SPIRITUALITY, RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PEACE:
EXPLORING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR INNER-OUTER PEACE
IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Linda Groff
California State University

Paul Smoker
Antioch College

"If a man sings of God and hears of Him, And lets love of God sprout within him, All his sorrows shall vanish, And in his mind, God will bestow abiding peace." --Sikhism
"A Muslim is one who surrenders to the will of Allah and is an establisher of peace (while Islam means establishment of peace, Muslim means one who establishes peace through his actions and conduct)."--Islam
"The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By his grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change." --Hinduism
"The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace." --Judaism
"All things exist for world peace." --Perfect Liberty Kyodan "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God." --Christianity
"Peace ... comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their openness, with the universe and all its powers and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."--From The Sacred Pipe, by Black Elk, Lakota Sioux Medicine Man

Introduction

This paper is about different spiritual and religious traditions in the world and how they have or could in the future contribute to the creation of a global culture of peace. As the above quotations indicate, almost all of the world's religions, in their own sacred writings and scriptures, say that they support "peace". Yet it is a known fact that war and violence have often been undertaken historically, as well as at present, in the name of religion (as is discussed further below). Yet religions profess to want peace. So what is 'peace'? And how have religions historically helped to promote peace, and how might they help create a more peaceful world in the 21st century? These are a few of the questions that this paper will attempt to explore.
Traditionally many people focus on how wars and conflicts are seemingly undertaken for religious reasons, or at least undertaken in the name of religion. Indeed, it is not difficult to find data and statistics in support of this hypothesis. Quincy Wright, in his monumental study, A Study of War , documents numerous wars and armed conflicts that involve a direct or indirect religious component, (Wright, 1941) as does Lewis Richardson in his statistical treatise, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. (Richardson, 1960)
As the Cold War has ended and inter-ethnic conflicts have re-emerged in many parts of the world, it has indeed been a popular thesis of different writers to argue that these inter-ethnic conflicts often have a religious component. A few examples of such recent writing include: Samuel Huntington's, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993); Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics; and R. Scott Appleby, Religious Fundamentalisms and Global Conflict.
Following UNESCO's lead in holding two conferences on "The Contributions of Religions to a Culture of Peace" (both held in Barcelona, Spain, in April 1993 and December 1994), and other interfaith dialogues between different religions that are occurring in a serious way around the planet--including the World Parliament of Religions, in Chicago, August 1993; 1and the ongoing work of the World Council on Religion and Peace--this paper will focus instead on how religious and spiritual traditions can contribute to creating a more peaceful world via an exploration of the foundations for both inner and outer peace in the twenty first-century. The paper will have four parts:

I. Exoteric/Outer and Esoteric/Inner Aspects of Religions

Part I begins by providing a framework for looking at all the world's religions as having a potential spectrum of perspectives, including: the external, socially-learned, cultural or exoteric part --including different religious organizations, rituals, and beliefs, which are passed down from one generation to the next, and the internal, mystical, direct spiritual experience or esoteric part. In considering the external aspects of religion, principles from the field of intercultural communication are used to explore the creation of tolerance, understanding and valuing of diversity concerning different aspects of socially learned behavior or culture, including religion.
Fundamentalism or religious extremism or fanaticism--when religions claim their version of religion is the only one--are seen as an extreme form of the socially-learned aspect of religion and one not conducive to creating world peace. In considering the internal or esoteric aspects of religion, it is noted that all the world's religions began with someone who had a mystical enlightenment or revelatory experience, which they then tried to share with others, leading often to the formation of new religions--even though this was not the intention of the original founder. Parallels between new scientific paradigms and ancient mystical traditions from the world's religions are then noted to illustrate how contemporary dynamic, interconnected, whole systems ways of experiencing and viewing reality can be seen as providing necessary conditions "within the individual" for creating an external global culture of peace in the world.

II. Further Explorations of the Esoteric/Inner and Exoteric/Outer Aspects
of Religion and Culture

Part II continues the exploration of the inner and outer aspects of religion and culture. Here, three different topical areas are explored: first, the work of Pitirim Sorokin on the alternation historically within Western cultures between ideational/spiritual/inner values and sensate/materialistic/outer values; second, the evolution or change historically from female to mixed to male aspects of divinity within different religions and cultures, as this relates to changing values and worldviews; and third, the work of Joseph Campbell and the universal theme of "the hero's journey" (or search for inner meaning) in the myths of all cultures--even though the outer form of the journey can vary from one culture to the next.

III. Inner and Outer Aspects of Peace, the Cultures of Peace, & Nonviolence
(Paralleling Esoteric & Exoteric Aspects of Religion)

Part III traces the evolution of the concept of "peace" within Western peace research, including the recent development of more holistic definitions of peace that are consistent with the ideas explored in Part I of this paper. The conceptual shift involved in moving from peace as absence of war through peace as absence of large scale physical and structural violence (negative and positive peace respectively) to more holistic definitions of peace that apply across all levels and include both an inner and an outer dimension, represents a substantial broadening of the peace concept in Western peace research. Part III then uses the above evolution in the concept of peace as a framework to explore different dimensions of "a culture of peace," as well as different dimensions of "nonviolence." Gandhian, spiritually-based nonviolence is seen as a link between inner and outer forms of peace.

IV. An Agenda for Future Peace Research--Based on the Need
to Focus on Both Inner and Outer Aspects of Peace

Part IV argues that Western peace research has focused almost entirely on outer peace, but that in future it needs to deal with both inner and outer aspects of peace in a more balanced way. In order to do this, it is suggested that peace research elaborate on the different dimensions and levels of inner peace, just as it has done for outer peace, and that it expand its methodology to include other ways of knowing besides social scientific methods only. Finally, peace research needs to redress the inbalance between negative and positive images of peace by exploring not only what it wants to eliminate, for example war and starvation, but also what it wants to create in a positive sense.
Please note that this paper is an ongoing project that will become a book. At present, some sections of the paper are developed more than others, but the basic framework is here. Please contact the writers in the future for later elaborations of this writing. We offer this version of the paper with humility, aware that further revisions and elaborations are necessary.

PART I: EXOTERIC/OUTER AND ESOTERIC/INNER ASPECTS OF RELIGIONS

A. MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE, ORGANIZED RELIGION, AND FUNDAMENTALISM: A FRAMEWORK FOR LOOKING AT ALL THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS

Before considering the external and internal aspects of religion, it is important to note that within any religion, there is a potential spectrum of possible perspectives on the teachings of that particular religion or spiritual tradition, including how those teachings relate to world peace. First, there is religion as socially-learned behavior, i.e., as part of culture--what can be called "organized religion." Here religious beliefs, rituals, and institutions are learned and passed down from one generation to the next, and religious institutions are an integral part of the social structure and fabric of culture.
When religious beliefs take the form of rigid dogma, and the believers' beliefs and behavior are known to be right, while those of non believers, or other religions--or even different variants within one's own religion--are known to be wrong, this leads into what has been variously called "fundamentalism" or "fanaticism" or "extremism"--a global trend in almost all of the world's religions today.
At the other extreme are mystical traditions which are based on direct inner spiritual experiences. Here, such mystical, revelatory, or enlightenment experiences (rather than socially learned behavior and beliefs) constitute an important part of one's spiritual life. Such spiritual experiences have also occurred in mystics from all the world's religions throughout the ages. Indeed, the founders of the world's religions were themselves usually mystics, i.e., people who had revelatory or enlightenment experiences which they then tried to share, as best they could, with others--even though they were often not trying to establish a new religion at the time (which was often left to their followers to do).Given these considerations, it is possible to look at any religion as having a potential spectrum of different forms within it, each discussed separately in the paper, as follows:

MYSTICAL/SPIRITUAL______ORGANIZED RELIGION______FUNDAMENTAL TRADITIONS AND BELIEFS OR EXTREMISM
(direct inner experience)	(part of social learning and culture)	(my dogma/beliefs are right and yours are wrong; also social learning and culture)
Figure 1: Spectrum of Potential Perspectives Within Any Religion

It is interesting that mystics of all religions can usually communicate with each other and appreciate the spiritual or God force operating within each other--no matter what religious tradition the other mystics come from. Organized religion is often tolerant of different religious traditions, as seen in ecumenical movements around the world, but there can be misunderstanding between religions based on differing beliefs and practices. These misunderstandings can be lessened by educational programs focusing on the appreciation and understanding of cultural and religious diversity. But fundamentalism often stresses how one particular interpretation--of religion, scripture, and religious practices--is right and other interpretations are wrong. This difficulty of fundamentalists, from any religion, in dealing with diversity in a tolerant manner presents a major problem for peaceful relations and understanding between religions and cultures and hinders the creation of a global culture of peace.

If the whole world were mystics--who tend to honor the mystical experience in people from all the world's religions--world peace would be easier to achieve than it is today. But mystics are a very small percentage of the world's population and so misunderstandings, conflicts, and wars have often resulted historically, in part at least, over different religious interpretations of what constitutes proper beliefs, practices, rituals, and organizational forms, i.e., over the socially- learned aspects of religion.

B. EXOTERIC/OUTER FORMS OF RELIGION

This section of the paper will look at exoteric or outer forms of religion, i.e., religion as part of our socially-learned behavior or culture--whether it takes the form of traditional organized religion or a more extremist or fundamentalist form, and how principles from intercultural communication and conflict resolution can help people deal constructively with cultural and religious diversity.

1. Religion as Socially-Learned Behavior or Part of Culture

"Religion is man's inability to cope with the immensity of God." Arnold Toynbee
"Rain falling in different parts of the world flows through thousands of channels to reach the ocean...and so, too, religions and theologies, which all come from man's yearning for meaning, they too, flow in a thousand ways, fertilizing many fields, refreshing tired people, and at last reach the ocean." Sathya Sai Baba

One way of looking at religion is as part of culture through socially learned behavior. "Culture" can be defined as learned, shared, patterned behavior, as reflected in technology and tools; social organizations, including economic, political, religious, media, educational and family organizations; and ideas. In this way, religion is shared by a group of people, learned and passed down from one generation to the next, and is clearly reflected in both religious organizations and beliefs. "Socialization" is the process through which culture is learned, including our religious beliefs and practices. The agents or institutions of socialization include language, (a factor individuals are often least conscious of), politics, economics, religion, education, family, and media.
While Anthropologists have often studied one culture, including its institutions, in depth, others have undertaken cross-cultural, comparative studies. More recently the field of intercultural communication has emerged, (Groff, 1992) as witnessed in the emergence of specialist inter-cultural organizations, such as The Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR). While cross-cultural studies deal with comparing some aspect of life, such as religious institutions and beliefs, from one culture to another, intercultural communication deals with the dynamic interaction patterns that emerge when peoples from two or more different cultures, including religions, come together to interact, communicate, and dialogue or negotiate with each other. There are general principles of intercultural communication. There are also studies of particular cultures interacting, based on a belief that when persons from any two specific different cultures come together to interact with each other, that they will create their own dynamic interaction process, based on the underlying values of both groups, just as any two individuals will also create their own dynamic interaction process.
A significant problem with organized religion and belief, as this relates to peace and conflict, is individuals and groups often confuse the map (their socially-learned version of reality or culture or religion) with the territory (or ultimate reality), as elaborated below. Thus people believe that their personal or subjective version of reality or religion is valid, while other views are invalid. Instead it can be argued that the many maps are different, but possibly equally valid interpretations and attempts to understand the same underlying reality or territory.

2. Fundamentalism: Taking Organized Religion and Beliefs into Dogma

Fundamentalism seems to be a trend in almost all the world's religions today. The term "fundamentalism" had its origins in "a late 19th and early 20th century transdenominational Protestant movement that opposed the accommodation of Christian doctrine to modern scientific theory and philosophy. With some differences among themselves, Christian fundamentalists insist on belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious and atoning character of his death, his bodily resurrection, and his second coming as the irreducible minimum of authentic Christianity." (Grolier, 1993) More recently the concept has been applied not only to conservative, evangelical Protestants, but also to any Christian group which adopts a literal interpretation of the Bible and to groups from other religious traditions who similarly base their religious views on a particular and exclusive, literal interpretation of their holy book. For example, radical Islamic groups, such as Islamic Jihad, are seen as examples of Islamic fundamentalism, although a different term is preferred. In the Islamic tradition the word fundamentalism, when translated into Arabic, has a completely different and positive meaning. In Arab countries the appropriate word for describing literal religious fanaticism is "extremism." (Al-Dajani, 1993) In this paper the term "fundamentalism" is used in the broad sense to portray any religious group or sect from any religious tradition, which adopts purely literal, as opposed to metaphorical or mythical, interpretations of their holy book, and which denies the validity of other interpretations or religious traditions, believing truth resides with their perspective only.
Because fundamentalists in any religion turn the beliefs of their religion into dogma, and also tend to interpret the scriptures of their religion in a literal way only, thus missing the many subtle levels of meaning as well as analogies with teachings from other world religions, they can end up stressing primarily how they are different from other world religions, and even from different interpretations within their own religion, rather than stressing any commonalities they might share with other world religions. This more limited interpretation of their scripture can then lead to dogmatic views that their interpretation of religion, and reality, is correct and everyone else is wrong.

An interesting and important question for peace research and future studies is why there is such an upsurge in fundamentalism in so many of the world's religions in so many different parts of the world today? Of the many possible explanations for this phenomena, two hypotheses will be explored here. The most obvious hypothesis would argue that people are overwhelmed by the increasing pace of change today, and are desperately seeking something that they can believe in as a mooring to help them through all this change in the outer world which is uprooting their lives and creating great insecurities in their lives. In the case of fundamentalism, this can involve returning to some over-idealized vision of their religious roots, which may never have existed in the idealized form that they remember, and trying to literally enforce that interpretation of reality on all the members of their group. In such situations, people may need time to try to go back to a stringently defined earlier way of life and see if they can make it work, and only when they see that the world has changed too much to return to the past will they then be ready to move forward into the future. This hypothesis is consistent with the view that any religious or spiritual tradition needs to be constantly adapted to the world in which it finds itself--if it wishes to remain a living, breathing, spiritual force that people experience in their lives, rather than become an outdated institution based on dogma or rules.
A second related hypothesis, to explain the rise of fundamentalism in the world today, relates to the dual trend towards both globalism, as well as localism. The globalization process of the last 50 years has led to a dramatic increase in global governance structures, including an expansion of the multi- faceted United Nations (UN) system, an increase in scope of regional economic and political organizations, such as the European Community (EC) and the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), and the continuing proliferation and development of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs). The growth in IGOs and the increase in size and scope of United Nations activities, such as the expanded scope of United Nations Peace Keeping operations, has had a major impact on international relations.
A similar expansion of activities can be seen in the work of various international scientific, educational and cultural organizations, as indexed by the continued growth in International Non Governmental Organizations (INGOs). Millions of individuals are routinely engaged in the work of INGOs, whose activities span the whole range of human experience, including agriculture, art, communications, economics, education, environment, health, music, politics, religion, sport and transportation. Additionally, the world has witnessed the growth of an increasingly integrated global economy, as manifested in interdependent national economies and the evolution of multinational corporations (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs) operating in just about every country worldwide. Many of these companies are economic giants, dwarfing all but a few of the world's national economies.
An apparently contradictory worldwide trend towards local identity and ethnicity has also emerged as a major factor shaping events in the world today. In the wake of the end of the old East-West Cold War confrontation, we are witnessing a worldwide increase in local ethnic conflict, sometimes nonviolent but too often violent and very bloody, and often involving a religious dimension. These "local conflicts" are often proving to be intense and intractable, embedded in centuries of mistrust and hatred, and too often crystallized around and sanctioned, implicitly or explicitly, by particular religious institutions.
This localization process is every bit as profound as the overarching trend towards globalization, and in fact it is perhaps best conceived as neither in opposition to, nor separate from, that process. Globalization and localization are so interconnected and interdependent that localization is best conceptualized as an essential complement of the globalization process. This view suggests that the integration of the big system, the creation of a new world order, requires a sense of meaning at the local level, requires human beings to experience coherence and balance within the local socio-cultural context. The rise of fundamentalism, it can be argued, is associated with this interdependence of the globalization and localization processes and the resulting pressures to achieve coherence at the local level in the face of the vast scope of the global supersystems.
The coherence in individuals' lives is, to a greater or lesser degree, associated with culturalization, with what the world means and how meaning in life and death is interpreted. Multicultural interpretations of the globalization - localization interdependency argue, as a consequence, that religion should not be the same in all societies, that it will and must have personal, local and global dimensions that manifest themselves in a rich variety of cultural forms and expressions.
This paper will subsequently further argue that the diversity of organized world religions--if also recognizing a deeper spiritual unity that connects this outer diversity--is a necessary requirement for the creation of a new culture of peace in the 21st century. If, as many believe, the underlying spiritual reality of the world's religions is the same, it can be argued that the cultural expression of that reality in the material world, the world's organized religions, must necessarily be different, in tune with the rich tapestry of our many global cultures, if we are to sustain the dynamic globalization-localization balance in a nonviolent, multicultural form.

3. Principles From the Fields of Intercultural Communication and Conflict Resolution: Tools to Help Deal with Cultural and Religious Diversity

"And the question for today is: 'What is Reality?"-- cartoon caption under a group of aliens or space beings [or people from different cultures or religions] sitting around a table.
"The message sent is often not the message received."-- Basic tenet from the field of Intercultural Communication

As noted above, intercultural communication deals with what happens when people from different cultures, including religions, come together to communicate, interact, and even negotiate with each other. Individuals each carry around some different version of "reality" or culture in their heads, based on socialization (or learning) by the different agents or institutions of socialization in their culture, including religion, and based on different individual and collective life experiences. This worldview provides a sense of values and meaning about life. The way that this reality is known is through one's perceptions of it. Unfortunately, perceptions based on evidence from one or more of the five senses are often distorted. Individuals also selectively perceive ideas and information, often accepting information which fits with their preconceived worldview and blocking out information which challenges that worldview--a worldview that they have spent a whole life time putting together.
It is often the case that in everyday interactions individuals, even from the same culture, can misperceive each other. When they come from totally different cultures, including different religious traditions and belief systems, the danger is even greater. It is thus a basic tenet of intercultural communication that "The message sent is often not the message received" It is understandable that individuals tend to expect others to behave the way they would in a given situation or say what they would say in that same situation. When they do not, there is a strong tendency to interpret the motivation or meaning behind the behavior of the other person in terms of what that behavior would mean in one's own culture rather than in terms of what that behavior actually means in the other person's culture, since the other's culture is not really understood. The next step can involve taking a mistaken interpretation of the other person's behavior and then evaluating or judging that behavior, often negatively. This process thus involves moving from a simple factual description of the behavior of someone from another culture, to an interpretation of the meaning of that behavior (often a misinterpretation, based on what that behavior would mean in the individual's own culture, not in the other person's culture.) A final step in this model involves a move to evaluation or judgment of that behavior, as good or bad, in turn often based on an incorrect interpretation. This description, interpretation, and evaluation sequence of events, which individuals do quite often without even realizing they are doing it, is often called DIE for short.
A related theory is Attribution Theory, which hypothesizes that individuals attribute meaning to the behavior of someone from another culture, often based on what it would mean in their own culture, rather than in the context of the other person's culture or religion. As long as an individual remains uninformed about another person's culture or religion, that individual remains vulnerable to repeating this problem over and over in their intercultural and inter-religious interactions. One important component of a solution to this problem is to become better informed about another person's culture and religion so that it is at least possible to interpret another's behavior and words in the proper cultural and religious context within which they occur. Such a strategy will also contribute to an appreciation of the rich cultural and religious diversity that exists in this world and help to counteract the tendencies to judge other's actions and words incorrectly and negatively.
In terms of conflict resolution, it can be argued that if an individual is not conscious of their own cultural or religious socialization or programming--which influences people to a much greater extent than most individuals realize, then their behavior will in many ways be preconditioned, and on automatic pilot: they will be acting out their cultural or religious programming, without being conscious that there are other cultures or religions or ways of experiencing reality. If an individual begins to become conscious of their own cultural or religious programming, often by exposing themselves to other cultures or religions, then they can for the first time come back to their own original culture or religion and begin to see it for the first time, since they now have some basis with which to compare it. Such an individual can begin to act consciously in the world and start to appreciate the rich diversity of the human experience, including the many different outward forms, rituals, and beliefs that have emerged in different religions as human beings have sought different paths for bringing a spiritual force into their lives.
A central problem in intercultural communication, including interactions between peoples from different world religions, is to confuse the map (one's own particular version of culture or religion) with the territory (an ultimate experience of "Reality" or "God" or "Spirit," as opposed to the relative or limited experiences of daily life). Becoming conscious of being socialized into different religions and cultures, coupled with an awareness that individuals as a consequence carry around different versions or maps of "reality" in their heads, can contribute to becoming more tolerant of the different maps or versions of reality that others also carry around in their heads, while also recognizing that something much more basic and essential underlies all the apparent outer diversity.
In looking at diversity, it should also be noted that it is a basic principle of systems theory that the more complex a system is, the more diversity there needs to be within the system for it to maintain itself. The discussion of globalization and localization in the first part of this paper suggests the evolution of a more complex global system with increasing diversity within it. It is a thesis of this paper that such diversity is ultimately a strength, not a weakness, but only if it is consciously dealt with. Otherwise, we will expect people from different cultures to think and behave the way we do, and when they do not, we will tend to misinterpret and then judge their beliefs or behavior negatively (the Description, Interpretation, Evaluation problem discussed above), thus creating misunderstanding and conflict between peoples. Nonetheless, cultural diversity in the global system, like ecological diversity within an ecosystem, is ultimately an asset, if it is valued and contributes to openness to learn from other groups and cultures. Another thesis of this paper is that every culture, just as every religion (or species), has something important to contribute to the world, and no culture has all the answers. Thus every culture has both strengths as well as weaknesses. There are thus important things that we can each learn from each other--if we are open (and humble enough) to do so.

