to 700 students from many European countries at the annual Model United Nations in Oldenburg, Germany. OLMUN 2014 was one of the largest Model United Nations held in Europe.

In the fall the Dayton International Peace Museum in Ohio sponsored Paul Chappell to deliver a week’s worth of lectures in central, southern, and northwest Ohio. He spoke at universities, high schools, and churches, and to the museum’s docents and donors.

His 2014 keynotes included the 29^th Annual Maryland United for Peace and Justice Conference, the annual conference for the Peace and Justice Studies Association in San Diego, and the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers Annual Celebration at the St. Paul Landmark Center. Paul Chappell also lectured as part of the Culture of Peace Distinguished Speaker Series at the Soka Gakkai International Buddhist Centers in both New York City and Washington, D.C. He also gave the Public Forum lecture at the University of New England Center for Global Humanities; which in the past had hosted Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben, and NAPF Advisory Council Member Helen Caldicott, M.D.

In the U.S., peace leadership trainings and workshops were held with graduate students in San Diego, high schools students in Santa Barbara, and community and activist groups in Washington, D.C.; Bridgton, Maine; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Minneapolis, Minnesota; and with the docents at the Dayton International Peace Museum.

Plans are underway for an even busier 2015. This growing schedule already includes the University of California/Irvine Center for Citizen Peacebuilding Conference, a 4 day Peace Leadership training on the graduate level at the University of San Diego, School of Leadership and Education Sciences, and the 36th Annual Convocation for Peace and Justice in Baltimore, Maryland. Other events will include the Clifford and Virginia Durr Memorial Lecture at Auburn University, in Montgomery, Alabama, the Kent State University 45^th Commemorative Anniversary in Kent, Ohio, and keynote speaker at the Presbyterian Fellowship Convocation of Peacemakers in Stony Point, New York.

For 2015 the Dayton International Peace Museum is planning for two separate weeks of events. Museum co-founder Christine Dull said, “Paul Chappell is a prophet for our times. Would that all thoughtful young people could experience his wisdom, whether from his interactive talks or his beautifully expressed books. Through his fine mind and great heart, Paul shows us that peacemaking requires as much discipline as war, but the motivation is the opposite. It comes from the recognition that we are all one human family.”

January 5, 2015
Wage Peace, End Racism

If anyone doubts that attitudes toward race have improved in America, they should follow what is going on with the Ku Klux Klan. Being part black and from Alabama, I have been following this for awhile now. The Ku Klux Klan is so desperate for new members that many people in the KKK are trying to reach out to people who are not traditionally considered white. When my African American father was born in the South in 1925, the KKK had millions of members (back then the United States had a little over 100 million people). Today it only has between 5,000 to 8,000 members in a country of over 300 million.

It’s more difficult for the Ku Klux Klan to recruit today when support for interracial marriage went from 4 percent in 1958 to 87 percent in 2013, and some of the biggest Tea Party rockstars are African Americans such as Allen West and Ben Carson. Racism is certainly not gone today, and many people are joining sites such as Stormfront, but the violent rhetoric of white supremacist groups scares a lot of potential members away, so many white supremacists now advocate nonviolent solutions.

Many people who are drawn to white supremacist groups are what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “forgotten white poor,” which is why toward the end of his life he became an advocate not only for black people, but also poor white people. He believed that African Americans need to find common cause with poor white people in order to tackle the problem of poverty that affects all races (if only more poor white people realized how much they have in common with poor immigrants). Poverty and pain are the best recruiting ground for white supremacist groups, and if we continue to ignore the suffering of poor white people, we will continue to put our country at risk. I am half Korean, a quarter black, and a quarter white, and attitudes toward race in America are better in 2014 than in 1914 or 1814 (interracial marriage was illegal in almost all Southern states until the late 1960s). But will attitudes toward race be better in 2114 than in 2014? It depends on how well we wage peace.

According to an article on NPR:

“After some residents in a South Carolina county woke up last spring to find anti-immigrant literature on their doorsteps, a local Klan leader explained the group’s reasoning. ‘I mean, we can’t tell who lives in a house, whether they’re black, white, Mexican, gay, we can’t tell that,’ he said. ‘And if you were to look at somebody’s house like that, that means you’d be pretty much a racist.’ (Ahem.)”

“John Abarr, a Klan leader in Montana, is going even further. Last week, Abarr said his newly formed Klan group — the Rocky Mountain Knights — would not discriminate on the basis of race or sexual orientation. ‘The KKK is for a strong America,’ Abarr told a local newspaper. ‘White supremacy is the old Klan. This is the new Klan.’”

