Storrs – Monday morning saw the third day of the UNESCO International Leadership Training Programme: A Global Intergenerational Forum at the University of Connecticut. Delegates from around the world gathered to hear new ideas about how to bring about some of the goals of UNESCO and the United Nations. They were mostly young, energetic, full of hope and anticipation as they established new friendships and learned about various programs.

A key theme for the day was about how to promote a culture of peace. It started off with Dr. David Adams presenting the framework for a culture of peace. Dr. Adams taught psychology at Wesleyan University for twenty-three years and has numerous publications related to understanding the psychological, physiological, and sociological aspects of aggression, war and peace.

He started off by describing how the United Nations arrived at their declaration of a culture of peace. He explored what constituted a culture of war. He referred to Margaret Mead who asserted that war is a social invention and he claimed that no other species wage war. He noted that fear, anger and greed are not key parts of the culture of war. In fact he spoke of Defense Secretary Cheney berating General Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War for letting anger get in the way of his executing the war effort.

A few of the things that particularly jumped out at me as he described the culture of war was a strong sense of authoritarianism, the use of propaganda, and a focus on competition instead of cooperation. The opposite of this, a culture of peace, includes strong participatory democracy, transparency and the free flow of information and cooperation. For there to be wars, people need enemies and instead of miscommunication and misunderstanding, a culture of peace needs mutual understanding.

Empires rise and fall in a culture of war. Dr. Adams spoke about the fall of the Soviet Union which he experienced parts of first hand while he was doing research in Russia. He looked back to the fall of the British Empire and the fall of the Roman Empire. He expressed a belief that the American Empire was bound to fail, perhaps fairly soon. His hope was that a culture of peace could take hold before the next empire emerges, but expressed doubts and a sense of urgency of developing a culture of peace rapidly.

Yet as I look at our country, it has survived in part because of commitments to principals in a culture of peace. Yes, our democracy is not as participatory as it could, or should be. Yet there are many that work hard to make it more participatory. Our culture does not value the free flow of information or transparency as much as it should, but again, there are many that work hard for this as well. Perhaps most importantly, there are many that are working hard to promote mutual understanding between different groups of people.

The second speaker was Joanne Tawfilis, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Art Miles. The Art Miles Mural Project seeks to create twelve miles of murals, covering twelve different themes and build them into a pyramid to float down the Nile River in 2010 for the International Day of Peace. In terms of murals produced they are approximately 80% there.

Yet in many ways, the murals themselves are not what really matters. What matters is living out a culture of peace by working collaboratively to come to understand one another. The process of painting these murals is an important part of promoting a culture of peace.

Ms. Tawfilis spoke about how they have worked with people from different cultures and different locations to help them learn about one another share ideas and create a mural together. As I heard about this, it struck me that this would be a wonderful project for Beecher Road School to undertake with a sister school in China.

Many of my friends pray for peace, visualize world peace, or try to find other ways of expressing their desire for a more peaceful world. Ms. Tawfilis and her friends work for peace in a much different and more concrete manner. She recognizes that peace begins with each one of us individually promoting a culture of peace. The murals are a great way of doing this. Other great ways include working towards getting people more involved with their government from the local level up to international governance, and by people working together for a free flow of transparent information. The Internet can be a great tool for this, and hopefully this blog post will do its little part in helping people think about more concrete ways that they can work for peace.