C. ESOTERIC/INNER FORMS OF RELIGION AS DIRECT INNER MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

1. The Inner, Mystical Path to Spirituality: Many Paths to God

"There are many paths to God." - Common mystical view.
"Look at every path closely and deliberately....Then ask yourself...one question...Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is no use." - Carlos Castaneda
"The Tao that can be named is not the Tao." - Lao Tsu

According to mystics, the mystical experience focuses on a direct inner experience of God or spirit, in which a person becomes one with the ultimate, invisible, creative force and divine intelligence at work in the universe or with the infinite void beyond creation. Via such an inner experience of enlightenment, God, oneness or spirit, one has an inner "knowing" that cannot be adequately described in words (indeed, "the Tao that can be named is not the Tao"). This experience totally transcends the world of outer beliefs--which we learn from our social and religious institutions. This inner knowing occurs on a much deeper level of one's being and is not vulnerable to all the distortions of our regular five senses, on which we depend for all our learning in the world.
It is interesting that almost every one of the great religions of the world originated with someone who had such a direct, inner revelatiory or enlightenment experience. Jesus who became the Christ, Buddha, Moses, Zoroaster, and various other evolved beings are obvious examples. After achieving enlightenment, such persons (who usually did not themselves intend to start a new religion) have always returned to society to minister, teach, and share their spiritual experiences and enlightenment as best they could with others. Eventually, the original teacher/ Master passed on and the followers were left to interpret, and later record, the original founder's teaching. But these followers have often not had the same enlightenment experiences themselves, and so with time, the original teachings became codified as beliefs, rituals, even dogmas. In this way, an original esoteric, mystical experience is changed over time into an exoteric form of organized religion. Nonetheless, since most people begin their spiritual path with some exoteric form of religion, it can be hoped that with time, at least some of these people will eventually turn inward to seek and experience the truth of God or spirit within.
While all religions usually began with someone who became enlightened, it is also interesting that mystical traditions continue to be dominant in Eastern religions, but were often overshadowed, though not lost, in Western religions by a focus more on organized religion and learned beliefs and principles to live by in the world. Nonetheless, there has been an interesting recent revival of interest in mystical/spiritual traditions in the West, along ironically with equally strong or stronger fundamentalist movements. Perhaps this indicates the great desire in people to find some deeper meaning to their lives, amidst all the changes in their external lives and in the world, although by sometimes very different paths. Such a hypothesis would be consistent with the globalization-localization hypothesis discussed earlier.
It is also interesting that while the traditional, exoteric religious path requires learning about different practices and beliefs, the mystical, esoteric path often involves unlearning or using various meditative techniques to clear the mind of thoughts about the external world, so that it is possible to come to a place of inner stillness or emptiness of the external world--what Zen Buddhists call "No Mind." This still, inner state enables individuals to experience the godforce, spirit, or pregnant void within, without the distortions of everyday needs, beliefs, and limited consciousness intervening, and thus to go beyond the limited self or ego so that spirit can make itself manifest in their lives. Thus many mystical traditions focus on ways to quiet the overactive mind in meditation, and thus bring one's inner self to a state of peace.
In such spiritual traditions, only true inner peace within the hearts of people can bring about true outer peace in the world, because if individuals are plagued by inner conflicts, doubts, fears, and insecurities, they will tend to project them outwardly onto others, blaming others for their problems, without even realizing what they are doing. It is thus necessary for all of us as individuals to 'wake up' and become increasingly conscious of our own thoughts and feelings, and how these are creating certain results or consequences in the world, so that we may each become increasingly responsible for the type of world that we are creating--including whether this world is a peaceful one or not.

2. Parallels Between New Scientific Paradigms and the Mystical Experience

"Religion without science is blind. Science without religion is lame." -- Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -- Albert Einstein

There are a number of new paradigms, or overarching worldviews, under which scientists conduct their research, in science today. These paradigms can be seen as differing versions of a dynamic, interdependent, whole systems worldview, which various writers have suggested parallels the mystical, spiritual experience of mystics from different religions around the world. (Capra, 1991; Capra, 1982; Chopra, 1990; Davies, 1992) In effect, mystics experience this dynamic, interdependent, whole systems worldview on the inner planes, while scientists have used scientific methods and analysis of the external world to arrive at related conclusions. It can be argued that the scientific and the spiritual paths are just two different ways of trying to study or know the same ultimate reality; that one can go infinitely outward scientifically into space and infinitely inward spiritually in meditation, and that ultimately these two paths converge with parallel worldviews. Nonetheless, it needs to be pointed out that physics or science can only study or measure reality within the space-time framework of the created, physical universe. Science itself cannot provide the mystical experience of the mystery or ultimate beyond space & time, which may be one reason why the greatest scientists all eventually became mystics themselves, including DeBroglie, Einstein, Eddington, Heisenberg, Jeans, Plank, Pauli and Schrodinger. (Watson, 1988; Davies, 1992)
The old, Newtonian paradigm in physics saw reality as a clockwork universe made up of separate parts, existing within a static or equilibrium model of reality, which operated by fixed laws that could in theory predict how A effected B. This paradigm sought the ultimate physical building blocs of matter and was based upon the assumption that science, in principle, could arrive at total truth or understanding of reality within its' materialistic, reductionist, mechanistic worldview. In contrast, the New Physics has a totally new worldview, based on Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and then later his General Theory of Relativity, followed by Quantum or Subatomic physics. With regard to quantum physics, however, it is interesting that Einstein himself could not totally accept Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle," expressed in Einstein's famous saying: "God does not play dice with the universe" or allow unpredictability. Thus Einstein himself only accepted part of what has come to be called "the New Physics."
Before noting further characteristics of the new paradigm view of reality in the New Physics, it should be noted that this new paradigm does not negate the Old Physics paradigm. Instead it says that the old Newtonian worldview works within certain parameters, and is thus still valid within those parameters, but beyond those parameters a new paradigm is necessary. Likewise, with the other new scientific paradigms (discussed further below), there is a tendency at times to conclude that they make the older scientific paradigms totally obsolete, but this is seldom the case and needs to be stressed. The old paradigms still work within certain parameters and under certain conditions, while the new paradigms work beyond those parameters, when the underlying conditions change. Recognition of this fact is part of creating a balance between different world views, and knowing when each is appropriate, that is a primary thesis of this whole paper.
The characteristics of this new paradigm--which in physics exists especially on the very macro level of the whole universe and on the very micro subatomic levels--are as follows. The New Physics (according to Capra, Davies and others) includes a dynamic, interdependent, whole systems worldview, where matter is concentrated energy and there are no ultimate building blocs of matter to find. In addition, one cannot predict an absolute relationship between A and B, and one cannot predict ahead of time whether something will, for example, be a particle or a wave. Unlike the old paradigm where the scientist was a pure, theoretically objective, outside observer, the new paradigm admits that the scientists' presence in the situation, in making a scientific measurement, can affect the outcome of the measurement, and thus there is no such thing as a purely detached objective, scientific observer anymore, instead one's mere presence in a situation can effect the outcome. The new paradigm is thus holistic, dynamic, and interdependent; there are no separate parts, only relationships; and reality is not totally predictable, except in terms of statistical probabilities. The old paradigm focuses on analysis of separate parts and either/or thinking (beginning with Aristotle), while the new paradigm focuses on synthesis and dynamic interrelationships, as well as both/and thinking.
In addition to the New Physics, there are other new scientific paradigms in science that also exhibit this dynamic, interdependent, whole systems worldview, as opposed to the old paradigm view of reality as a static, equilibrium model, which saw reality as made up of separate, unconnected parts, in a mechanistic, reductionist worldview. (See Figure 2) Some of these other new scientific paradigms follow below.
Whole, dynamic systems and living systems paradigms are illustrated in the work of the Society for General Systems Research. Evolutionary paradigms--such as those of Teilhard de Chardin, Peter Russell, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Erich Jantsch, John Platt, Erwin Lazlo, and Stephen Jay Gould's Puctuated Equilibrium Theory in biology--see change within a system as sometimes taking quantum jumps. Ilya Prigogine's Nobel Prize winning Theory of Dissipative Structures--which reconciles the entropy of physics with the increasing order and complexity of biology--shows how open systems can change via perturbations or new energy of some kind within a system, which can cause that system to break down, releasing the energy of that system to be reorganized at a higher level of order and complexity.

Rupert Sheldrake's Hypothesis of Formative Causation, or Theory of Morphogenetic Fields, hypothesizes that the universe operates more by habits, that build up over time, than by fixed laws. Under this theory, the first time a member of a species does something new is the hardest, but each successive time this new behavior becomes easier, until finally a critical mass is reached, and then suddenly everyone in the species knows how to do that new behavior. James Gleick's Chaos Theory hypothesizes that everything in the universe is interconnected--a butterfly flapping its wings in one hemisphere can effect the climate in another hemisphere, for example--and there is always order emerging out of chaos and chaos emerging out of order in the universe.

It is significant is that all of these new paradigms and scientific theories are versions of a dynamic, interdependent, whole systems worldview, just as the New Physics is. In medicine and health care, new notions of health, healing and treating the whole person are fast gaining ground. (Chopra, 1992) In environmental science, the Gaia hypothesis presents a new paradigm where the Earth as a whole is seen as a living entity, a self-regulating system of which we humans are a part. (Lovelock, 1991) In the life sciences, new thinking is challenging traditional notions of biological evolution and developing new interdependent conceptions of what constitutes a person and a society. (Watson, 1988) In each of these cases, as well as in many other examples of the development of new thinking in areas such as management and economics, (Wheatley, 1992; Hawley, 1993) the relationship and interaction between parts and the whole has been reconceptualized. Holistic paradigms, where the overall pattern of interaction between the parts is as important as the parts themselves, have emerged across a broad spectrum of disciplines and issues.

3. How a Dynamic, Interdependent, Whole Systems Worldview (of the Mystic or Scientist) Can Help Contribute to a Global Culture of Peace

"Everything has changed except our way of thinking." --Einstein
"Oh, Great Spirit, let us greet the dawn of each new day, when all can live as one and peace reigns everywhere." --Native American Quote

The relevance of "new thinking" or a shift in consciousness--as seen in the dynamic interdependent, whole systems views in the new scientific paradigms and experiences of mystics from different religious traditions--to world peace can be seen as follows. Once our consciousness shifts from seeing the world as divided up into separate, unrelated parts (whether individuals, groups, nation-states or whatever), where the goal is to win for one's own self or group or nation, without adequate concern for others, to a new more dynamic interdependent, whole systems worldview, where everything is interconnected, and whatever happens in any part of the system effects all the other parts of the system--it becomes apparent that the only way that individuals or separate parts of the whole can "win" is if other peoples and parts of the whole also win. A fundamental shift from win-lose to win-win thinking then ensues, which seems a fundamental prerequisite and framework for creating a global culture of peace.

PART II: FURTHER EXPLORATIONS OF THE ESOTERIC/INNER AND
EXOTERIC/OUTER ASPECTS OF RELIGION AND CULTURE

A. ALTERNATION BETWEEN IDEATIONAL/SPIRITUAL/INNER AND SENSATE/MATERIALISTIC/OUTER FORMS OF WESTERN CULTURE: THE WORK OF PITIRIM SOROKIN

1. Functional and Logico Meaningful Integration of Cultures

The previous section of this paper described some of the new paradigms, which are emerging in a range of areas. It can be argued that it is no accident that these holistic paradigms have developed at this time. Indeed, one of the founding fathers of peace research, Pitirim Sorokin, suggested some 60 years ago that this would be the case. (Sorokin, 1933) Sorokin, in his classic text, Social and Cultural Dynamics, elaborated a theory of socio/cultural evolution that can be summarized as follows.

In any society or social system, there are four ways in which integration can occur. Two of these are for our purposes here quite trivial, namely spatial integration (when entities simply occupy the same space and nothing more) and external integration (when two or more entities are linked to each other through some other entity, for example grass and flowers may grow together at the same rate because of the external factors of sun, soil and rain). The third, functional integration, is far from trivial. This, for Sorokin, describes the interlocking interdependencies we now recognize as crucial in complex systems. Indeed for many scientists "functional integration," or its modern cybernetic equivalent "syntegration," (Beer, 1993)--the dynamic interdependence of entities that are in symbiotic interaction with each other--is of the utmost importance. Whole societies, whole systems, are held together by their mutually interdependent functional interactions and, following Wright's model, any changes in one will need changes elsewhere in the system to restore dynamic equilibrium.

Sorokin also proposed a fourth level of integration, which, in his view, was the highest form of integration. He called it "logico meaningful integration," to try to describe the underlying idea that things are held together because of what they mean, because of deep values in the culture. Sorokin argued that this level of integration not only provides coherence in life to individuals through the underlying meanings in their culture, but also results in these deep values being manifest in all aspects of a culture, from science to religion. For Sorokin, a culture at its peak will be integrated in both functional and logico-meaningful ways. He approached the problem of meaning in the following way.

2. Sensate/Materialistic, Ideational/Spritual, and Idealistic/Mixed Cultures

Sorokin argued that the macro cultures in Western Civilization evolved through stages that could be understood in terms of their central meanings. At one end of a continuum, these underlying meanings were essentially sensate, that is reality was defined entirely in terms of the physical world and the truth of the senses. At the other end, reality was "ideational," by which Sorokin meant spiritual in the sense that the eternal infinite spiritual reality is real, while the material world is an illusion. In this case truth of faith is the only truth. Halfway along this continuum was the "idealistic" point, where truth of faith and truth of senses were balanced through "truth of reason." Sorokin identified seven types of culture mentality on the sensate-ideational continuum. Table 1 gives the main elements of the sensate, ideational and idealistic forms.

Table 1: Three Types of Culture Mentality (Sorokin): Active Sensate, Ascetic Ideational, and Idealistic (Combining Both)
	Active Sensate	Ascetic Ideational	Idealistic
Reality	Sensate, material, empirical	Non-sensate, eternal transcendental	Both equally represented
Main needs and ends	Manifold and richly sensate	Spiritual	Both equally represented
Extent of satisfaction	Maximum	Maximum	Great, but balanced
Method of satisfaction	Modify external environment	Self modification	Both ways

Note: Sorokin elaborated seven types of culture mentality. The three listed above are the two extremes--Active Sensate and Ascetic Ideational, as well as a middle point, the Idealistic culture type.

Table 2: Three Types of Culture Mentality (Sorokin): Weltanschauung, Power and Object of Control, and Activity
	Active Sensate	Ascetic Ideational	Idealistic
Weltanschauung(or World View)	Becoming: Transient values, full blooded sense of life, joy and grief; dynamism and endless readjustment ; progress, evolution	Being: Lasting value; indifference to transient values; imperturbability; statism	Both equally represented
Power and Object of Control	Control of the Sensate Reality	Self Control, repression of the sensual person and of "self"	Both equally represented
Activity	Extrovert	Introvert	Both equally represented

Table 2 outlines the logico meaningful consequences of the three types of culture mentality for weltanschauung (or worldview), power and object of control, and activity. For Sorokin, the "logical satellites" are aspects of the culture that follow logically from the central integrating principle of the culture. In Sorokin's words, "each of them (the logical satellites) is connected logically with the dominant attitude toward the nature of ultimate reality." Thus the active sensate culture is based on "becoming", based on a full-blooded sense of life and continual change. Ideas such as progress and evolution are central to such a viewpoint. In addition, the dominant ideas on control stress control of the external sensate reality and hence activity in the outer world. In contrast, the ideational culture is based on "being", stressing lasting value. In addition, self-control and repression of the sensual person and of self lead to a focus on the inner life. Idealistic culture for Sorokin is an attempt to balance both worldviews, to live in both the inner and outer worlds, and balance being and becoming, control of the external environment and control of self.

Table 3: Three Types of Culture Mentality (Sorokin): Self and Knowledge
	Active Sensate	Ascetic Ideational	Idealistic
Self	Highly integrated, sensate, dissolved in immediate physical reality; materializes self and all spiritual phenomenon; cares for integrity of body and its sensual interest (sensual liberty, sensual egotism)	Highly integrated, spiritual, dissolved in the ultimate reality; aware of the sensual world as illusion; anti-materialistic	Both equally represented
Knowledge	Develops science of natural phenomena and technical inventions; concentrates on these; leads to arts of technology, medicine, hygiene, sanitation and modification of peoples' physical environment	Develops insights into and cognition of the spiritual, psychical, and immaterial phenomena and experiences; concentrates on these exclusively; leads to arts of education and modification of inner life	Both equally represented

Table 3 details how each culture mentality affects what is meant by "self" and what is defined as knowledge in each type of culture mentality. Both the sensate and ideational types are highly integrated around completely different reality definitions. The sensate culture is associated with a view of the self as a material entity dissolved (or living totally) in the immediate physical reality. Under this view the material world provides the basis for everything, and materialistic models of reality are likely to be dominant in all compartments of culture. Mechanistic models of the universe and materialistic biochemical models of health are typical examples of the sensate view of reality, a view that stresses caring for the physical body, sensual liberty (for example, sexual freedom) and sensual egotism (for example, cultivating the body beautiful). Such a worldview will naturally develop physical and biological sciences that study and manipulate the external world, and in so doing will develop technology for this purpose. In contrast, the ideational culture type searches for the inner self, which is experienced as dissolved (or existing totally) in the ultimate spiritual reality. The external material world is seen as an illusion, and knowledge of the spiritual, psychical and immaterial reality becomes the basis for knowledge. Using meditation and other self exploration approaches, knowledge of the inner self, including inner peace, becomes central. As in the case of Table 2, the idealistic culture mentality attempts to balance both approaches.

Table 4: Three Types of Culture Mentality (Sorokin): Truth, and Moral Values and Systems
	Active Sensate	Ascetic Ideational	Idealistic
Truth: its categories, criteria, and methods of arriving at	Based on observation of, measurement of, experimentation with, exterior phenomena through exterior organs of senses, inductive logic	Based on inner experience, "mystic way," concentrated mediation, intuition, revelation, or prophecy	Both equally represented (scholasticism)
Moral values and systems	Relativistic and sensate; hedonistic, utilitarian; seeking maximum sensate happiness for largest number of human beings; morals of rightly understood egotism	Absolute, transcendental, categoric, imperative, everlasting, and unchangeable	Both equally emphasized

Table 4 illustrates the approaches to truth and to moral values in the three culture mentalities. Thus the active sensate culture is based on "truth of the senses," where truth is validated through observation of, and experimentation with, the external environment. The five human senses are ultimately the basis for establishing truth, and inductive logic is used to relate the evidence from the senses to models of reality. The moral value system of the sensate culture is relativistic and utilitarian, based on maximum sensate happiness. In contrast, the ideational worldview is based on "truth of faith," whereby the inner experience of the ultimate reality, the mystical experience discussed above, is achieved through concentrated meditation, intuition, revelation, or prophecy. This ideational culture mentality is based on absolute, transcendental values, values that are God-given, imperative, everlasting and unchangeable. The idealistic culture mentality stresses both "truth of the senses" and "truth of faith" in a truth system that Sorokin calls "truth of reason." Greek culture around the 4th and 5th centuries BC and European culture around the 12th to14th centuries AD are seen by Sorokin as examples of this balanced cultural form. Idealistic culture similarly includes a both/and approach to moral values, incorporating both perspectives in its value system.