“[In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan] was an incorporated entity with millions of members across the country. The Klan held huge marches in Washington, D.C., and its influence swung elections. President Warren G. Harding was often alleged to be a member, while Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black said he joined to further his political career. Of course, all this was happening as the Klan conducted or participated in hundreds of lynchings, which were themselves mainstream, heavily attended celebrations in many towns. It was as mainstream as terrorist organizations got.
Today, Klan groups are fractured and scattered — the Southern Poverty Law Center puts the number of Klan members across the country at between 5,000 and 8,000. That’s a far cry from the millions of Klansmen of the 1920s, or the tens of thousands the group boasted during the 1960s.”

“Today’s Klan groups have been riven by internal conflicts over territory and personality, and by operating in an environment much less welcoming to their political goals. But Cunningham said they’ve also been hurt by the many other groups encroaching on their ideological turf. Folks with strong anti-immigration views can find many more organizations to affiliate with today, both in the political mainstream and on the fringes. Given this expanded menu of options, there’s an ever-smaller pool of people who might be willing to hear the Klan out.”

November 13, 2014
Peace Leadership in Maine

“The most important work in the world,” is how Tilla Durr, the daughter of famed civil rights activists Clifford and Virginia Durr, described the work of NAPF Peace Leadership Director Paul K. Chappell during his recent visit to Maine. Durr attended both the two-day Peace Leadership Training in Bridgton, Maine and Paul’s lecture at the University of New England Center for Global Humanities in Portland, Maine.

“He teaches us how to both understand and strengthen that which already lies within us for the change to occur which can heal the way we dehumanize ourselves, one another, and the planet.” As a young adult in Alabama, Tilla Durr had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Her mother was a good friend of Rosa Parks, and Tilla Durr found herself ostracized by the Montgomery, Alabama white community.

“Paul does not just leave his audience with an intellectual understanding of the anatomy of aggression and the art of waging peace, but teaches us to see conflict as opportunity,” Durr commented about the training and the UNE lecture. “There was not a single person who attended who was not profoundly affected.”

One local minister at the training reflected, “As a pastor, I will be able to teach peace with more authority and spread more seeds of peace.” Another minister commented, “I will take away a better vision.”

Pax Christi member Sally Chappell (no relation to Paul) who met Paul Chappell at the previous peace leadership training in Maine said, “My plan is to be more positive and more respectful of opponents…. I will try to be more courageous in speaking to a group that dismisses my values…. I am less fearful as a result of participating in Paul’s workshop.”

She wrote in the local newspaper, “Remarkably candid about the trauma he endured as a child, Chappell used his own life story as well as historical examples of human advancements like the abolition of state-sponsored slavery, civil rights and women’s rights to argue that humans are not inherently violent and that ending war is necessary and possible. ‘I’m not an optimist; I’m a realist,’ Chappell revealed, urging his listeners to opt for a paradigm shift of nonviolent action that provides people with hope, meaning, belonging and purpose.”

The Center for Global Humanities at the University of New England is a public forum dedicated to the study of human destiny in the 21st century. Previous speakers have included Bill McKibben, Helen Caldicott, and Noam Chomsky.

November 4, 2014
50 years after receiving Nobel Prize, do Martin Luther King’s peace prophecies still resonate?

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his life to much more than achieving racial equality. That goal, he said again and again, was inseparable from alleviating poverty and stopping war. And he reiterated this theme after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 50 years ago this week.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war, that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality,” he said in his Nobel acceptance speech.

“Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace.”

Half a century later, it’s obvious that enormous progress has been made toward overcoming racial discrimination — that King was right in his vision about race. Yet widespread poverty remains, in America and beyond, and bombs still fall as brutal wars rage on.

Was King naive? Was his full vision simply unobtainable — do free markets require poor people to function, and will war always assert itself as a defining human habit?

Is King’s Nobel vision relevant five decades later?

Absolutely, insist some who study King’s life and philosophy. They say his racial proclamations and strategies, so controversial back then but now part of the American cultural canon, can and should apply to today’s stubborn issues of poverty and war.

“I don’t think his vision has ever been more relevant,” says Paul Chappell, a West Point graduate who served in Iraq and now teaches and writes books about peace. “The problem is, people don’t realize how prophetic King was.”

Chappell, the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, which seeks a world without nuclear weapons, says a close examination of King’s life and work shows he predicted today’s protests over income inequality and trillions of war dollars drained from America’s budgets.