Table 5 illustrates the characteristics of the three culture mentalities as these relate to aesthetic values and social values. In the sensate culture, art and aesthetic values are based on increasing the joys and beauties of a rich sensate life, while social and practical values give joy of life to self and partly to others. In particular, they stress the value of monetary wealth and physical comfort. Prestige in society is in large measure based on these factors. In conflicts, physical might is more important than being right in the moral sense. The ideational culture type sees aesthetic values as being servants to the main inner values, which are essentially religious and non-sensate. For social values, only those which serve the ultimate inner spiritual reality are of value, while materialistic values, such as economic wealth, are seen as ultimately worthless. The principle of sacrifice is an integral part of the ideational social value system. As in the above cases, idealistic culture attempts to balance sensate and spiritual concerns.

Table 5: Three Types of Culture Mentality (Sorokin)
	Active Sensate	Ascetic Ideational	Idealistic
Aesthetic Values and Systems	Sensate, secular, created to increase joys and beauties of a rich, sensate life	Ideational, subservient to the main inner values, religious, non-sensate	Both equally emphasized
Social and Practical Values	Everything that gives joy of life to self and partly to others: particularly wealth, comfort, etc.; prestige is based on the above; wealth, money, physical might become "rights" and basis of all value: principle of sound egotism	Those which are lasting and lead to the ultimate reality: only such persons are leaders, only such things and events are positive, all others are valueless or of negative values, particularly wealth, earthly comfort, etc.; principle of sacrifice	Both equally emphasized; live and let live

Sorokin and his helpers collected and coded huge amounts of information on various aspects of Western macro culture, including indicators of sensate and ideational worldviews, in art, science, mathematics, architecture, discoveries and inventions, philosophy, ethics and jurisprudence. Using this data, he argued that there was a tendency, over long periods of time, for Western macro culture to swing from one end of the continuum to the other in their central meanings, and that these changes in central meanings are manifest in all aspects of an integrated culture. A crude summary of his findings are presented in Table 6.

The still evolving Western civilization, in Sorokin's view, had achieved overripe sensate status (with too much stress on materialism and an almost complete disregard for spiritual values) and was now in crisis, swinging back towards the ideational pole. Such a swing would inevitably manifest itself in the emergence of "new holistic paradigms" in many different areas, as illustrated above, as well as in the re-emergence of ideational, religious or spiritual worldviews. It will also, in Sorokin's view, lead to a period of turmoil, crisis and catharsis, from which the new ideational or idealistic culture will emerge.

Table 6: Fluctuation of Truth Systems in Graeco-Roman and Western Civilization (Sorokin)
Period	Classification
Up to the 5th Century B.C.	Ideational
5th and 4th Centuries B.C.	Idealistic
3rd to the 1st Century B.C.	Sensate
1st to end of 4th Century A.D.	Transition & Crisis
5th to 12th Centuries A.D.	Ideational
12th to 14th Centuries A.D.	Idealistic
End of 14th Century to 15th Century A.D.	Transition & Crisis
16th through 20th Century A.D.	Sensate (Active, then passive, now cynical, entering transition)

3. Relevance of Sorokin's Ideas to the World Today:

Every model of reality--including Sorokin's--is a simplification of reality to some extent. In various ways, the global situation today is more complicated than Sorokin's model suggests, since the world is also more complex than when he wrote. There are, for example, multiple interactions between different cultures occurring in the world today, which are not in Sorokin's model. Despite this fact, it is nonetheless interesting that a number of new, holistic scientific paradigms and worldviews are emerging today in a number of different areas--just as Sorokin predicted 65 years ago would happen as part of a return to more spiritual values in Western cultures today. There is, however, within the scientific community itself, some difference of opinion over whether the new, holistic scientific paradigms deal only with the physical world, or whether they also parallel holistic spiritual values and experiences of reality. The latter view was the thesis of Fritjov Capra's book, The Tao of Physics, for example, but not all physicists agree with Capra.

Similarly, the Gaia Hypothesis is interpreted by some in a purely "functional" integration sense (K. Boulding, 1990) and by others within a spiritual framework, suggesting "intentionality" and an "intelligence" behind the way Gaia operates. (Ruether, 1992; Badiner, 1990) James Davies, who has written various books popularizing the New Physics, also asks: "Why are the laws of nature mathematical?" and why can nature everywhere be explained by mathematics, thereby allowing science to understand nature? To Davies, the fact that we can study and understand the universe at all, and that science is even possible at all, implies that the universe is not a random event, but rather that intentionality and purpose are behind its creation and design. (Davies, 1992) Other scientists also note the extremely low statistical probability of life--including self-conscious, self-aware, intelligent life (as represented by humans)--evolving on earth, which to some scientists implies an intentionality or purpose behind our physical universe, its creation and the design of its evolution. The fact that life itself seems to evolve towards ever more intelligent self awareness--whether in human form on earth or other possible forms elsewhere in the universe--implies a designer behind the design to some scientists. In summary, new holistic, scientific paradigms are emerging across a variety of fields, and increasing numbers of people are seeing connections between the spiritual and material aspects of these paradigms.

In looking at Sorokin's two opposite types of cultures--sensate/materialistically-based cultures, and ideational/spiritually-based cultures--and his thesis that Western history has alternated back and forth between these two extreme cultural types, with periods of balance between them during certain transitional times, several interesting questions and observations arise in regard to how these two opposite cultural types, and the transitions between them, relate to the contemporary world and to the world of the 21st century?

(1) First, it is amazing how Sorokin's two polar opposite cultural types--sensate and ideational cultures--which alternated in Western history, seem to perfectly describe what we commonly think of (at least in a generalized, archetypal way) as characteristics of Western cultures (sensate/materialistic) and Eastern cultures (ideational/spiritual).

(2) However, if we now think of Western cultures as predominantly materialistic, but note that Western culture has also had non-materialistic, spiritual periods in its history, then perhaps Eastern cultures, which we tend to think of as more spiritual, have also had periods of materialism and a predominance of sensate values at certain periods in its history as well? Sorokin's work focused primarily on Western cultures, so further research needs to be done by others today on this question. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the work that Sorokin did do on Eastern cultures tended to describe them predominantly as ideational/spiritually-based cultures. As Sorokin himself concluded: (Sorokin, 1957, p. 43)

....the Ascetic Ideational culture mentality comprises not an island but several of the largest continents in the world of culture. The systems of mentality of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Sufism, early Christianity, and of many ascetic and mystical sects, groups, and movements (i.e., the Cynics, Stoics, Gnostics, and the devotees of Orphism) have been predominantly Ideational, Ascetic Ideational at the highest level, Active Ideational on a lower, and Idealistic and Mixed on the lowest.

(3) If we tend today (in our common images and stereotypes) to think of Western cultures as primarily sensate/materialistic, and Eastern cultures as primarily ideational/spiritual, then it needs to be noted that the actual world of today is more complex than this. Indeed, there are powerful forces of change sweeping the planet today. In many ways, Eastern cultures (represented especially by Asian countries) are undergoing rapid economic development, technological growth, and increasing materialism as a result. This has led many thoughtful people to be concerned that the whole world is perhaps becoming Westernized and materialistic. But an equally strong counter current is also occurring within Western cultures today, where the achievement of a certain level of material comfort often leads people to seek other values in life, especially spiritual values, in an effort to find meaning. Spiritual and religious movements of various kinds are thus having a comeback--especially in cultures and countries that have undergone the greatest degree of material development, i.e., North America, Europe, and Japan. This is no accident. Indeed, it can be argued that both Western and Eastern cultures, in their pure or extreme forms (to the extent that they did actually at times represent one of Sorokin's two opposite cultural types), have traditionally both been out of balance, and that today, for the first time our increasingly interdependent world is providing the conditions for both Eastern and Western cultures to become more in balance, in terms of honoring both spiritual and material values, inner peace as well as outer peace values, and group as well as individualistic concerns and perspectives, and that this is indeed the most promising development occurring in the world today, in regard to creating the foundations for a global culture of peace--for both East and West--in the 21st century.

(4) Nonetheless, it needs to be pointed out that periods of transition--when the underlying values on which a culture and civilization have been based are undergoing rapid change and being challenged--are very disruptive to people's lives and to the effective functioning of one's societal institutions. And indeed, we see that this is happening today. Crime and violence are on an increase everywhere. Fanatics of the left and right--including religious cults promoting violence in the name of God or spirit (a total contradiction in terms)--are multiplying. The transition period does not guarantee an easy ride. But change is inevitable, and it must be dealt with as constructively and consciously as possible, so that we can get through this transition period with as little real catastrophes and violence as possible.

(5) Then, assuming that such a new, balanced culture of peace can be created in the world in the 21st century (a big assumption, we grant you), how long could such a balanced inner-outer, spiritual-materialistic, female-male balanced culture be able to endure? Sorokin's work suggests--at least based on his analysis of the alternations in Western cultures historically--that such balanced Idealistic periods usually lasted about 200-300 years. In non-Western cultures, Sorokin saw Confuscianism and much of Ancient Egyptian culture (which lasted 3,000 years) as good examples of the balanced, Ideational form. As Eastern and Western cultures increasingly come together and interact with each other, now and in the future, perhaps such a balanced period could last for a long time--drawing on both Eastern and Western cultural values for its maintenance and sustenance. If that were to become possible, then the so-called "Golden Age" (prophesied in various religious and spiritual traditions) could indeed become a reality.

(6) A less desirable alternative to this balanced scenario would be if Western cultures move increasingly towards an ideational, spiritual value system, while Eastern cultures move increasingly towards a sensate, materialist value system, with East and West, in effect, changing places! This might be more likely if both Eastern and Western cultures could continue to develop in isolation from each other, but in our increasingly interdependent world, this seems unlikely. The more preferable, balanced scenario, however, would be for the East to increasingly develop economically--as it no doubt will do, with many economic observers having called the 21st century the "Pacific Century--while still maintaining and preserving its rich spiritual traditions and values, and for the West to increasingly further an interest in spiritual, inner peace questions, while still maintaining a decent materialistic lifestyle and concern with social justice issues in the outer world.

(7) We will no doubt have to wait and see what we all individually and collectively decide to create. The transition period of getting there may indeed be rocky. But a peaceful world, based on attention paid to both inner peace and outer peace, including social justice questions, is indeed one possibility for the 21st century.

B. MALE AND FEMALE ASPECTS OF DIVINITY IN DIFFERENT RELIGIONS AND CULTURES

1. In Different Cultures and Historical Periods, People Have Believed in Nature Spirits, Goddesses, Gods and Goddesses, and in One God (Often Interpreted as Male)

At different times in history, and in different cultures, divinity or the sacred or spiritual has been represented in different ways: sometimes as nature spirits (such as Shintoism in Japan, American Indian traditions, as well as other indigenous people's spiritual traditions, such as the Aborigines in Australia); sometimes as goddesses, often associated with fertility and the earth (seen in the ancient temples in Malta or the Old Europe documented by Marija Gimbutis); sometimes as a balance between male and female gods and goddesses, each representing different aspects or attributes of the one God, (as in Ancient Egypt and Hinduism); and sometimes as a monotheistic, all powerful God who is often portrayed as God the Father or male (in Western monotheistic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

There are a number of books that have been written in recent years--many by feminists who are trying to recapture the spiritual and societal role of women historically--about the factors leading to the above transition from female goddess to male God. (Please consult the Bibliography for a few of these recommended sources, such as Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, Elise Boulding, Riane Eisler, Marija Gimbutas, David Leeming and Jake Page, Shirley Nicholson, and Merlin Stone. ) There is not space here to explore this subject in greater depth. The important point here is just to note that divinity has been portrayed and experienced differently, at different times in history and in different cultures. Underneath this diversity, however, was a common search for some kind of spiritual meaning in life--whatever the form that this took, which one could argue was at least partly a reflection of the dominant cultural values that existed at the time.

2. In Essence Spirit or God (in Mystical Traditions of All Religions) Transcends Polar Opposites or Dualities (Often Portrayed Symbolically as Male and Female)

It is not the purpose of this paper to argue that one symbol system for spirit or divinity is correct and others are wrong. All sought to honor spirit in some way. If God or spirit is beyond all dualities, however--which the mystical traditions of all religions seem to suggest--then clearly God or spirit or divinity is also beyond our human attempts to categorize it as either all male, or all female, at the exclusion of the other. As Lao Tsu said, "the Tao that can be named is not the Tao." Yet in our limited consciousness, and in our effort to create a personal relationship with what is essentially beyond form, infinite, and partaking of the great mystery, we tend to personify god or spirit--in different ways at different times and places historically.
One of the themes of this paper is that if we want to create peace in the world, then we need to find a way to include all the parts of the whole, or the world, in this process. It would thus seem in keeping with this theme that divinity or spirit should be seen to be the unity that transcends all opposites or dualities, however they are represented. In support of this idea, Figure 3 cites examples of spiritual symbols from a number of different religions in the world, which are all based on this idea of recognizing that the spiritual path involves balancing and transcending polar opposites, or dualities. Indeed, the mystical or esoteric path in all religions is based on this simple truth: unitive consciousness transcends duality.

Explanations for the Symbols in Figure 3:

Ancient Egyptian Ankh: Represents the unity of opposites, which are symbolized by the two halves of the Ankh: the top, circular part representing the female principle; the bottom straight part representing the male principle. The Ankh also symbolized eternal life and immortality (with the balancing and transcending of opposites--represented by the male and female principles--being the way to get there), as well as the union of Upper and Lower Egypt (the upper half representing the Delta region of Lower Egypt and the bottom half representing the rest of the Nile River that flowed through Upper Egypt, in the South, to the Delta in the North).

(Please Note: if the reader is aware of additional symbols, from different religious traditions, illustrating this idea of the unity of opposites, the writers would appreciate hearing from you about this. Thank you.)

Celtic Cross: The Celtic Cross is an interesting Christian cross in that it combines the traditional symbol of the cross (representing Christ on the cross, who died to the physical life and was resurrected into eternal life with the Father--more a representation of the male principle) with the circle around it (representing the female principle).* [*In this regard, it should be noted that the ancient temples in Malta to the goddess were all made in circular shapes representing the female figure.]

Vesica Pisces (Pre-Christian, Celtic Symbol): This pre-Christian, Celtic symbol also represents the unity (outer circle) of opposites--the two inner circles, which are also seen to be overlapping or interdependent. The area in the middle, where these two circles overlap, is also the shape of a fish, which later became one of the dominant symbols for Christianity. This symbol can be found on the ancient well at Glastonbury, England, which some call the mythical "Isle of Avalon" of King Arthur legends. This well has provided healing waters at a constant temperature for 5,000 years, according to tradition. This overlapping and interdependence of opposites also represents, in the Celtic tradition, the interdependence of spiritual and material life; it is not a choice of one or the other, but of both together.

Yin Yang: This is the famous Yin-Yang symbol from Taoism, which also represents the idea of the unity, balance, and interdependence of opposites--as the basis for a balanced and healthy life, including a spiritual life. What is most interesting here is that there is always a small amount of the opposite characteristic in each half of the symbol (Yin or Female in Yang or Male, and Yang or Male in Yin or Female). The meaning of this is clear. If you try to totally eliminate your opposite, and create a pure Yin, or pure Yang (half of the whole), it will have the opposite effect of what you intended, i.e., the state of total Yin, or Yang, will be so out of balance that it will cause the situation to begin to move in its opposite direction--towards what you were trying to eliminate. Thus the lesson is clear: if you want to maintain a current situation, always keep a little of its opposite present, so that the situation will be partially balanced and thus maintainable. This basic philosophical principle is also embedded in the I Ching, or Chinese Book of Changes.

Hinduism: Male-Female Embrace: Another version of the balance of male and female principles or opposites as a symbol of the path to attain spiritual union with God can be seen in the Hindu symbol of a male and female in an often voluptuous embrace. Westerners sometimes misinterpret the meaning of this symbol. What it really means is that the spiritual, mystical path requires the balancing and transcending of opposites, not the elimination of opposites.

Spirals (Coming Into Form, Going Out of Form): These ancient spirals--moving in two opposite circular directions--can be found on the ancient temples to the goddess in Malta, on ancient stone circles in England and Europe, and even in the Andes, as well as other places. These symbols have been interpreted to mean the spiral of coming into life and the spiral of going out of life as a continuous and interconnected process, thus indicating a belief in reincarnation by the people drawing these symbols.

Jewish Menorah: Apparently the Jewish Menorah is an outgrowth of one of these spirals which was cut in half. Further research follows re: its symbolic meaning.
In conclusion, if a symbol can represent a whole philosophy, as well as an approach, to the mystical path of enlightenment, then perhaps these symbols--from a number of different religious traditions--are a simple, visual way to do so. These symbols are also archetypal and thus communicate in deeper archetypal ways to our psyche or consciousness. One might also note that many, if not most religions, are based not only on the idea of the unity or interconnectedness of opposites; they are also based on the trinity principle in which two opposites come together and create something new.

C. JOSEPH CAMPBELL AND MYTHOLOGY: UNIVERSAL ASPECTS OF THE HERO'S JOURNEY IN THE MYTHS OF ALL CULTURES
AND EAST-WEST DIFFERENCES

This section will look at the role of mythology--especially as interpreted in the works of Joseph Campbell, and later Jean Houston--in showing a way to bridge one's outer life in the world with the inner life of the spirit. It will also look at universal aspects of the "hero's journey" (the journey to our inner selves) in the myths of all cultures; the stages of the hero's journey; and East-West cultural and historical differences in the hero's journey.

1. Mythology: A link between Our Outer Lives and the Search for Deeper Meaning and Purpose in Life--including the Inner Life of the Spirit

While some people living in our demythified Western world tend to think of only facts as true, and therefore myths as untrue or illusory, those who study myths note that they have a deeper type of truth to them, which attracts people in almost all cultures to them. Indeed, mythology can be seen as a link between our outer lives in the world and the search for deeper, archetypal levels of meaning and purpose in life, which then leads to the inner life of the spirit. Therefore myths do not speak to us in factual terms, but in archetypal, metaphorical language. Joseph Campbell himself said that "myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation." Thus myths provide maps for the inner spiritual journey. Myths can also help people realize how their everyday life can take on extraordinary or heroic dimensions via the way they choose to deal with these events, as often inspired by other heroic figures from mythology.

2. Joseph Campbell: Universal Aspects of the Hero's Journey in the Myths of All Cultures

Joseph Campbell's most famous study is probably The Hero With a Thousand Faces, originally published in 1947. In this he posits the idea of a "monomyth"--the one great story which underlies much mythology" from different cultures around the world. It is basically the story of any human being who sets out on a journey to discover whom he/she really is. While the outer forms can vary from one culture to another, the deeper aspects of the journey are universal and transcend different cultures. Besides The Hero With a Thousand Faces , Joseph Campbell also wrote a number of other books. His ideas gained a great following and popularity in the United States through the six part television series, "The Power of Myth," in which Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell for public television. In this series, as in other writing, Campbell encouraged people to "follow your bliss," meaning to listen to your own inner voices and follow your own dream, which will take you on your own hero's journey of self discovery and transformation.

3. Jean Houston's "Sacred Psychology" and the Role of Mythology in it

Jean Houston, who works with mythology in the tradition of Joseph Campbell, talks about "sacred psychology" where our "deepest fulfillment comes from experiencing union with the divine and bringing a sense of the sacred into our everyday lives"--especially in Western society which has become increasingly disconnected from the deeper "waters of life." Jean believes that we humans are multilevel beings, living in three realms, and that the middle realm (of mythology and archetypes) helps us connect our everyday outer lives with our inner spiritual selves. These three realms include:

(i) The "THIS IS ME" realm of our everyday self, the space-and-time bound personality that is heavily influenced by habit, social conditioning and cultural patterns.

(ii) The "WE ARE" realm housing "the myths and guiding archetypes that connect the personal self with its spiritual source. This realm also serves as a cultural template, providing the primal patterns that take form as works of art, architecture, literature and drama."

(iii) The "I AM" realm described by mystics throughout the ages as the realm of limitless Being, boundless love and pure potency. This is the realm that was revealed to Moses in the wilderness, for example.
Jean Houston believes that jumping from the time bound, socially conditioned life of the THIS IS ME realm directly into the "boundless unconditioned state of I AM ness" is too much for most people. They need the intermediate WE ARE realm of mythology and archetypal stories as a bridging place to prepare for the life of the spirit and to learn how to navigate through the various stages of the hero's journey. (Houston, 1994)

4. Stages of the Hero's Journey: Universal Path to Self Awareness and Mastery in All Cultures--Though the Outer Form May Vary

The hero's journey is basically a road map that shows any human being a pathway from the outer world of our everyday lives inward towards deeper spiritual dimensions. There are various versions of these stages. Campbell himself said: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." (Campbell, 1949) In one version of the hero's journey, there are three key stages: separation (from one's everyday life); initiation (where one is tested); and return (to one's everyday life, to share with others what one has learned and experienced).

Another more detailed version of the hero's journey has five stages, borrowing on ideas of both Joseph Campbell first, and then Jean Houston, in each stage as follows:

(i) Nothing Holding You to Current Situation: you are open for the adventure of the hero's journey because there is nothing holding you to your current situation and you are, in effect, seeking some deeper meaning or purpose in your life. Another version of this stage is that you hear an inner call to adventure, which you can either accept or reject.

(ii) Find a Mentor or Teacher: Often a mentor or teacher must be found who can act as a guide on the journey. Another version of this stage is that once the call is accepted, you will find allies to help you on the journey. "These secret allies represent undeveloped potentials and skills that will be evoked" on the journey.

(iii) Jumping off Place Into the Unknown: There is a particular point or place where you must leave all the things of your old, familiar life behind you, and jump off into the unknown. Another version of this stage is that you must get past the guardians at the threshold, who represent the limitations of conventional thinking, which one must outwit if one is to be allowed to enter the realms of the creative and mysterious depths, where one will be tested.

(iv) You Must Be Tested-Both Externally, in the World, and Internally: The hero's journey involves real testing, where you will be confronted with demons and dangers, which will require that you confront your own inner demons and fears and limitations, if you are to develop mastery in the situation; this part of the hero's journey is the real "initiation". If you survive it, you will grow and be changed in the process, and you will be able to return to your society a changed or transformed person--whether your hero's journey was an adventure (as Odysseus), a spiritual initiation (as Christ, Buddha, Moses, and others), or the development of authentic mastery in some artistic tradition.

(v) Return to Society, to Share the Wisdom and Mastery that You have Learned: If you survive the initiation and testing, and develop internal, as well as external mastery, then you will be able to return to your society able to share your wisdom and mastery with others. You will have received great boons, i.e., new powers and perceptual abilities which can help others.

5. Historical and East-West Differences in the Hero's Journey

While there are, according to Campbell and Houston, universal aspects of the hero's journey in the myths of all cultures (as noted above), Campbell and others also noted that there are important distinctions in the nature of the hero's journey--at different stages of history, as well as in Eastern and Western cultures. While we cannot go into these differences in any depth here, it should be noted that Campbell believed that there were four major mythological periods:

(i) The Way of the Animal Powers, i.e., the way of shamanistic hunter-gatherers in Paleolithic times, where "the individual has an inner experience which calls him or her to the role of shaman;"

(ii) The Way of the Seeded Earth, i.e., when settled agricultural communities emerged and there was a cycle of birth, death (or ritual sacrifice), and rebirth;

(iii) The Way of the Celestial Lights, with the emergence of the high civilizations, where priests and priestesses were ordained by institutions (rather than from an inner calling); writing and higher mathematics were invented; mythological systems were based on the movements of the planets, moon and sun; and large bureaucracies and monumental architecture emerged; and

(iv) The Way of Man, focusing on the modern world, where rationalism replaces the older role of mythology, and philosophy replaces theology, and art and culture are individually expressed, rather than products of society as a whole.
Campbell and others have also noted important differences in the hero's journey as it is lived in Eastern and Western cultures. In the East, where a group identity and culture are more dominant, one must follow the path set before by one's guru, spiritual teacher or master, in an unbroken lineage passed down from master to apprentice, while in the West, where individual identity and culture are more dominant, the hero must embark on the hero's journey at a place and time of his own choosing. In short, the hero cannot follow a path set by others, but must find his own path. Campbell believed that the best illustration of the hero's journey in Western culture was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, where each of the knights, in their search for the Holy Grail (which search is basically that of the hero's journey) had to enter the forest (the unknown) at a point of their own choosing.

6. Need to Adapt the Hero's Journey to the Times and Culture (Star Wars: An Adaptation by George Lucas of the Hero's Journey for the Space Age)

Campbell also believed that the hero's journey--if it is to impact people's lives-- must be adapted to the times and the culture in which this mythological story appears. Ancient myths or stories must thus be reset in new contexts and environments if they are to relate to people's lives today. In this context, it is interesting that the Star Wars Trilogy was George Lucas' attempt to take the idea of the hero's journey and adapt it to a space age environment, which may be one of the reasons for the film's great popularity. If one looks at the five stages of the hero's journey (outlined under Section 4 above), one can see how closely the Star Wars story followed Campbell's five stages:

(i) Nothing Holding you to Current Situation: Here Luke Skywalker (who lived with his aunt and uncle who were farmers and were suddenly found murdered) had already been yearning to explore new horizons and now had nothing holding him to his old life anymore.

(ii) Find a Mentor or Teacher: Luke finds Obiwan Kinobe, who becomes his teacher in the ways of "the force".

(iii) Jumping Off Place Into the Unknown: There is a famous bar scene, filled with strange looking alien creatures, which symbolically represents Luke's jumping off place into the world of the unknown, which he does in the company of his mentor, Obiwan Kinobe.

(iv) You Must Be Tested--Both Externally in the World and Internally: Once in the unknown, Luke must receive further training in the ways of the force--by Obiwan Kinobe and later by Yoda; he must undergo many adventures; and then he must finally be tested, in the form of confronting Darth Vader--the symbol of evil itself. Only after he has passed this test, does the adventure come to an end.

(v) Return to Society, to Share the Wisdom and Mastery that You have Learned: Here victory over the dark side is celebrated and the trilogy ends.

7. Need to Create New Types of Hero Figures Today Besides Warriors

While Star Wars was a great success, it still glorified fighting and violence (against evil), and as such is still not the best archetypal model we can find for creating a peaceful, nonviolent world in the future. Indeed, society seems more violent than ever. In looking at the role of the warrior image in mythology, such as Star Wars, a few observations need to be made:

First, it is important to point out that the hero's journey--even for the warrior archetype-- need not be violent. With the destructive power of modern technology, clearly our future survival requires that we find alternative ways to resolve our conflicts short of violence. As Elise Boulding has noted, we can take the adventuresome energy of the warrior hero archetype and channel it (consciously) into nonviolent action in the world.

Second, it is clear that we also need to find new types of hero figures, besides the warrior archetype today. Various books have been written exploring alternative types of archetypes, and this type of research needs to continue. Women, who identify less as a whole with the warrior archetype than men, are looking for such alternative archetypal images, which could provide models with which they could identify as women. In addition, alternative, non-warrior archetypes also need to be found for men.

Third and lastly, we need to remember that when we go to do battle in the world--the warrior archetype--that the real battle is really within oneself. Indeed, the external battle in the world is really a reflection or mirror of the inner battle within--to master one's own fears, limitations, insecurities and demons. Once we can consciously recognize this, then 'perhaps' we will realize that we can focus our primary energies there, on developing internal mastery and balance, which can then be expressed in nonviolent ways in the world, and then we will not have to act out the warrior need to do battle in the external world in what has too often been a violent way. Or if we must do battle in the world, we can do it against poverty, injustice, ignorance, prejudice, intolerance, etc. Certainly there are plenty of admirable battles that need to be addressed and they do not require violence as a means to engage in such efforts.

8. Conclusion

In conclusion, this section has explored the possible role of mythology as a bridge between our outer lives in the world--what is comparable to the exoteric aspect of religion, with the development of an inner life of the spirit--what is comparable to the esoteric aspects of religion. If mythology and archetypal figures can help us to embark on the hero's journey to discover and encounter the deeper aspects of our being, then perhaps nonviolent, archetypal models can also be found for our actions in the world that are appropriate to our technologically sophisticated and interdependent world for our actions in the world.

PART III: INNER AND OUTER ASPECTS OF PEACE, THE CULTURES OF PEACE, AND NONVIOLENCE (PARALLELING ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC ASPECTS OF RELIGION)

A. EVOLUTION OF THE PEACE CONCEPT: INNER AND OUTER PEACE IN WESTERN PEACE RESEARCH

1. Evolution of the Peace Concept: Six Stages

If, for the sake of brevity, we oversimplify peace thinking, then it is possible to identify at least six broad categories of peace thinking which, in large measure, also correspond to the evolution of peace thinking in Western peace research. This is not to say that all scholars once thought one way and now think another, nor is it to say that the majority of peace researchers now adopt holistic paradigms. Rather it is to argue that overall there has been a trend in peace research away from the traditional idea that peace is simply the absence of war towards a more holistic view, as seen in Figure 4:

(a) Peace as Absence of War

Figure 4 summarizes six perspectives on peace in terms of the levels of analysis and theoretical focus that each includes. The first perspective, peace as the absence of war, is applied to violent conflict between and within states--war and civil war. This view of peace is still widely held among general populations and politicians. In certain situations, it can be argued, this is still a legitimate objective, at least until the killing stops and it is possible to ask for more out of life than avoiding death in war. Furthermore, all six definitions of peace discussed here require absence of war as a necessary precondition for peace.

(b) Peace as Balance of Forces in the International System

Quincy Wright (1941) modified this absence of war idea to suggest that peace was a dynamic balance involving political, social, cultural and technological factors, and that war occurred when this balance broke down. Wright argued that this balance of forces occurred in the international system--defined in terms of the overall pattern of relationships between states and International Governmental Organizations (IGOs)--as well as between and within states. Wright also discussed the role of domestic public opinion within a state--which involves the community level of analysis. His model assumed that any significant change in one of the factors involved in the peace balance would require corresponding changes in other factors to restore the balance. For example, Robert Oppenheimer, the much misunderstood "father of the atomic bomb," adopted Wright's view when he insisted on continuing to develop the bomb so that a global political institution, the United Nations, would have to be created to help control the new global military technology.

(c) Peace as Negative Peace (No War)/Positive Peace (No Structural Violence)

Galtung (1969) further modified Wright's view, using the categories "negative peace" and "positive peace" that Wright had first put forward some 28 years earlier. Galtung developed a third position and argued that negative peace was the absence of war and that positive peace was the absence of "structural violence", a concept defined in terms of the numbers of avoidable deaths caused simply by the way social, economic and other structures were organized. Thus if people starve to death when there is food to feed them somewhere in the world, or die from sickness when there is medicine to cure them, then structural violence exists since alternative structures could, in theory, prevent such deaths. Peace under this rubric involves both positive peace and negative peace being present. Galtung's model (in addition to the community, within states, between states, and international levels of analysis) includes the global level of analysis, such as the global economy which is influenced by non-state actors, such as MNCs.

(d) Feminist Peace Theories

During the 1970's and 80's, a fourth perspective was ushered in by feminist peace researchers, who extended both negative peace and positive peace to include violence and structural violence down to the individual level. (Brock-Utne, 1989) The new definition of peace then included not only the abolition of macro level organized violence, such as war, but also doing away with micro level unorganized violence, such as rape in war or in the home. In addition, the concept of structural violence was similarly expanded to include personal, micro- and macro-level structures that harm or discriminate against particular individuals or groups. This feminist peace model came to include all types of violence, broadly defined, against people, from the individual to the global level, arguing that this is a necessary condition for a peaceful planet.

(e) Holistic Gaia-Peace Theory

The 1990's has seen the emergence of two types of holistic peace thinking. (Dreher, 1991; Macy,1991; Smoker, 1991) Here, as with the feminist model, peace between people applies across all levels of analysis--from the family and individual level to the global level. In addition, Gaia-peace theory places a very high value on the relationship of humans to bioenvironmental systems --the environmental level of analysis. Peace with the environment is seen as central for this type of holistic peace theory, where human beings are seen as one of many species inhabiting the earth, and the fate of the planet is seen as the most important goal. This type of holistic peace thinking does not have a spiritual dimension, peace being defined in terms of all forms of physical violence against people and the environment.

(f) Holistic Inner Peace-Outer Peace Theory

This sixth view of peace sees inner, esoteric (spiritual) aspects of peace as essential. Spiritually based peace theory stresses the interactive relationships, the mutual co-arising, between all things and the centrality of inner peace. In addition to the relationships of human beings with each other and the world--including the environment-- a spiritual dimension is added to Gaia-peace theory. This dimension is expressed in different ways by peace researchers, depending on their cultural context. As in the Tao of Physics, where new paradigms in physics resonate with worldviews found in Eastern mysticism, this new paradigm in peace research resonates with much thinking in world spiritual and religions traditions. Peace has truly become indivisible.

(g) Summary: Evolution From Negative to Positive Peace

Two important issues in the evolution of the Western peace concept concern the various interpretations of "positive peace" (which, following Galtung, was expressed in terms of absence of structural violence) and "nonviolence" (the verbal construction of which suggests an "absence of violence" framework, i.e. nonviolence--somewhat parallel to the peace as absence of war perspective). In this section of the paper, we would like to consider the evolution from negative to positive views of peace, including the evolution of the "positive peace" concept itself.

Schmidt, in his critical Marxist analysis, "Politics and Peace Research," (1968) argued that value positive concepts of peace were doomed to failure within peace research, because it would not be possible for peace researchers to achieve a consensus on what constituted a positive view of peace. He put forward the view that peace researchers could only agree on what they were against--for example war, starvation, and poverty. Schmidt's article was arguably the main stimulus to Galtung's 1969 rejoinder, in which he redefined Quincy Wright's concept "positive peace" to mean the absence of "structural violence"--harmful social, political and economic structures that are responsible for avoidable human deaths through preventable starvation or treatable illness. Galtung's positive peace concept --the absence of structural violence, like his negative peace concept --the absence of war, did not include an inner or spiritual dimension. Peace of both sorts took place in the outer world and positive peace was a function of human social structures.

Feminist theory, the fourth perspective defined above, broadened the positive peace concept to include micro structures, such as the family, as well as Galtung's macro structures, but for the most part it still emphasized elimination of the undesirable--such as war and wife beating. At the same time, however, there was an increasing emphasis on value positive thinking (stressing desirable alternatives, such as visualizing alternative futures as a part of the process of moving towards those futures--the work on imaging positive futures by Elise Boulding in the peace research community being an excellent example).

An earlier paper (Smoker, 1981) discussed the extent to which peace research--as reflected in the pages of a defining journal, such as the Journal of Peace Research--had focused almost entirely on negative concerns, such as how to avoid or control war, aggression, physical violence and structural violence. Since that article--which was part of a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research on peace--the situation has not changed significantly. Within the last six months, the Editors of the Journal of Peace Research have revisited the idea of peace in the positive sense--as opposed to positive peace in the Galtung sense--and are considering including a section on the topic (not a whole issue) at some future time. However, a decision has not yet been made. There is little doubt that positive images of peace have been the exception, rather than the rule, in Western peace research.

This has not been true in Futures Studies, where a focus on alternative futures has contributed towards the development of both negative and positive conceptualizations. There is a sizable group of people within the Western futures community--but by no means all futurists--whose visioning of positive alternative futures is based, in part at least, on a spiritual, holistic, perspective. The works of Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marilyn Ferguson, and Jean Houston--an outstanding group of women futurists--are particularly notable examples.

The emergence of holistic peace paradigms in peace research--whether spiritual and/or environmental--has included an increasing emphasis on positive conceptions of peace. In part this is because of our realization that, whatever our nationality, culture or religious tradition, we are all interconnected and interdependent. Viewed from space, planet Earth is a blue-green sphere, we cannot see national boundaries, but we can see the land and the water, ice caps, deserts and forests. The Earth is clearly a whole complex system, a living being perhaps, but we as individuals and groups are but a part of the planet as the planet itself is a part of the solar system, galaxy and universe. The new thinking, it can be argued, represents a return to wholeness, not in the sense of uniformity, but in the sense of complexity dynamically balanced in interaction, the whole as integrated synergy, syntigration. This mindset enables an appreciation of the interdependence of species in the global ecosystem, of particular cultural meanings in the context of the total global cultural system, and of particular faiths in the rich diversity of global religions. The whole is more than the sum of the parts, and the greater the variety of the parts, the richer the expression of the global whole.

Whereas "peace as absence of war" typifies the conceptual framework for most popular "peace thinking," there are other aspects to peace. The answer to the question " if you think about peace, how would you define it?" might, in the majority of cases, very well be "absence of war" or "absence of violence". But the answer to the question "when you are at peace, what does it feel like?" will almost certainly describe some form of inner peace experience involving "being at one with," or being "peaceful" or "calm". This is because the actual experiences of peace that most, if not all, of us have as human beings--in Western or Eastern culture--are related to inner peace. Inner peace also involves an inner knowing or intuitive dimension--beyond the feeling dimension--where one suddenly understands patterns and relationships between things which were not understood before. This is the classic "aha" type experience which is the basis for creativity, and tapping this source would do much to enrich peace researchers visions of a positive future world at peace.

Holistic peace paradigms that include spiritual and/or environmental concerns resonate with our positive peace experiences and, as a result, are better able to add value positive images to their intellectual frameworks. Positive peace can therefore be seen as an evolving concept, a concept that does not yet exist in the initial "peace as absence of war" definition, but a concept that subsequently takes on different meanings as the peace concept expands.

2. Cultures of Peace: Inner and Outer Dimensions

The term a "culture of peace" has recently become an important focus for UNESCO--both in academic terms, as witnessed by the 1993 Barcelona conference on "Contributions of the World's Religions to a Culture of Peace," and in practical terms, as evidenced by the launching of UNESCO field projects in the South around this concept. An important theoretical question concerns the possible meanings of the term "culture of peace", particularly since the previous section of this paper illustrated the broad range of interpretations given to the word peace, and the ramifications this has for peace action. The difficulties of understanding what might be meant by "culture of peace" are further magnified by the fact that "culture," like "peace," can and has been defined in many ways. Therefore this section of the paper is best seen as a contribution to a preliminary discussion of the culture of peace concept, a discussion that is likely to continue for some time.

Earlier in this paper, we noted that culture can be defined as learned, shared, patterned behavior, as reflected in technology and tools; social organizations, including economics, politics, religion, media, education, and the family; and ideas. Under this view, socialization is the process through which culture is learned, including our religious beliefs and practices, and the agents of socialization include language, politics, economics, religion, education, family, and media. Culture under this view provides the medium through which we interpret the world, the context of meanings, small and large, that makes coherence possible. A culture of peace, therefore, would be a culture that made peace possible, and, as we have seen in the previous section, what is meant by a culture of peace will almost certainly vary according to the concept of peace that is used.

(a) Culture of Peace for Peace as Absence of War

If peace is just the absence of war between and within states, then a culture of peace would be a culture that made war between or within states increasingly unlikely, until eventually interstate and intrastate war would cease. Such a culture of peace has long been established in certain parts of the world and between certain states, for example, between Canada and the United States, the U.K. and France, or Australia and New Zealand. It has been argued elsewhere that there has been a worldwide trend towards such a culture of peace for some centuries. (Smoker, 1984) The steadily decreasing frequency of interstate warfare in Europe, for example, has taken place over a period of some hundreds of years, such that there is now this sort of culture of peace between all members of the European Community. Similarly, worldwide there has been a clear trend away from interstate warfare being the dominant mode, as was the case before 1938; through intrastate armed conflict with foreign military intervention being the dominant mode, for example the Vietnam or Afghanistan wars, as was the case up to the middle 1980's; to the present situation, where intrastate armed conflict--usually between nations (as distinct from states) or culturally distinct ethic groups--without armed foreign military intervention, is the dominant form of violent conflict, for example, in the former Yugoslavia, Myanmar and Rwanda.