“He realized that American military intervention is not only harmful to people around the world, it’s also harmful to the American people,” Chappell says.

The peace prize for King, then just 35 years old, honored a Southern preacher whose philosophy, courage and oratory galvanized the civil rights movement, on whose behalf he said he accepted it. It gave a unique international recognition to the movement’s accomplishments at a pivotal time.

The prize was announced on October 14, 1964, against a backdrop of the Civil Rights Act, whose passage earlier that year finally granted black Americans full citizenship. But it also came as the nation approached all-out war in Vietnam. King accepted the award in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, and the following day delivered the traditional Nobel lecture.

In his remarks, King returned to a lifelong theme of describing a world where love and compassion could conquer poverty and conflict. His strategies were based on nonviolence — “the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression,” as he said in his speech.

“The foundation of such a method is love,” he said.

“The Nobel speeches really are neglected gems of how long-term progress against these evils requires a great commitment of mind and spirit and cooperation all rolled into one,” says the historian Taylor Branch, author of the definitive trilogy “America in the King Years.”

“I don’t think he’s naïve,” Branch says. “I think he’s saying, if there’s hope, it’s through nonviolent cooperation and really applying it with courage and all your heart and your mind against the evils that still plague the world.”

Branch says that even though dozens of countries are at war today, levels of global violence and large-scale casualties have been declining since the mid-20th century. By that measure, there has been progress toward King’s dream of peace.

King used his Nobel lecture to expand on the connections between racism, poverty and war.

“Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other,” he said.

Using nonviolence to achieve racial progress, King said, meant people “have taken suffering upon themselves instead of inflicting it on others . It has meant that we do not want to instill fear in others or into the society of which we are a part.”

That society is far bigger than America, King stated. It is the human family.

“We have inherited a big house, a great ‘world house’ in which in which we have to live together — black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other,” King lectured.

“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men.”

Some say love has nothing to do with it. “War is embedded in our very nature,” the influential scholar Edward O. Wilson wrote in his book “The Social Conquest of Earth,” which argues that humans have developed, biologically, a tendency to fight. Others argue that some income inequality is inevitable, since people have different capabilities.

Yet there is the question of degree. Clayborne Carson, a history professor and director of Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, says King had focused on the triple threat of racism, poverty and war since the earliest parts of his career.

“You couldn’t solve one without solving the others,” Carson says in describing King’s view.

In that context, today’s struggle against enduring poverty and war may reflect a resistance to King’s holistic approach: We followed King’s lead to push back racism, but haven’t yet tried to apply his methods of love and shared suffering to poverty and war.

“If the distribution of wealth in America was less unequal, we wouldn’t see as many of these manifestations of racial conflict,” Carson says.

The gap between the richest and poorest Americans has grown over the last 40 years, according to a February 2014 report by the liberal Economic Policy Institute. And the poverty rate, 15 percent in 2012, the most recent year available, hasn’t improved much since 1964, when it stood at 19 percent.

King said in Oslo: “It is obvious that if man is to redeem his spiritual and moral ‘lag,’ he must go all out to bridge the social and economic gulf between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ of the world. Poverty is one of the most urgent items on the agenda of modern life.”

Carson provided another example of King’s strategies being ignored: the idea that “if we just fight against these terrorists, terrorism will go away. One of the things King said is that the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. We don’t see that in ourselves, we (think we) use violence for good.”

Chappell, the soldier turned peacemaker, said King was ahead of his time in calling for solving international problems without war, because there are often no military solutions available today.

“In purely military terms, look at Russia. There is no military option for us, because they have nuclear weapons,” Chappell said. “With ISIS, you have people from Britain and Turkey and probably the United States who want to join ISIS. It’s an ideology. How do you deal with this problem in a conventional military way?” ISIS is another name for the terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State.

Observed King in his lecture: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

“Violence ends up defeating itself,” he said.

These were King’s thoughts 50 years ago as he sought to heal a nation fraught with centuries-old racial barriers and to safeguard a world with growing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Today, as society continues to realize King’s racial dreams, perhaps there is still prophecy to be fulfilled in his Nobel talks.

“Is it possible that the road he and his people have charted may bring a ray of hope to other parts of the world, a hope that conflicts between races, nations, and political systems can be solved, not by fire and sword, but in a spirit of true brotherly love?” Gunnar John, chairman of the Nobel committee, asked when giving King the peace prize.

“It sounds like a dream of a remote and unknown future,” he said, “but life is not worth living without a dream and without working to make the dream reality.”

October 12, 2014