So while at one level, that is between states, much progress towards a culture of peace (as absence of war) has been made, the same is not true within states, particularly where culturally distinct nations or ethnic groups are concerned. A consideration of culture of peace as balance of forces in the international system is necessary to explore this problem.

(b) Culture of Peace for Peace as Balance of Forces in the International System

The establishment of a balance of forces culture of peace has been explained by various theorists in terms of increased economic, social and political interdependencies between states in the international system, making violent conflict between states less likely. Thus the idea of a war between France and Germany is now unthinkable to either side, despite the fact that just 50 years ago these two states provided a battlefield for the bloodiest war in human history. The same is probably not true for India and Pakistan, Argentina and Chile, or North and South Korea, although integration theorists would, and do, argue that the danger of war between any of these states has in most cases lessened and will certainly diminish in future with increased economic, social and political interdependencies. This functional integration argument, which is closely related to the balance of forces point of view, suggests that if peace is seen as a balance of forces in the international system that enables change to be dealt with nonviolently at the state level, then the globalization process, in line with the integrationist arguments detailed above, should strengthen the culture of peace. This is particularly true for the period since the Second World War, following the establishment of the United Nations and the dramatic expansion in International Governmental Organizations (IGOs), International Non Governmental Organizations (INGOs) and multinational (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs). During this period, a "balance of forces" culture of peace has grown substantially, as indexed by the dramatic fall in cross-border wars between states. A culture of peace in this sense refers to the structures, norms and customs that have grown up in the international system, and within states, and that are increasingly accepted as appropriate, if not yet required, conditions to be an accepted member of the "community of states."

Theorists such as Kenneth Boulding have argued that the development of zones of peace, in the peace as absence of war sense, has in part resulted from the "movement for peace". For Boudling the movement for peace is an indirect consequence of increased economic and social interdependencies between two states in the international system, while the "peace movement" is represented by individuals and groups who actively campaign against war, nuclear weapons and other undesirable features of the international system. Zones of peace are areas in which war between, or within, states has become increasingly unlikely, because of the multiple interdependencies between both states and nations within the zone.

(c) Culture of Peace for Negative Peace (No War)/Positive Peace (No Structural Violence)

If we turn to a culture of peace in the Galtungian framework, and we focus on the issue of structural violence, then the world picture is less positive, but by no means entirely negative. At the non-governmental level, large numbers of international citizen's groups have emerged who struggle to create the economic, social and political context to overcome the harshest manifestations of structural violence, namely poverty, starvation and preventable disease. In addition, many governments contribute to humanitarian missions worldwide as a matter of duty, accepting some measure of shared responsibility for the human tragedies that daily appear on our television screens. While it can, with some legitimacy, be argued that the global economic and political structures of the world continue to contribute substantially to global structural violence through the activities of multinational and transnational corporations and the inevitable consequences of the current international economic system, it has to be recognized that a number of multimillion dollar private enterprises, and thousands of similar smaller groups, work to overcome "structural violence" using economic, social and political approaches. While this interpretation of the culture of peace has not yet succeeded in changing values or economic, political, and social structures sufficiently to create a world in which structural violence becomes progressively less likely, there is strong evidence to suggest the emergence of a culture of peace of this sort. The actions of citizens and governments in humanitarian aid, while often inadequate, are nevertheless an established part of international relations--they are the norm, rather than the exception.

(d) Culture of Peace for Feminist Theories

If the concept culture of peace is interpreted in the feminist framework, then the cultural conditions necessary for peace do not exist in any country. Physical and structural violence at the micro level, in the community and family, on the streets and in the schools, are widespread, and the cultural, social, political and economic changes required to create a feminist culture of peace represent a major challenge to every national society on Earth, as well as in most, if not all, institutions, including many religious institutions. While the three previously discussed models of peace have stressed peace at macro levels of analysis, the feminist models are firmly rooted in personal experience, and are based around how peace feels to individuals. The evolution of the peace concept towards holistic peace, which includes both inner and outer aspects, required this shift, which, it can be argued, represented the biggest single contribution of feminist peace theory. Whereas the three previous models tended to conceptualize peace using abstract, general concepts applied towards the more global level, the feminist models turned these conceptions upside down and clearly defined peace from the personal, experiential level. Feminist notions of "structure" stress circular complex patterns as opposed to the complex, hierarchical notions associated with Galtungian definitions of structural violence. In this regard, the feminist theories also represent a shift towards value positive perceptions of peace, which stress holistic, non-hierarchical interaction between human beings.

This is not to say that global problems cannot be addressed using such a perspective: they can, as the following example illustrates. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times, entitled "Asia's Response to AIDS Marked by Fear, Denial" (Los Angeles Times, 1994) describes how, in 1993, more than one third of the estimated 1.4 million new AIDS cases worldwide were women and how, by the end of the century, we might expect equal numbers of new cases from women and men each year. The article, reporting on an August 1994 global gathering of AIDS experts in Japan, pointed out that "women are subject to the whims of fathers, brothers, husbands and pimps, with no divorce or inheritance rights of their own. Men often feel no responsibility to the women--whom they view as little better than disposable property--and thus are immune to exhortations to use condoms and adopt other safe sex practices." The Los Angeles Times quotes Dr. Jonathan Mann of Harvard University, who was the first head of the World Health Organization's Programme on AIDS, as saying that "even if all the envisaged educational and control programs were implemented in developing countries, they would fail to halt the impending catastrophe because they do not take into account human rights issues, especially the rights of women." This sentiment is further elaborated by the current Director of WHO's AIDS Programme, Dr. Michael Merson, who is quoted as saying: "Disempowered people are vulnerable, consider the untold numbers of women who fear infection from their partner, but do not have the power to insist on condom use or the economic power to leave the relationship." Dr. Mann further argues that "No matter how hard we try, traditional public health programs cannot make up for the negative impact of this difference in societal status and realization of rights. A group of women lawyers in Uganda has convinced me that the first step in fighting AIDS must be to rewrite the divorce and inheritance statutes."

A feminist culture of peace, based on personal, experiential analyses, requires fundamental changes in societal values, in the North as well as the South, if the conditions conducive to the creation of peace, in the feminist sense, are to be achieved. The AIDS issue highlights the centrality of culture in overcoming micro-level structural violence. Likewise, issues such as domestic violence and child abuse, which have been highlighted by feminist scholars, will require similar fundamental changes in cultural values. While much feminist scholarship has stressed micro violence--such as wife beating--there has also been a focus on macro structural questions--such as the pervasive effects of patriarchal structures. As a consequence, feminist conceptions of a culture of peace will also require societal wide changes in personal cultural values.

(e) Culture of Peace for Holistic Gaia-Peace Theories

A holistic Gaia-peace interpretation of a culture of peace presents an even broader set of concerns that must be brought into play. Whereas the environment was, until fairly recently in Western Civilization, seen as a resource to exploit, that was separate from human beings, it is now seen as connected to us. The extension of outer peace to include peace with the environment represents an important and necessary evolution of the peace concept, whether the environment is seen as just a tightly integrated biochemical system, or as the Goddess Gaia, a living being, a whole system integrated both in functional and meaningful (logico meaningful) terms. The shift in values towards a concern for peace with the environment has not yet led to widespread, radical changes in cultural values, but perhaps that process has begun. In a period of less than twenty years, there has been a shift towards environmentalism in most societies on the planet, green peace has become more than the name of an important environmental pressure group, and there is now widespread verbal recognition of the need to live in harmony with the environment--a need that for some may be purely functional, but which for many if not most, is based on a vision of planet earth as sacred.

(f) Culture of Peace for Holistic Inner Peace-Outer Peace Theories

For Western peace research, this represents a shift from secular towards spiritual peace paradigms, a realization that inner peace and outer peace-- spiritual and material--are interconnected and interdependent. It is here that the contributions of the world's religious and spiritual traditions can help us better understand holistic peace. For example, the idea that the collective external world of outer peace is in some way a representation or image of the collective inner world of spiritual peace, may be of particular importance in the creation of a holistic, inner and outer global culture of peace. The variety and diversity of humanity's religious life, as celebrated in the ecumenical tradition, would then provide a dynamic link between the inner and outer worlds, such that inner-outer peace would be manifest in all aspects of a culture of peace--including macro and micro social and economic institutions, local and global values, art, literature, music, technology, meditation and prayer. The resulting culture of peace would display a Gaia-like global pattern, where the interacting local cultures are manifestations of the inner unity and outer diversity principle spread throughout the whole system. Definitions of reality would be fundamentally different under such a paradigm. Whereas "reality" in Western Peace Theory has previously been defined in terms of aspects of the material world, leading to a concentration on economic, military and political questions, "reality" under a holistic peace paradigm includes both material and spiritual components. A holistic culture of peace (balancing inner and outer, feminine and masculine, material and spiritual in a both/and framework) will lead to a completely different outcome to peace theories that concentrate on changing the outer world, but do not balance such concerns with a parallel and interdependent exploration of the inner.

(g) Conclusions on the Cultures of Peace

The previous sections describe various interpretations of the culture of peace concept ranging from a narrow view that stresses the creation of cultural conditions that make war between states impossible, to a broad view that requires the transformation of every culture to a state that makes holistic inner-outer peace achievable. If we use this framework then there are, in practical terms, at least three strategies that can be followed to create global cultures of peace. The first strategy would emphasize the importance of the international system in creating global cultures of peace. In the short term, the existing trends towards an international society in which war between states is no longer seen as acceptable can be strengthened which, in the longer term, would make it possible to work for local cultural conditions to support broader definitions of peace, such as feminist ideas that include eliminating micro level physical and structural violence against individuals as well as against nations and states. The second strategy would stress the bottom up approach to creating global cultures of peace, arguing that we should, as individuals, work in the short term in our own cultural communities and contexts to transform our own local cultures into cultures of peace, and in this way, in the long term, build a global culture of peace. The third strategy would combine both global and local initiatives, working with international, national and local organizations and groups to create appropriate cultural conditions for peace. At the global level, peace might be more appropriately defined, at least to begin with, in terms of eliminating large scale physical and structural violence. At the local level peace might initially be defined more in terms of eliminating individual or small scale physical and structural violence, as well as in terms of creating inner and outer aspects of peace.

3. Parallel Evolution in Concepts of Nonviolence: Inner and Outer Dimensions

The concept "nonviolence", like the concept "peace", has various meanings in different cultural and political contexts. In this section of the paper, we would like to briefly describe six different interpretations of nonviolence, using the peace theories framework developed above.

(a) Nonviolence as Any Action to Prevent War

During the period of the Cold War, the theory of nuclear deterrence adopted by the United States and Soviet Union required each side to develop and maintain substantial military forces--including nuclear weapons arsenals capable of destroying the world several times over. Strategists on both sides argued that the nuclear deterrent kept the peace in Europe and prevented a nuclear or conventional war between the then two military superpowers. Peace can be defined as a state of non-war, as we have discussed above, and actions that maintain such a peace can similarly be defined as nonviolent--even when they involve threatening to use military force. So nuclear deterrence is an example of nonviolent action under this view of peace. The United States' Strategic Air Command--which helped the US implement nuclear deterrence through their state of constant readiness to launch a massive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union--adopted this view of nonviolent action, as illustrated in their motto: "Peace is Our Profession". (The movie "Dr. Strangelove" was a spoof of this interpretation of peace. Nonetheless, many people in the military and politics in both countries and their allies--given the dynamics of the Cold War--sincerely believed that nuclear weapons were a necessary deterrent to war.)

(b) Nonviolence as Actions to Maintain the Balance in the International System

For Quincy Wright's "balance of forces" perspective, where public opinion at the "within states" level is also seen as important, the idea of nonviolence as "war without weapons,"(Boserup and Mack, 1975) based on Gene Sharp's functional interpretation of nonviolence, (Sharp, 1973) becomes appropriate for maintaining and adjusting the balance of forces. Sharp's model of fragile power--as opposed to the monolith model of power assumed in nuclear deterrence--argues that power is fragile because the balance of social forces that maintain it can be changed by concerted, group nonviolent action. Wright similarly assumed peace involved a dynamic balance between various social, economic, political and technological forces, although he placed more emphasis on the international system level of analysis, and Sharp focused more on the community level of analysis.

(c) Structural Nonviolence

Galtung's structural view added the idea that certain structures, both in the international system and in the community, can be either violent or nonviolent, and that changing such structures was a fundamental task for peace research. Nonviolence under this rubric expands beyond Gene Sharp's original conception, as Sharp himself did in his study of social power and political freedom, (1980) to include not only group actions, but also the social, economic and political structures within which they occur. For example, the international system, which prior to Galtung's theory had been viewed by most peace researchers as a positive contribution to peace, was the focus of intense criticism from peace researchers after the theory was published in 1969. Previously it had been seen as evidence of increased cooperation between states, but after 1969 it was redefined as an oppressive, violent, macro structure that caused the deaths of millions of people per year through the starvation and inequalities it caused. For example, even though there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, millions die from starvation every year because of the structure of the international economic system. A nonviolent international (or domestic) economic system would ensure that no one would starve as long as there was enough food in the world (or country) to feed them.

(d) Feminist Nonviolence--on Macro and Micro Levels

The feminist perspective further extended the concept of nonviolence, in keeping with its extension of the concept of peace, to include nonviolent relationships and structures on all levels of human society, both macro and micro. Feminist nonviolence is not limited to the behavior of states or the structure of the international system; it includes nonviolent behavior in the community and the home, and nonviolent political, economic and social structures at all levels of society. The feminist critique of patriarchy provides a good illustration of the extension of the idea of nonviolence to include all levels and institutions of society. Patriarchy is seen as a pervasive violent structure that acts against women in all of society's major institutions--including marriage, business institutions, churches, community organizations, and even peace movements. Feminist nonviolence also involves peaceful behavior between individuals, as well as between states.

(e) Holistic Gaia Peace and Nonviolence

The Gaia Peace view of nonviolence is a natural extension of the original feminist position. Indeed, many feminists (following Rachel Carson's lead) have expanded their original ideas into ecofeminism, where a peaceful relationship with the environment is seen as paramount, embodying, as it does, the central feminist principle of "power with" rather than "power over." This view of nonviolence includes nonviolent actions at every level, nonviolent structures at every level, and nonviolent processes and relationships between all living beings. Nonviolence of this sort is clearly visible in the West, where environmentalism, vegetarianism, and animal welfare issues are becoming increasingly popular.

(f) Holistic Inner and Outer Peace and Nonviolence

Holistic definitions of nonviolence have of course been present in the Western literature for a considerable time, with Eastern traditions in general, and Gandhi in particular, having made the greatest contribution to our understanding of this spiritually-based type of nonviolence. The distinction between nonviolent action as a technique of struggle versus nonviolence as a philosophy and way of life has provided the basis for discussing nonviolence in the West, thanks to the work of Gene Sharp in the West and Mahatma Gandhi in the East and their respective perspectives. Whereas Sharp has stressed the functionality of nonviolent action and its value as a technique for waging conflicts--a technique he believes to be superior in pragmatic terms to violence--the Gandhian nonviolence as a way of life school has always adopted a deeper view of nonviolence, based on a centuries-old Eastern tradition that stresses an inner, spiritual peace component

(g) Gandhi's Spiritually-Based Nonviolence: Nonviolence as a Philosophy of Life: A Link Between Inner and Outer Forms of Peace

One of Mahatma Gandhi's most important statements was that "the means are as important as the ends." This is a central part of using nonviolence as part of a whole philosophy of life, rather than as just a temporary tactic. There have been various practitioners of nonviolence as a philosophy of life, including Gandhi, and before him Leo Tolstoy in Russia and Henry David Thoreau in the United States, as well as after him Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez in the United States. What distinguishes all of these people--besides the fact that they each influenced those who came after them in the use of nonviolence--is that their use of nonviolence as a philosophy of life was grounded in deep spiritual principles and practices. In short, all of these people tried to live a life based on these spiritual principles, including the idea that how we live our lives everyday is as important as the ends or goals that we seek via these means. In a nonviolent struggle, one therefore has the goal of not dehumanizing one's opponent and also trying to not let one's opponent dehumanize oneself, since it is this dehumanization which is part of the process that people go through before justifying using violence against other human beings in the world.

Gandhi never took action in the world until he had first meditated and asked for inner guidance on what to do. When Gandhi's movement also became violent, he called off further action until people could be adequately trained in nonviolence. Gandhi did not see nonviolence as passive, but rather as active struggle against unjust laws or policies. Gandhi also believed that one should not oppose all laws, only the unjust ones. Gandhi had five stages in his nonviolent struggle, as noted below, and believed that one must exhaust all possibilities of each stage before going on to the next stage.

Gandhi's Five Stages on a Nonviolent Struggle

Stage 1: Utilization of All Regular Constitutional Machinery

In this first stage, the existing legal constitutional machinery is used to try to deal with the conflict within the system and achieve a satisfactory resolution.

Stage II. Agitation Stage

If stage one was fruitless, a stage of agitation is undertaken to heighten the awareness and educate the people as to what the conflict is all about. In a totalitarian society, the network of communication that is established to implement this phase is built outside the normal channels, and is thus more difficult, since it must be undertaken in secret.

Stage III: Ultimatum Stage

This stage involves the presentation to the establishment of a document listing the people's needs and stating that continued opposition would produce some sort of direct action. If, however, this document fails to produce a favorable response, then members of the movement begin their preparation for direct action.

Stage IV: Self-Purification Stage

This stage is used by those preparing for nonviolent action to develop ahisma (the spirit of harmlessness), which is seen as a prerequisite to action that is untainted with self-interest. During this time members question their inner strength, noting if they have enough self-respect to command the respect of the opposition. The ability of each member to avoid the pitfall of
reducing their opponent to an "enemy," thereby dehumanizing them and allowing violence to occur as a result, is of the highest importance.

Stage V: Direct Action Stage

In this fifth stage, after exhausting all regular constitutional machinery, heightening the awareness of the population at large about the issue, and undertaking intensive soul searching and inner preparedness, nonviolent action is undertaken. This action can take many forms, including economic boycotts, sit-down strikes, non-payment of taxes, mass resignations from public office, and deliberate and organized disobedience to certain laws that are considered unjust. Gandhi, relying heavily on his opponents' lack of preparation, felt that some combination of these methods, coupled with sympathy from within the ranks of the authority being challenged, could open channels for discussion. On the other hand, if resistance continued, the end result could be the complete collapse of the government's power, shifting power to the Satyagrahis, who could then constitute a new government.

(h) Relevance of Gandhi Today

Having explored Gandhi's philosophy and practice of nonviolence above, as he used it against the British first in South Africa, and then in India, an interesting question is: what relevance do Gandhi's ideas have for today? The first obvious answer is that with the destructive potential of nuclear weapons today, the world can no longer afford to solve its conflicts via violence and weapons of mass destruction--if we want a future for ourselves, our children, and the earth. Gandhi was the first person to take ideas of nonviolence and apply them in a mass movement for social and political change, that showed that a party to a conflict can win via nonviolent means against a much stronger party, 'if' the former can appeal to the moral conscience of their opponent, and the world, and convince them that they have a just cause which deserves to be listened to and addressed in a constructive manner. Certainly the world can use such an approach today. Being willing to listen to inner spiritual guidance, and then to undergo purification (to be sure one's motives are pure) before embarking on political action in the world are other characteristics of spiritually-based nonviolence, which distinguish it from both temporary uses of nonviolence for functional purposes, and from violent efforts at social-political change. Such spiritually based nonviolence carries a much bigger moral authority and influence because it is not undertaken for personal power or ego reasons, and because it does not dehumanize one's opponent, which is a necessary step before people can justify killing other human beings in the world. All of these values, if adopted by the world's different peoples, cultures, and religions today would do much to create a more peaceful world in the 21st century. It is also significant that religious leaders of many of the world's religions would agree today that when violent actions are undertaken in the name of religion, the party concerned is not being true to the spirit or the letter of that religion. (Certainly religious cults today or fundamentalist religious factions that advocate and engage in violence against others with different perspectives than their own are not being true to the spirit of the original founders of their professed religions.)

4. SUMMARY OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INNER AND OUTER PEACE

While various aspects of inner and outer peace have been explored in this paper (especially outer peace, which is a more developed concept in Western peace research), it is also useful to ask (and to summarize) what the possible linkages or bridges are between inner and outer peace in our lives. At least two suggestions have been made in this paper. First, in the section on "Mythology," it was noted by Joseph Campbell and Jean Houston that the myths and archetypal hero figures of different cultures can provide road maps for individuals showing how their everyday life in the world can be linked to the inner life of the spirit. Likewise, in the section on "Nonviolence", it was noted that spiritually-based nonviolence, such as that practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King (i.e., nonviolence which is part of a whole philosophical way of life, based on spiritual principles, as opposed to nonviolence as a temporary tactic when it is expedient) provides a model of how one can turn to inner spiritual guidance--through meditation or prayer--to seek inner help and confirmation before embarking on action for social justice and social change in the world. Combining these two suggestions, we can thus see two distinct ways to connect inner and outer peace--one (mythology) leading from outer to inner peace, and the other (spiritually-based nonviolence) leading from inner to outer peace in the world. This is not meant to suggest that mythology and nonviolence are the only ways to connect or bridge inner and outer peace, but certainly they are two important ways to do so.

Two other fundamental linkages between inner and outer peace are obviously prayer and meditation. Indeed, prayer is often seen as asking God or spirit for something, i.e., thus going from our outer lives in the world to our inner life of the spirit, while meditation is listening to God or spirit for an answer, i.e., thus going from our inner life to our outer life in the world. While this sounds like a clear cut distinction, in reality the two things--prayer and meditation--are often interconnected and part of a larger whole. In any case, both prayer and meditation are important dimensions of the inner-outer peace relationship, as noted in the above diagram.

PART IV: AN AGENDA FOR FUTURE PEACE RESEARCH--BASED ON THE NEED TO FOCUS ON BOTH INNER AND OUTER ASPECTS OF PEACE

A. TENDENCIES OF EASTERN AND WESTERN RELIGIONS AND CULTURES TO FOCUS MORE ON EITHER INNER OR OUTER ASPECTS OF PEACE RESPECTIVELY

1. Eastern Religions and Cultures (Hinduism, Buddhism): Tendency to Focus More on Inner Peace as a Precondition for World Peace

In summary it can be said that Eastern religions and cultures, including Hinduism and Buddhism, have a 'tendency'--because of their focus more (though not exclusively) on the esoteric aspects of their religions--to focus more on inner peace as a precondition for peace in the world. They also have less of a tradition historically of concern with social justice questions, which are so important to the West. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the link between inner peace (based on a spiritual life) and outer peace (or action in the world for social justice) was most clearly made for the first time in the world in any collective societal way by Mahatma Gandhi, who was born in India and came out of a Hindu background, but who also studied in England.

2. Western Religions & Cultures (Judaism, Christianity, & Islam): Tendency to Focus More on Outer Peace, including Social Justice Questions, as a Precondition for World Peace

Western religions and cultures, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,--have had a tendency--because of their focus more (though not exclusively) on the exoteric aspects of their religions, at least in their everyday activities--to focus more on aspects of outer peace, including social justice questions, as a precondition for peace in the world. There are nonetheless esoteric traditions in the West, which though less dominant, were nonetheless the foundation for the original spiritual enlightenment experienced by the founders of all the world's great religions, including the three dominant Western religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These can take the form of the Kaballah (in Judaism), Gnostic Christianity (in Christianity) and Sufism (in Islam), as examples, although there have always been some mystics in the mainstream forms of all the Western religions as well.

3. World Peace Requires Attention to Both Inner and Outer Peace: It's Not 'Either/Or,' But 'Both/And.' In short, an East-West Dialogue is Necessary

a. If one focuses only on outer peace and creating social justice in the world, but not inner peace, then people's unresolved inner conflicts can be projected out onto the world, creating scapegoating, prejudices, and conflicts, therefore making it difficult to create social justice and peace in the world (the ostensible goal).
b. If one focuses only on inner peace, then social injustices and structural violence in the world, which are not addressed by society and people, will tend to make it difficult for most people to transcend their outer conditions of life, thus making it difficult for them to attain inner peace (the ostensible goal).
c. Clearly there is a dynamic and synergistic relationship between inner and outer peace: by focusing on both aspects of peace, each aspect of peace--i.e., inner or outer--increases the probability that more people will also be able to attain the other aspect of peace.

B. AN AGENDA FOR FUTURE PEACE RESEARCH--BASED ON THE NEED TO FOCUS ON BOTH INNER AND OUTER ASPECTS OF PEACE

1. Peace Research Must Focus on Both Inner and Outer Peace and the Dynamic Interrelationships Between Them

Western peace research has hitherto defined peace in terms of particular aspects of outer peace, such as Wright's conception of peace as a balance of macro forces in the International system or the Galtung formulation of peace in terms of negative peace (absence of physical violence) and positive peace (absence of structural violence). The evolution of the outer peace concept in Western peace research has contributed much to our understanding of peace and conflict issues, but it is important to recognize that Western peace research has concentrated its effort almost entirely on outer peace and has not to date included the spiritual inner peace dimension in its philosophical framework. This is not to say that religion or religious institutions have not been considered by peace researchers, as the work of Sorokin (1931) and Richardson (1960 ii), two of the founding fathers of Western peace research, demonstrates. But when peace researchers have focused on religious institutions or the values associated with particular religious traditions, their analyses have stressed behavior in the outer material world, in much the same way that particular economic institutions or political institutions and their associated values have been considered. What has been lacking in Western peace research is an exploration of inner peace and its relationship to outer peace.
We propose that the concept of peace used in Western peace research should now be extended to include both inner and outer dimensions of peace and their interrelationships. This will require a transformation in the dominant sensate or material worldview associated with mainstream Western peace research to a worldview that in Sorokin's terms includes both truth of sense and truth of faith.

2. Peace Research Must Elaborate on the Different Dimensions and Levels of Inner Peace, Just as It Has Done for Outer Peace

In Western peace research, models of outer peace now include many interpretations and levels, whereas inner peace is just beginning to be included and is not differentiated in terms of different levels of consciousness. Thus in Figure 4, five distinct perceptions of outer peace are elaborated: peace as absence of war, peace as balance of forces, peace as negative peace plus positive peace, feminist peace paradigms and holistic peace. Each of these five models of peace is considered against seven levels of analysis in the outer world, namely; individual, community, within states, between states, international, global and environmental. The inner peace concept is far less developed in peace research, despite the fact that the world's spiritual traditions have for centuries explored many aspects of inner peace using a variety of different approaches. Western peace research needs to learn from both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions that experientially focus on different levels of consciousness and inner peace. It needs to elaborate different dimensions and levels of inner peace as a necessary component of a holistic inner-outer interpretation of peace.

3. To Explore Inner Peace, Peace Research Must Acknowledge Other Ways of Knowing Besides the Scientific Method (Based on the Five Senses)

To do No. 2 above, Western peace research must go beyond empirical research on, and actions in the world--both based on our five senses, which is one way of knowing, to also acknowledge intuition and direct inner experience as another way of knowing. This will require that Western science acknowledge that there are other ways of knowing besides the five senses-which will create an epistemological challenge for some people. But, as Michael P Richard says, in the introduction to Pitirim Sorokin's book Social and Cultural DynamicsI: (Sorokin, 1957, pp. x-xi) The implications of all this are profound. From the standpoint of epistemology, the most controversial point is that the scientific method of apprehending reality is not the only valid one. Equally valid is the truth of faith: insight, intuition, revelation....The most valid method is what he [Sorokin] calls "integral truth" since it combines reason, faith, and empiricism.
In many ways such an extension of ways of knowing represents a continuation of a methodological trend that has been underway for some time. Whereas much of the early work in peace research was primarily associated with particular disciplines such as political science and economics, scholars such as Wright developed multidisciplinary approaches that included a broad range of perspectives from Anthropology to Zoology. With the broadening of the disciplinary base of peace researchers came interdisciplinary approaches and the application of both analytical and experiential approaches, such as simulations and games. The further expansion of peace research methodologies to include spiritually based methodologies, such as meditation and prayer, should not be taken as a negation of the well established social scientific approaches that have provided the basis for Western peace research, but should rather be seen as an extension of the multimethod philosophy that is associated with interdisciplinary work.

4. Peace Research Must Focus Not Only on What It Wants to Eliminate, But Also on What It Wants to Envision and Create in a Positive Sense--if Peace is to Be Achieved

Up to now, Western peace research has tended to focus on peace as the absence of negative or undesirable things (including war, physical violence, and structural violence, on all levels). Even the concept of "positive peace" has been defined as the absence of structural violence. It is clear that a peaceful world cannot be created only by eliminating negatives: one must also have a clear vision of what one wants to create in a positive sense. These positive attributes of peace include both inner and outer dimensions. The field of Future Studies is a good place to look for some of the positive aspects of creating peace in the world, i.e., outer peace, as well as certain aspects of inner peace. In this regard futurists often quote Fred Polak who said "A civilization without positive images of itself is doomed." Global spiritual traditions are the obvious other place to gain insight into the multileveled different aspects of creating and experiencing inner peace. As peace research adopts a broader inner-outer framework for considering peace, it is likely that insights and experiences from explorations of inner peace will help create a more balanced view of outer peace in which positive peace can become a desirable ideal in its own right, rather than a concept that is defined in terms of the absence of something undesirable.5. Peace Research Must Explore and Include How Cultures Influence People's Perceptions of 'Peace' as Well as How Much People Believe the World Can Be Changed or Not.

In a globally interdependent world, it is critical that peace research include perspectives on peace, and how to create it, from different cultures around the world and that people be open to dialoging with each other on these various perspectives on peace. Peace research must explore how different cultures (and religions), and their underlying values, influence (often unconsciously) how peoples (including peace researchers) from different cultures perceive "peace'--both in the negative sense of what they want to eliminate, as well as in the positive sense of what they want to create, and indeed how culture itself influences how much people believe they can change their conditions of life in the external world or not. For example, Western cultures are much more likely to believe that the external world can be changed by actions in the external world, and therefore to focus their energies in this direction; whereas Eastern cultures may accept the state of the external world more and focus instead on their inner world. In short (while noting the dangers of over generalization) Western cultures have been called "doing cultures" while Eastern cultures have been called "being cultures." Peace may require both of these perspectives in the twenty first century. Insights from the fields of anthropology, intercultural communication, comparative religions, and the ongoing inter-religious dialogue should help in this endeavor.

C. CONCLUSION

This paper has developed the theme that peace requires a dynamic balance between different "opposites" or "extremes," including a balance between both spiritual and material values, as suggested by the work of Sorokin; between exoteric and esoteric forms of the religious experience, as discussed in the first part of the paper; between male and female aspects of divinity, in such a way that our experience of God or Spirit transcends all dualities, including male and female; between inner and outer aspects of peace, in such a way that peace action and research include both an inner component, such as meditation or prayer, and an outer component that deals with action in the world for peace and social justice. We have stressed the need to avoid "either/or" formulations and instead to seek paths that include "both/and" perspectives that include both poles and their dynamic interdependence. In helping the world to find such a balance, as a foundation for peace in the 21st century, the ongoing ecumenical dialogue and sharing of religious practices and concerns between Eastern and Western spiritual and religious traditions will play a critical role.
* Note: This is a slightly revised version of an earlier (5/95) article published as part of the Proceedings of the Second UNESCO-Sponsored Conference on "THE CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS TO THE CULTURE OF PEACE," Barcelona, Spain, Dec. 12-18, 1994.

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2016 JUNE Canada Military News-Can world societies change from evil selfish and cruel to decency kind and caring – war or peace- it’s time the planet decides OUTSIDE OF #UnitedNations creepy imho some links and incredible articles of hope articles

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#PopeFrancis

October 30, 2014

5 facts about evolution and religion

By David Masci1 50 comments

Are faith and belief in evolution necessarily at odds? According to Pope Francis, the answer is no. Indeed, the pope recently reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s view that “evolution in nature is not inconsistent” with church teaching on creation, pushing the debate on human origins back into the news.

Although most U.S. Catholics accept the idea of evolution in some form, a substantial percentage of American adults reject the scientific explanation for the origins of human life, and a number of religious groups in the U.S. maintain that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection is not correct because it conflicts with their views of creation.

Here are five facts about evolution and faith:

1 The Roman Catholic Church has long accepted – or at least not objected to – evolutionary theory. Pope Francis is not the first pontiff to publicly affirm that evolution is compatible with church teachings. In 1950, in the encyclical “Humani Generis,” Pope Pius XII said that Catholic teachings on creation could coexist with evolutionary theory. Pope John Paul II went a bit further in 1996, calling evolution “more than a hypothesis.”

2 http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/A minority of Americans fully accept the scientific explanation for the origins of human life. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, 60% of Americans say humans have evolved over time, but only about half of that group (32% of U.S. adults overall) believes that humans and other living things evolved solely due to natural processes, the explanation accepted by the vast majority of scientists. About a quarter of U.S. adults (24%) say that humans and other life evolved, but that this evolution was guided by a supreme being. The same survey found that a third of Americans (33%) reject evolution entirely, saying humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

3 http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/Of all the major religious groups in the U.S., white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to reject evolution. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of white evangelicals say that humans and other living things have always existed in their present form, while roughly one-in-ten white evangelicals (8%) say that humans evolved through natural processes. On the other end of the spectrum are the unaffiliated, a majority of whom (57%) said they believe that life evolved through natural processes.

The rejection of evolution by most evangelicals is largely mirrored by their churches, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which explicitly reject evolutionary theory as being in conflict with what they see as biblical truth.

4 About a quarter of white American Catholics (26%) say that they do not believe in evolution of any kind, despite the church’s acceptance of it. The share of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. who reject evolution and say that humans have always existed in their present form is even higher (31%).

5 A series of court decisions prohibit the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in public schools. In spite of efforts in many American states and localities to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools or to teach alternatives to evolution, courts in recent decades have consistently rejected public school curricula that veer away from evolutionary theory. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring public school students to learn both evolution and creation science violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the establishment of religion.

Category: 5 Facts

Topics: Catholics and Catholicism, Evolution, Religion and Society

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/30/5-facts-about-evolution-and-religion/

AND... U.S.A.

Public’s Views on Human Evolution

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/12/30/publics-views-on-human-evolution/

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United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Educating for a Sustainable Future

A Transdisciplinary Vision for Concerted Action

EPD-97/CONF.401/CLD.1.
November 1997. Original: English. Also available in French and Spanish.
Other language versions are foreseen.

PREFACE BY THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF UNESCO
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
I. WHAT IS ‘SUSTAINABILITY’?

BEHIND THE HEADLINES

EDUCATION: THE FORCE OF THE FUTURE

II. PUBLIC AWARENESS AND UNDERSTANDING: THE FUEL FOR CHANGE

III. REORIENTING EDUCATION TO SUPPORT SUSTAINABILITY

IV. SHIFTING TO SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLES: CHANGING CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION PATTERNS

V. ETHICS, CULTURE AND EQUITY: SUSTAINABILITY AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE

SOME ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABILITY

VI. MOBILIZING FOR ACTION

BOX 1: WORK PROGRAMME OF THE CSD – EDUCATION, PUBLIC AWARENESS AND TRAINING
BOX 2: EARTH SUMMIT + 5

PREFACE BY THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF UNESCO

Moving towards the goal of sustainability requires fundamental changes in human attitudes and behaviour. Progress in this direction is thus critically dependent on education and public awareness. The concept of sustainable development – as this document suggests – is not a simple one, and there is no road map to prescribe how we should proceed. Yet time is short, and we are called upon to act without delay. We must move ahead now, in a spirit of exploration and experimentation and with the broadest possible range of partners, so as to contribute through education to correcting trends that place in jeopardy our common future.
The International Conference on Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability, organized by UNESCO and the Government of Greece, is designed to highlight the role of education and public awareness for sustainability, to consider the important contribution of environmental education in this context, and to mobilize action to this end. The Conference follows on from major meetings relevant to education for sustainable development held in Tbilisi in 1977, Jomtien in 1990, Toronto in 1992 and Istanbul in 1993 as well the series of United Nations conferences beginning in 1992 with Rio (environment and development) and followed in 1994 by Cairo (population), in 1995 by Copenhagen (social development) and Beijing (women), and in 1996 by Istanbul (human settlements). It is also being held at the end of a year that, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Tbilisi Conference and the fifth anniversary of the Rio Conference, has seen the organization of numerous national and regional events (many with the backing of UNESCO), providing a wealth of information on the situation in countries around the world.
Twenty years after Tbilisi and five years after Rio and ECO-ED, who would deny that too little has been achieved? As I stated at the special session of the General Assembly held in June 1997 to review progress five years after UNCED: “the key to sustainable, self-reliant development is education – education that reaches out to all members of society through new modalities and new technologies in order to provide genuine lifelong learning opportunities for all. We must be ready, in all countries, to reshape education so as to promote attitudes and behaviour conducive to a culture of sustainability”. In keeping with its mandate and its designation as Task Manager for Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, UNESCO has a special responsibility with regard to education and public awareness for sustainability. In 1994 it launched an international initiative Educating for a Sustainable Future – known as the EPD Project – to serve as a stimulus for transdisciplinary reflection and action. EPD is the main mechanism through which UNESCO responds to the recommendations of all the United Nations conferences concerning education, information and public awareness related to sustainable development.
It is in its function as Task Manager for Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 that UNESCO has prepared the Thessaloniki Conference, acting as mobilizer and facilitator to bring together representatives of the United Nations system, governments, NGOs, experts and other major interested parties. The main framework for action is the special work programme on education, public awareness and training initiated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) at its fourth session in 1996 and carried forward in its second five-year programme of work. In addressing the priorities identified by the Commission, the Thessaloniki Conference is intended to provide UNESCO with elements to prepare an expanded version of the special work programme for consideration by the CSD at its sixth session in 1998.
In preparing the present document, UNESCO has drawn on a wide variety of sources: the results of the many national and regional conferences mentioned above; contributions from the United Nations system and key institutional partners such as the World Bank, OECD and the World Conservation Union (IUCN); the views of experts in all branches of education and specialists from other relevant disciplines; and inputs from the whole range of UNESCO’s programmes in education, science, culture and communication. A draft compiled from these diverse materials was reviewed by some thirty-five experts, whose extensive comments were integrated into the final version.
This document – the result of a collective ‘brainstorming’ – is to be seen as a beginning of a process not a conclusion, as an attempt to stimulate discussion not to direct it, as an action-oriented paper not a blueprint for action. It is at once the main working document for the Thessaloniki Conference and a response to the work programme of the CSD, which “calls upon UNESCO to refine the concept and key messages of education for sustainable development, taking into account the experience of environmental education and integrating considerations pertaining to population, health, economics, social and human development, and peace and security”. Its intended public is not mainly those professionally concerned with education for sustainable development – many of whom will be familiar with the concepts and issues presented – but rather the multiple partners and broad community of stakeholders in the educational enterprise. It is for this reason that the document has been made available on the Internet in its English, French and Spanish versions and why a special web site is being developed by UNESCO to provide a knowledge management system for Chapter 36, which will include a registry of innovative practices in the field.
Promoting sustainable development, whose close interrelationship with democracy and peace is increasingly recognized, is one of the key challenges of our time; and education in all its forms is vital to addressing it successfully. UNESCO believes in education as the force of the future – which cannot be other than a sustainable future – and is committed to maximizing its efforts and multiplying its partnerships for the development and deployment of this force in the cause of peace and human betterment.

Federico Mayor

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This document was prepared by UNESCO in its function as Task Manager for Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 to serve two purposes. First, it is the main background paper for the International Conference on Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 8 to 12 December 1997. Second, it is a contribution by UNESCO to the implementation of the special work programme on Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) which “calls upon UNESCO to refine the concept and key messages of education for sustainable development”.
The document is based on a wide variety of source materials, background papers prepared by specialists, and a preparatory meeting held in September 1997. It is to be considered the beginning of a process of discussion and debate, not a conclusion. Among the international institutions contributing to its preparation were: FAO, IUCN, OECD, UN-DESA, UNDP, UNEP, UNFPA, WHO and the World Bank, in addition to the Greek Organizing Committee for the Thessaloniki Conference.
Beginning with a preface by the Director-General of UNESCO, the paper addresses priority issues reflected in the work programme of the CSD. Part I (“What is ‘Sustainability’?”) examines the emerging vision of ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’, including consideration of its inter-related components such as population, poverty, environmental degradation, democracy, human rights and peace, ‘development’, and interdependence. The role of education seen in this perspective is discussed, no longer as an end in itself but as a key instrument for achieving sustainability in the future.
Part II (‘Public Awareness and Understanding: the Fuel for Change’) takes up the topic of public awareness and understanding as indispensable to support change towards sustainable development. Problems of vested interests, the difficulties of communicating science, the inherent complexity of the issues, and the tendency of the media to focus on extreme positions and controversies are considered. It is suggested that the most effective communication strategy for building awareness and understanding is to focus on problems which the public experiences in everyday life.
Part III (‘Reorienting Education to Support Sustainability’) emphasizes the importance of the concept of lifelong learning in a rapidly changing world, as well as the need to give high priority to basic education in the developing world. The need to reform curricula and educational policies and structures at all levels is also discussed, with an example given of recent reform of the curriculum in Toronto, Canada. The importance of teacher education and training as well as higher education in general is stressed. The valuable experience and role of environmental education is reviewed, and the need to develop interdisciplinary studies and programmes at all levels emphasized.
Part IV (‘Shifting to Sustainable Lifestyles: Changing Consumption and Production Patterns’) notes that the effectiveness of awareness raising and education for sustainable development must ultimately be measured by the degree to which they change the attitudes and behaviors of people as both consumers and citizens. Changes in lifestyles as reflected in individual behavior, households and at community level must take place. Particular emphasis is given to wasteful consumption patterns.
Part V (‘Ethics, Culture, Equity: Sustainability as a Moral Imperative’) evokes some ethical principles of sustainability such as the ‘ethic of time’, complexity as an ethical issue, the ethical link of past, present and future. The overriding importance of culture in achieving sustainability is discussed, and a parallel drawn between the loss of biological diversity and the loss of cultural diversity. The role of education in communicating the moral imperative of sustainability is emphasized.
Finally, Part VI (‘Mobilizing for Action’) highlights the international framework for action and the new vision of education, public awareness and training which have emerged from the series of UN conferences beginning with Rio in 1992. The umbrella role of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, the work programme of the CSD adopted in 1996, and the reaffirmation of the importance of education by the Earth Summit + 5 are explained. Information is provided about the preparation, by UNESCO as Task Manager, of an expanded work programme for consideration by the CSD in 1998, working together with the UN system and other key international partners. Action at the national and local levels is discussed as the most effective and appropriate way to bring about the required change.
This document is obviously far from complete in terms of all that could be said on this vast subject. It is therefore intended as the beginning of a process and debate not a conclusion, as an attempt to stimulate discussion not direct it, and as an action-oriented paper not an action plan. This first attempt to articulate the key messages of education for sustainable development and to consider its many components will need to be refined over time, with the widest possible discussion and participation to which UNESCO is committed.
In embracing the broad scope of Chapter 36 and in addressing the priorities laid out in the CSD work programme, there are naturally some areas which are more advanced than others. It is for this reason that UNESCO anticipates that strategy papers on the different topics dealt with in this paper and for different regions of the world will need to be prepared in the future.

INTRODUCTION

1. This paper was prepared by UNESCO in its function as Task Manager for Chapter 36 of Agenda 21. It serves two purposes:

It is the main background paper for the International Conference on Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability, to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 8 to 12 December 1997. As such, the document is intended to provide stimulus to discussion at the conference, rather than as a document for discussion per se.
It is a contribution by UNESCO as Task Manager to the implementation of the special work programme on Chapter 36 of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development which “calls upon UNESCO to refine the concept and key messages of education for sustainable development, taking into account the experience of environmental education and integrating considerations pertaining to population, health, economics, social and human development, and peace and security”.

2. UNESCO as Task Manager for the CSD Work Programme is preparing an expanded version for consideration by the Commission at its sixth session in April 1998. The Thessaloniki Conference has been designed to provide UNESCO with elements for that task as well as to mobilize action at international, national and local levels.
3. The document has been written based on a wide variety of source materials, including United Nations publications, documents and reports, studies issued by non-governmental organizations and academic institutions and accounts published in newspapers and journals. In addition, specialists on different aspects of sustainable development were invited to prepare background papers on selected aspects of the conference programme for use in the preparation of conference documentation. As a further step to prepare the conference, a panel consisting of UNESCO staff and outside experts was convened at UNESCO Headquarters on 22 and 23 September 1997 to discuss the organization and objectives of the conference and the nature of the documentation required. Account was also taken of the results of the numerous recent national, regional and international events on the subject.
4. An earlier draft of this document was circulated to individual experts both within and outside UNESCO as well as to numerous partner organizations and all sectors of the UNESCO secretariat. The high interest in the conference and the subject matter it addresses is demonstrated by the more than thirty-five responses received. Many of them were extremely detailed, ranging from five to thirty or more pages. All sectors of UNESCO also contributed to the revision of the paper through written responses and/or oral discussions. The paper has been extensively revised in the light of the suggestions, comments and criticisms received. Among the international institutions contributing to this document were: FAO, IUCN, OECD, UN-DESA, UNDP, UNEP, UNFPA, WHO and the World Bank, in addition to the Greek Organizing Committee for the Thessaloniki Conference.
5. The scope of the paper reflects the extremely broad scope of Chapter 36, which includes formal education at all levels, vocational training in all its forms, non-formal and informal education and communication of information to the general public about sustainable development. Chapter 36 also emphasizes that basic education, as defined by the World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, 1990), is essential to education for sustainable development and must remain a priority for many countries of the world, linked as it is to their overall efforts to combat poverty and promote economic and social development.
6. This paper is obviously far from complete in terms of all that could be said on this vast subject. It is for this reason that in the preface the Director-General has characterized this work as the ‘beginning of a process not a conclusion’. This first attempt to articulate the key messages of education for sustainable development and to consider its many components will need to be refined over time, with the widest possible discussion and participation to which UNESCO is committed. It is for this reason that the paper has deliberately not been targeted to those already engaged in this field. For these relatively few persons, this document will no doubt appear to ‘repeat what we already know’. But for others engaged in one aspect or another of this broad topic – teachers, government officials, NGOs – or for those not directly connected to education but who are nevertheless prime stakeholders in education for sustainable development – business and industry, financial institutions, the academic community – this paper should open up the broader perspective offered by the concept of education for sustainability. It should also make clear that well-established disciplines such as environmental education and population education have a vital role to play while still maintaining their distinct identities.
7. In embracing the broad scope of Chapter 36 and in addressing the priorities laid out in the CSD work programme, there are naturally some areas which are more advanced than others. For example, education for sustainable consumption is still in its infancy. It is for this reason that UNESCO anticipates that, with this document as a start, and building on the results of Thessaloniki as well as those of the many very important national and regional meetings held recently, strategy papers on the different topics dealt with in this paper and for different regions of the world will need to be prepared in the future. UNESCO as Task Manager will continue to facilitate this process.

I. WHAT IS ‘SUSTAINABILITY’?

8. Most people in the world today have an immediate and intuitive sense of the urgent need to build a sustainable future. They may not be able to provide a precise definition of ’sustainable development’ or ’sustainability’ – indeed, even experts debate that issue – but they clearly sense the danger and the need for informed action. They smell the problem in the air; they taste it in their water; they see it in more congested living spaces and blemished landscapes; they read about it in the newspapers and hear about it on radio and television. The stories that carry the message may be about pollution alerts or the bans on driving and closed beaches that result from them, or about hunger and famine, growing health problems such as asthma and allergies, unsafe drinking water, ’greenhouses gases’ and the threat of global warming and rising ocean levels, the destruction of the world’s forests and the expansion of its deserts, the disappearance of species, the large-scale death of fish and birds caused by oil spills and pollution, or about forest fires, floods, dust storms, droughts and other so-called ’natural’ disasters. Or they may be about many other matters suggesting increasing levels of distress and desperation: inexplicable violence and outbreaks of war, mass migrations, the rise of intolerance and racism, the denial of democratic freedoms, corrupt practices that enrich the few at the expense of the many, rising prices and resource scarcities, growing unemployment and slipping standards of living for many of the world’s inhabitants.
9. Even banal accounts of everyday life cause one to pause and reflect: e.g. the need for poor women in developing countries to spend many hours each day searching for wood and water or the plight of the commuter in the developed world whose travel to work is now measured in hours rather than minutes. Are these random events and developments, unrelated to one another, or are they parts of a pattern? Both opinion polls and casual conversations suggest that people are increasingly beginning to sense that something has gone seriously wrong, that there must be some connection among the growing difficulties they encounter and read about, even if they cannot provide an adequate explanation of exactly what it is or how it has developed.
10. For countless millions of people, it is not simply a matter of speculating about causalities; they are already feeling the painful consequences of changing conditions in their daily lives. The situation is most severe for the poor and deprived, but increasingly even the more fortunate are experiencing a growing sense of anxiety and unease, of pending problems and unresolved difficulties. They perceive, for example, that the opportunities open to their children are shrinking even as the problems and challenges facing their societies continue to grow. Providing employment for the young and social security for the old is a growing challenge as populations expand in the developing world and age in the industrialized countries. Yet, if the future looks increasingly problematic, there is no retreating into the past, into time-honoured practices and values, for these, too, have been irreversibly altered by the profound transformation of society in the wake of the industrial and post-industrial revolutions. Attempts to do so usually end in frustration and sometimes in violence and nihilism.

BEHIND THE HEADLINES

11. What lies behind these newspaper headlines and the rising concerns and problems of people around the world? There is evidently no single or easy answer, but it is not difficult to identify some important and interrelated contributing factors:

the rapid growth of the world’s population and its changing distribution;
the persistence of widespread poverty;
the growing pressures placed on the environment by the worldwide spread of industry and the use of new and more intensive forms of agriculture;
the continuing denial of democracy, violations of human rights and the rise of ethnic and religous conflicts and violence, gender inequity; and
the very notion of ‘development’ itself, what it has come to mean and how it is measured.

12. These factors are probably more accurately regarded as symptoms rather than as causes as they themselves are the consequences of thinking, values and practices in social, economic and political affairs that have put the world on an ‘unsustainable’ path. It is, therefore, not only necessary to deal with the problems discussed below, but even more essential to get our thinking right: to see the interrelations among these problems and recognize the fundamental need to develop a new perspective rooted in the values of sustainability. It is this need which makes education the key to creating a sustainable future.

Population

13. In 1950, the estimated population of the planet was 2.5 billion. By the year 2000, it is projected to grow to more than six billion and by the year 2025 to more than eight billion. Population pressures are undeniably a factor in the degradation of environments. Moreover, population pressures are increasing most rapidly in the regions of the world where resources for coping with the requirements and demands of growing numbers are most limited. Between 1990 and 1995, an estimated 94% of total population growth occurred in the less developed regions and only 6% in the more developed regions. While fertility rates are declining in all major regions of the world in response to improved access to education, health and social services, especially by women, rapid population growth is projected to continue well into the 21st century. By even the most optimistic scenarios, the world’s population will nearly double before it stabilizes. The predictable consequences of such growing population pressures, especially in already densely populated and poor countries, include rapid urbanization, possible further reductions in living standards, lower per capita investments in education and health and increased environmental distress and degradation. Less predictable outcomes might include a rise in violence or even war, large-scale migrations and escalating poverty and famine. While many of the worst consequences could possibly be avoided by early preventive action, the record of past decades provides little support for optimism or complacency in this regard.

Poverty

14. Poverty is, in part, a consequence of the present pattern of population growth as well as a serious threat to both human dignity and sustainable development. Over a billion people, about a third of the total population of the developing countries, are desperately poor, struggling to survive on less than a dollar a day. Hundreds of millions more live on the threshold of poverty and face the constant risk of sinking below it. People unable to care for themselves can be excused for failing to care for their environment. Necessity drives them to use, and eventually overuse, all the resources at hand: land, water, wood, vegetation and, indeed, anything that can help them to meet their vital needs. Poverty also makes it difficult to mobilize people to work together for common goals, be they healthful environments, food security, jobs or other aspects of sustainable development. Poverty makes the delivery of education and health services more difficult and spurs population growth. Poverty also contributes to much of violence and war which destroy lives and undermine social and economic progress.
15. The solution to poverty must be found not only through economic measures, but also through political and social reforms, as poverty is caused not only by natural scarcities, but also by domination, exploitation and exclusion. Nor can the answer to poverty be sought only through increased production. What is produced, and the employment generated in producing it, must also be more equitably shared. At present, one quarter of the world’s population consumes three-quarters of the world’s natural resources. For particular resources, petroleum for example, the disparities are even greater: the average consumption of a North American is fifteen times greater than that of an Indian. At the extremes of wealth and deprivation – where the comparison is between individuals, not countries – the disparities defy belief: by one estimate, for example, the wealth of the world’s richest 359 individuals equals the annual income of the poorest 2.4 billion people, almost 40% of humankind. Poverty reduction is, at once, an essential goal and indispensable condition for sustainable development.

Environmental degradation

16. The rise of a worldwide industrial civilization during the past century and the parallel development of more intensive forms of agriculture – based on the use of chemical fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides – needed to feed and clothe a rapidly expanding population has placed unprecedented pressures and stresses on the world’s ecosystems. The problems and dangers are manifold. In industrialized regions, the combustion of fossil fuels, the ‘life blood’ of modern civilization, is resulting in an acidification of soils which is having a destructive impact on plants, forests and aquatic life in lakes and rivers. The use of fossil fuels is also responsible for the buildup of ‘greenhouse gases’ that are a key factor in global warming which is changing weather patterns and raising ocean levels around the world. Even a modest rise in the Earth’s average temperature, of say two to three degrees, would result in the inundation of vast amounts of fertile low-lying coastal lands and the disappearance of many islands. A growing dependence on chemicals, many of which have never existed in nature, is having a damaging impact on plants and animals, leading even to the extinction of certain species and thus to a reduction in the world’s biodiversity. Chemicals are affecting the stratosphere, depleting ozone and exposing the Earth’s surface to higher levels of ultra-violet radiation known to cause skin and other cancers. In the developing countries, land degradation presents perhaps the most immediate and urgent problem. As agricultural land per capita diminishes as a result of population growth and urbanization, it becomes essential to preserve the productivity of every available acre.
17. Yet, perhaps the greatest environmental danger lies in problems that are little discussed, even among scientists, such as the impact of human activities on natural ‘nutrient cycles’ required to produce and balance elements essential to life: including carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. While the long-term affects of anthropogenic activities on the environment are either unknown or poorly understood, it is abundantly clear that delicate balances are being disturbed and disrupted. Some of these changes – e.g. the extinction of species – are already irreversible. Other processes may soon pass the point of no return, if action is not taken promptly. Yet, measures to protect the environment are resisted by those who insist that the needs of development – rising living standards for growing numbers – must take precedence over ecological concerns. The challenge of sustainability involves reconciling and adjudicating conflicting claims and moving towards a development which is environmentally sound.

Democracy, human rights and peace

18. It is not only the harm that human beings are doing to nature, but also the injury that they are inflicting upon one another that is at the root of many of the world’s problems. While democracy has made impressive progress in many regions, it has faltered in others. Even many ‘democratic countries’, however, do not systematically practice democracy. The votes of the citizens may be counted, but the citizens themselves don’t count for much in the operation of society. Inequalities dominate in all sphere of life: in the sharing of wealth, jobs, opportunities and social services, gender discrimination, and, of course, political influence and power. Underdevelopment and poverty are, at once, a cause and a consequence of arbitrary and undemocratic rule. The State, whose duty it is to protect the rule of law, is often the first to disregard it. Human rights are violated and ethnic and religious tensions exacerbated for political or personal gain. The bitter experience of the last decades has been that the failure of development efforts has often been followed by outbreaks of violence and wars between cultural, ethnic and religious communities. Since 1990, more than nine out of ten wars have broken out within countries rather than between them and more than nine out ten casualties have been civilians rather than soldiers. Without peace, there can be no development in any meaningful sense of the term.

Development

19. ‘Development’ itself – what it means and how it is measured – is also an important part of the problem. Standard measures of development, such as gross national product, equate ‘development’ with growth in production and consumption of goods and services. While such measures take into account investment in the means of production, such as the digging of copper mines or the drilling of oil wells, they fail to account for the use and eventual exhaustion of the precious capital represented by the world’s endowment of natural resources. Nor, until quite recently, have economists adequately recognized that the capabilities embodied in women and men through education, experience and training are, in fact, the most essential ‘means of production’.
20. Many economic measures fail on other scores as well. While they carefully account for productive outcomes, they treat the emission of smoke, gases and other pollutants, not as costs, but simply as ‘externalities’. This is so because society as a whole, not the polluter, bears the cost and burden of coping with the problem. National accounts also fail to reflect what is done out of love or duty rather than for profit, thereby deeply discounting the indispensable work that women have always done – and continue to do – for their families and in and about their homes. In addition, the focus of economics on the ‘immediate present’ is seriously at odds with the need to consider the long-term well-being of the environment. In addition, while economic costs are viewed as incremental and linear, the impact of economic activity on the environment is cumulative and subject to sudden and possibly irreversible changes. The traditional visions of the economist and the ecologist are thus fundamentally at odds. Fortunately, a search for common understanding is underway.
21. Yet, perhaps the greatest problem arises from the automatic equation of higher levels of production – and by implication, consumption – with ‘development’. Economists, and everyone else as well, recognize that this is at best a half truth. What is produced and, especially what it is used for, is every bit as important as how much of it is turned out. An added dollar of consumption, which doubles the daily income of an impoverished individual, evidently serves a very different purpose than the negligible addition of a dollar of purchasing power to the income of a millionaire. Yet, the automatic equation of a single technical measure of ‘development’, usually GNP, with the society’s overall progress and well-being is pervasive. It is part of an overall 20th century mind set that means are more important than ends, levels of activity more important than the purposes served.
22. Increasingly, developing nations set themselves the goal of ’catching up’ with Europe, Japan or the United States in levels of GNP per capita. It is necessary, however, to reflect that for all countries to achieve the current level of production of the most industrialized countries, worldwide consumption of natural resources would have to increase three-fold. Comparable increases would occur in the emission of pollutants and other perverse effects of production, assuming the newly industrializing countries make the same investment in controlling emissions as is presently done in the most industrialized countries. It may, however, be unrealistic to expect them to do so while urgent social needs are still unmet. The challenge is to find means and measures that assist the developing countries to meet the basic needs of their people without inflicting irreversible damage on their environment.
23. In pursuing this objective, measures of development such as the UNDP’s Human Development Index, which seeks to take account of the many dimensions of human well-being, would be extremely helpful in focusing attention on the ends that development must serve rather than on means, such as increased production, alone.

Interdependence

24. None of the factors discussed above can be examined or acted upon in isolation from the others. They are in constant interaction. Violence, for example, is, at once, a cause of poverty and its consequence. Growing populations place increasing stress on ecosystems, but human activity by contributing to climate change further intensifies population pressures though desertification and rising ocean levels. The issues, moreover, are not only related to one another in a physical manner, but also in a psychological sense. How people think about the issues – their knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and especially their values – is as important in the search for solutions as the ‘objective realities’ confronted.
25. It is also essential to take account of the varying circumstances in which people around the world find themselves and the impact of their situation upon their priorities and values. To an individual living in rural poverty in the developing world, ‘sustainable development’, if it is to make any sense, must mean increased consumption and a higher living standard. By contrast, to an individual in a wealthy country, with a closet full of clothes, a pantry full of food and a garage full of cars, ‘sustainable development’ could mean more modest and carefully considered consumption. Similarly, the issue of inter-generational parity and justice, inherent in discussions of sustainable development, will raise very different questions and choices in a country with a rapidly growing population, nearly half of which is under twenty years of age, than in a country with a stable and aging population.
26. In sum, the puzzle of sustainable development cannot be solved by concentrating on the pieces. It has to be seen as a whole – in both its scientific and social dimensions – not as a series of isolated issues and problems. In the final analysis, sustainable development is humanity’s response to an emerging global challenge and crisis.

NORTH-SOUTH DIFFERENCES

27. Any discussion of sustainable development has to take account of both the disparities between rich and poor nations and, equally important, what these differences imply for policy formulation. Policies appropriate to the north make little sense for the south and vice versa.
28. The major challenge facing the developing nations of the south is that of significantly increasing productivity and output to overcome poverty and deprivation. Until this is achieved, at least in part, it is unrealistic to expect the environmental standards that apply in the north to be adopted in the south as well. So long as poverty is widespread, the south will be tempted – and often compelled – to accept higher levels of pollution and lower levels of control, just as the highly industrialized countries of today did until relatively recently.
29. One of the tasks of education for sustainable development, especially in northern countries, will be to explain why these differences exist and why, at least for the time being, the application of equal standards would result in very inequitable outcomes. The north can, of course, help to shorten the interval in which lower standards will be necessary by assisting the south in its development efforts, especially, as concerns education, in the development of its schools, universities and training programmes for scientists and other key personnel through financial and technical assistance, sharing of knowledge, and the training of experts from the south in their institutes and universities.
30. There are, of course, many similarities as well as differences. Many of the emerging issues – e.g., the need for renewable energies and fresh water – affect all regions of the world in varying degrees. A major challenge of education for sustainable development in all countries is that of helping people to understand and adapt to a pace of change which is, as yet, ‘unnatural’ to all cultures. In a deeper sense, as neighbours on the same planet our destinies are ultimately joined.

TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABILITY

31. Sustainable development has been variously defined and described. It is not a fixed notion, but rather a process of change in the relationships between social, economic and natural systems and processes. The World Commission on Environment and Development, for example, defined sustainable development in terms of the present and the future: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Other definitions have extended the notion of equity between the present and the future, to equity between countries and continents, races and classes, genders and ages.
32. Perhaps the most widely used definitions focus on the relationship between social development and economic opportunity, on the one hand, and the requirements of the environment on the other: ie., on improving the quality of life for all, especially of the poor and deprived, within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems. This does not necessarily set fixed limits on ‘development’, but rather recognizes that the prevailing notions and definitions of development must themselves evolve in relation to changing requirements and possibilities. Caring for the Earth (IUCN, 1991), for example, notes that a sustainable economy “can continue to develop by adapting, and through improvements in knowledge, organisation, technical efficiency and wisdom”. In brief, sustainability calls for a dynamic balance among many factors, including the social, cultural and economic requirements of humankind and the imperative need to safeguard the natural environment of which humanity is a part. What is sought is the condition of ‘human security’ for all people.

A dynamic balance

33. Sustainability, in effect, involves an equation between environmental requirements and development needs. It can be balanced by acting either to reduce stresses or to increase ‘carrying capacities’. The argument between ecologists and economists has been that the former have stressed the first course of action and the economists the latter. It is evident that in a crisis, both possibilities have to be carefully explored. There are environmental strains, such as the multiplying of populations, that at some point become incompatible with both the maintenance of the environment and the quality of life. By the year 2030, for example, it is projected that there will be three billion more people on Earth than today. The task of feeding, clothing and sheltering them will be enormous, that of providing them with education, employment, security and a minimum of well-being and satisfaction vastly greater still. These facts of life must not be ignored. But neither should the capacity of humanity to find and invent solutions be overlooked or minimized.
34. The higher levels of production required by three billion additional people will certainly inflict serious damage upon the environment unless modes of production change significantly in the coming decades. Fortunately, this is what is happening. As this document is being prepared, the invention of a fuel cell has been announced that, it is claimed, is capable of directly converting hydrocarbons, such as gasoline, into electricity, with nearly twice the efficiency of an internal combustion engine and without the production of carbon-dioxide or other pollutants. Within ten to twenty years, the introduction of automobiles, buses and trucks powered by such fuel cells is expected to substantially improve air quality in large cities of industrialized countries. Whether the cost of this new technology will be affordable in the developing regions of the world in the near future is of central importance and, as yet, unclear. Of greater relevance to developing countries, major breakthroughs are being made in agriculture which allow farmers to produce more food on less land while reducing the impact on the environment. Moreover, the widening use of computers and the growing reach of the new information and communication technologies are ensuring a far more rapid and wider dissemination and application of innovations than was the case even a decade ago.
35. While such developments are highly encouraging, it would be imprudent to expect science and technology to find a solution to every problem that humanity is capable of creating for itself. Nor would it be wise to rely on technical solutions alone without considering the capacity of human societies to adjust to the changes and stresses that they may impose. But it would be equally short-sighted to overlook the capacity of people to invent solutions to problems or to find ingenious ways of coping with such problems. The concept of sustainable development is informed by both the warnings of environmentalists and the arguments of economists in favour of development. It seeks to strike a realistic balance between dangers and possibilities, hopes and fears, aspirations and constraints. The ‘point of balance’ is, of course, influenced by many factors and, thus, subject to constant change.

An emerging vision

36. Yet, while there are many definitions of sustainable development, it can perhaps be better understood as an emerging vision rather than as a neatly defined concept or relationship. In truth, it is as much an ethical precept as a scientific concept, as concerned with notions of equity as with theories of global warming. Sustainable development is widely understood to involve the natural sciences and economics, but it is even more fundamentally concerned with culture: with the values people hold and how they perceive their relations with others. It responds to an imperative need to imagine a new basis for relationships among peoples and with the habitat that sustains human life.
37. Its strength is that it frankly acknowledges the interdependence of human needs and environmental requirements. In so doing, it rejects the single-minded pursuit of one objective at the cost of others. A heedless pursuit of ‘development’, for example, can not be accepted at the cost of inflicting irreparable damage on the environment. But neither can the preservation of the environment be achieved at the cost of maintaining half of humanity in poverty. Or, in the terms in which the debate is sometimes posed, we cannot sacrifice people to save elephants, but neither can we – at least not for very long – save the people by sacrificing the elephants. Indeed, this is a false dichotomy that must be rejected. We must imagine a new and sustainable relationship between humanity and its habitat: one that places humanity at centre stage, but does not neglect that what is happening in the ‘wings’ may turn the drama of everyday life into an ancient Greek tragedy in which we see a terrible fate approaching, but can muster up neither the collective will nor common means to escape it.

EDUCATION: THE FORCE OF THE FUTURE

38. It is widely agreed that education is the most effective means that society possesses for confronting the challenges of the future. Indeed, education will shape the world of tomorrow. Progress increasingly depends upon the products of educated minds: upon research, invention, innovation and adaptation. Of course, educated minds and instincts are needed not only in laboratories and research institutes, but in every walk of life. Indeed, access to education is the sine qua non for effective participation in the life of the modern world at all levels. Education, to be certain, is not the whole answer to every problem. But education, in its broadest sense, must be a vital part of all efforts to imagine and create new relations among people and to foster greater respect for the needs of the environment.
39. Education must not be equated with schooling or formal education alone. It includes non-formal and informal modes of instruction and learning as well, including traditional learning acquired in the home and community. By defining education broadly, one also widens the community of educators, as the programme statement of Education 21 promoted within the United Kingdom notes, to include “teachers, lecturers, curriculum developers, administrators, support staff, industrial trainers, countryside rangers and staff, environmental health and planning officers, education officers with NGOs, community educators, youth leaders, parent association members, media people, representatives of learners in all contexts – and yet more.” One might further widen this community to include all those, whatever their role in society, who perceive a need or duty to inform and educate people regarding the requirements of a sustainable future. International organizations, government departments and institutions, foundations and many others are deeply involved in education in the broad sense of the term used here. Many firms in the private sector also see the need to play their part in promoting awareness and are doing so in innovative ways: for example, through sponsoring the publication of articles in newspapers and journals exploring environmental and social issues. This vast community of educators represents an enormously potent, but largely untapped human-resource for sustainable development that can be invaluable in a range of contexts as well as education. It represents, above all, a means for bringing the struggle for sustainable development into communities and local institutions around the world which, in the final analysis, is where the cause of sustainable development will either triumph or fail.
40. Education serves society in a variety of ways. The goal of education is to make people wiser, more knowledgeable, better informed, ethical, responsible, critical and capable of continuing to learn. Were all people to possess such abilities and qualities, the world’s problems would not be automatically solved, but the means and the will to address them would be at hand. Education also serves society by providing a critical reflection on the world, especially its failings and injustices, and by promoting greater consciousness and awareness, exploring new visions and concepts, and inventing new techniques and tools. Education is also the means for disseminating knowledge and developing skills, for bringing about desired changes in behaviours, values and lifestyles, and for promoting public support for the continuing and fundamental changes that will be required if humanity is to alter its course, leaving the familiar path that is leading towards growing difficulties and possible catastrophe, and starting the uphill climb towards sustainability. Education, in short, is humanity’s best hope and most effective means in the quest to achieve sustainable development.

II. PUBLIC AWARENESS AND UNDERSTANDING: THE FUEL FOR CHANGE

41. Awareness is a prelude to informed action. In democratic societies, action towards sustainable development will ultimately depend on public awareness, understanding and support. Common information and shared understandings, however, are important not only for mobilizing public support, but also for carrying out work consultative and participatory approaches in all fields.
42. Public awareness and understanding are, at once, consequences of education and influences on the educational process. A public well informed of the need for sustainable development will insist that public educational institutions include in their curricula the scientific and other subject matters needed to enable people to participate effectively in the numerous activities directed towards achieving sustainable development. The students that emerge from such courses will, for their part, be alert to the need for public authorities to make adequate provision for the protection of the environment in all development plans. Education is particularly important in developing a ‘taste for knowledge’.
43. Perhaps the greatest problem that advocates of sustainable development face is to convince not only those who are opposed to their ideas, but also those who simply ‘don’t want to know’. An approach that emphasizes local issues, rather than global ones, is likely to be most effective in dealing with this constituency. This may account, in part, for the success of non-formal community education and local environmental communication programmes in reaching and sensitizing people to environmental and development issues in both developing and industrialized countries. A particular benefit of such programmes is that they are often directly linked to action to control or solve the problems identified.

THE NEED FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

44. Advocates of sustainable development and the environmentalists who proceeded them have learned much about how to communicate effectively. Initially, their emphasis was on ‘getting the science right’ with little thought given to how to communicate findings and make them meaningful to a wide and non-technical public. It was assumed that the facts would speak for themselves. Sadly, it didn’t prove that easy.
45. It is important to explore the difficulties that arose in order that they may be avoided in the future. There are several sorts of problems: the influence of vested interests, the neglect or inadequacy of communication strategies, the complexity of the messages and the unfortunate tendency of some of the messengers to spend more time squabbling with one another than communicating with the public.

CONFRONTING VESTED INTERESTS

46. In any struggle – including one to win over the minds of the public – it is important to understand the motives and strengths of those on the other side of the issue. Naively, one might imagine that few would find reason to oppose measures necessary to avoid potentially calamitous consequences for humanity. But, alas, what is good for humanity in general may nonetheless be costly and inconvenient to particular individuals, groups and other vested interests. The electrical power industry, to cite a current example, is vigorously against more stringent controls on the emission of ‘greenhouse gases’, even though there is convincing and growing evidence – if not yet certainty – that the build-up of such gases in the atmosphere is leading to global warming and all that could ensue from it. Regulation is not going to come about on the basis of the evidence alone. Public mobilization and vigilance are essential, if effective measures are to be enacted into law and enforced.
47. Until quite recently, advocates of the common interest have had difficulty mustering the needed public relations expertise and support to overcome the influence of vested interests. Fortunately, in the past two decades, many lessons have been learned, especially by environmentalists, on how to convert a growing public concern for the state of Earth into effective support for specific measures to address concrete problems. Yet, in most countries, while environmental issues are now receiving greater support, measures aimed at promoting population policies, social development, poverty reduction and other necessary measures for achieving sustainable patterns of development continue to be largely ignored by the general public. Ultimately, though, there can be no solution to environmental problems unless the social and economic ills besetting humankind are seriously addressed. It is this broader message and reality which remains to be effectively communicated to and internalized by the public.
48. Debate and defence of particular interests are, of course, inherent in the democratic process. Vested interests have to be overcome by democratic means: namely, by more effective mobilization of public opinion aimed at gaining support at all levels: international, national and local. The difficulties in achieving this goal should not, however, be under-estimated. As can be seen in the discussions about implementation of the Convention on Climate Change, the opposition comes not only from particular industrial interests, but also from countries and groups of countries. While nobody favours pollution per se, many countries would nonetheless like to exempt themselves or others from bearing the cost of stringent controls. A vigilant and informed world public represents a powerful counterweight to the vested interests that appear, at present, to have the upper hand on many issues. It is no accident that the countries that are militating most strongly for controls on emissions and other environmental measures are the same nations that have strong environmental lobbies and publics committed to action – locally, nationally and internationally – to preserve the environment.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

49. One of the lessons of recent experience is the need to establish effective communication strategies as an integral part of any major scientific inquiry or programme. A comparison, which highlights this need, can be made between the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project (NAPAP) in the United States and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988 by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). NAPAP, while it was highly regarded by scientists, had virtually no communication strategy. As a result, while its research and recommendations were well considered, there has been little follow-up action. IPCC has sought to avoid this failure by keeping both the scientific community and the general public systematically informed of its work and findings from the very start. It has also sought, with considerable success, to build bridges to policy-makers in order that they be aware of and able to reflect upon the implications of the panel’s emerging findings. By informing the public, IPCC has made it much more difficult to simply sweep its conclusions under the carpet. The lesson here is that communication has to be seen as a long-term interactive process strategically aimed at particular groups and audiences, not as a concluding message when a project or panel is about to present its final report and wind up its activities. It is not necessary – or even desirable – for scientists to become propagandists, but it is essential that studies conducted in the public interest have adequate means to communicate their findings to the public on whose behalf they were carried out.

COMPLEX MESSAGES

50. The messages of sustainable development represent a challenge in and of themselves. Rather than being simple and unambiguous – thus easy to communicate – environmental and developmental issues tend to be complex. This is so because of the inherent complexity of ecological and human systems. They defy simplistic explanations, solutions and predictions. Some scientists, for example, expect that the buildup of greenhouse gases that causes global warming may, initially, result in several decades of falling temperatures in particular regions of the world because of the affect of the melting of the polar ice caps in slowing or stopping the warm ocean currents. This contention may or may not be correct. There is great uncertainty about what may happen, even if there is a general consensus that it won’t be favourable to life on Earth. Yet, the ambiguity of the situation makes it hard to explain to non-specialists. To the general public, hot and cold are opposites, even if to the climate scientists they are merely different manifestations of environmental stress. To urge people to beware of global warming, but to keep both their woollens and their beachwear handy, just in case, is in no way convincing. Such uncertainty suggests that global warming may be more speculative than scientific. This, evidently, is not the case. The truth is that complex realities are difficult to communicate in simple messages. Yet, attempts to simplify what, by its very nature is not simple, may result in further confusion and misunderstandings and, ultimately, in lack of credibility.
51. The same problems arise, although to a lesser degree, in dealing with major transformations such as population growth and urbanization. For example, the projection that by the middle of the next century several cities in the developing world may have populations approaching, or even exceeding, 50 million may be accepted matter-of-factly without due reflection on what is involved in managing an urban centre on such a scale or what the quality of life might be for its inhabitants. Thus, while the statement may appear easily understandable, the problems and issues that it raises may go undetected or be seriously underestimated. The fact is that people have difficulty adjusting from the scale of things encountered in everyday life to the scales of magnitude – enormously large and infinitesimally small – needed to understand demographic or ecological phenomena. Ultimately, a solution can be found only by educating the public in the developmental and environmental ‘facts of life’. Indeed, in the 21st century, the literacies of science, ecology and development will be as essential to comprehending the world as were the traditional skills of reading and writing at the start of the present century.
52. In the meantime, it will be important for those advocating sustainable development to choose, wherever possible, those cases and examples that are most easily understood by the general public. For example, air pollution is, if not always visible, often capable of being smelt and tasted. Closed beaches are plausible evidence of the pollution of rivers, lakes and seas. Even if one wishes, or is compelled, to go on to discuss complex issues such as global warming, it is well to begin with the evidence at hand: car, bus and truck exhaust, smoke stacks, etc. Health issues also are readily understood by the general public: allergies, asthma, and bronchial infections are widely accepted as consequences of deteriorating air quality. Average citizens may not gain a perfect understanding of global warming from such evidence – even scientists don’t have that – but their common sense will tell them that what harms their environments and health is capable of doing even greater damage on a global scale. The basic dictum of pedagogy is to begin where the learner is. This is also good advice for the communication specialist. Start with problems that people feel and understand at the local level. That is both valuable knowledge in itself and, if need be, a basis for moving on to more complex and global understandings.

THE MESSENGERS

53. Emotionalism and exaggeration are another frequent source of difficulty. The press is understandably drawn to those with the most extreme views: e.g., to ecological fundamentalists who will accept no compromise or individuals who possess an apocalyptic vision of the future. Disagreements and quarrels between specialists are also ‘newsworthy’ and are skillfully exploited by the opponents of reform proposals to suggest that the evidence supporting them is weak and confused. More moderate and reasoned voices often go unheard in the din. Extreme positions, while they may be useful in catching the public’s attention and alerting it to pending dangers, make it difficult to move from declarations and debate into action.
54. It has to be recognized that neither individuals nor societies are ready or even able to change their habits and behaviours from one day to the next. Proposals for change, if they are to be effective, have to be feasible. Both the messages and the messengers have to appear credible and responsible. Nothing is to be gained by scaring people. Alarmist predictions that make it seem that the world is about to end are evidently not conducive to the long-term planning and action that sustainable development requires. On the contrary, it is far more effective to present problems as manageable through responsible conduct and, wherever possible, put forward a realistic solution and a means to take preventive action.

REASON FOR OPTIMISM

55. This section has focused upon selected problems encountered in raising public awareness on a complex issue such as sustainable development and the many concerns that it subsumes. Yet, while these problems are important and need to be addressed, there is abundant reason for optimism. People are becoming increasingly concerned about the crises afflicting the environment and impeding development. This is, in part, because communication on such issues has become more effective and focused, but mainly because these problems – especially those concerned with the environment – are increasingly impinging on people’s lives: their health, their comfort and their hopes for the future. Scientific data alone have rarely won an argument when people were not ready to accept its conclusions and, equally rarely, have scientific findings lost an argument in which people had an intuitive sense that the data were right and relevant. The climate of opinion is changing and becoming more favourable to the promotion of sustainable development.
56. This is not an opportunity to be wasted, but a chance to be seized. To do so will require effective leadership – not in the sense of direction from above – but in the form of responsibility and responsiveness. There is also an important role for the press and media in responding and building upon the growing interest of the public in sustainable development concerns. Evidently, the fullest possible use must be made of the new information and communication media, but traditional and folk media must also be creatively employed. The messages of ancient cultures on sustainable development often took the form of metaphors and analogies. These are still powerful means of communicating, especially with poor peoples who are often little schooled, but very much in tune with their culture. The greatest challenge is precisely that of reaching the more than one billion people who live in poverty and deprivation, often in remote rural regions, urban slums and refugee camps.

III. REORIENTING EDUCATION TO SUPPORT SUSTAINABILITY

57. “Until recently, the planet was a large world in which human activities and their effects were neatly compartmentalized within nations and within broad areas of concern (environmental, economic, social). These compartments have begun to dissolve. This applies in particular to the various global ‘crises’ that have seized public concern. These are not separate crises: an environmental crisis, a development crisis, an energy crisis. They are all one.” (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987)
58. Reorienting education to sustainability requires recognizing that traditional compartments and categories can no longer remain in isolation from each other and that we must work increasingly at the interface of disciplines in order to address the complex problems of today’s world. This is true both within education, where interdisciplinarity is slowly and with difficulty gaining ground, and between the spheres of education, work and leisure as lifelong learning emerges as a key concept for planning and developing educational systems. It is also true as concerns the most important boundary of all: that separating those included in education systems from those who are excluded from them. These changes are not occurring nearly as rapidly as would be desired, but they are nonetheless taking shape within education at all levels.
59. Ultimately, sustainable development will require an education that not only continues throughout life, but is also as broad as life itself, an education that serves all people, draws upon all domains of knowledge and seeks to integrate learning into all of life’s major activities. The time when education was the activity of childhood and work the pursuit of adults is long over. The rapid growth of knowledge has rendered the notion of schooling as a ‘once and for all’ preparation for life utterly obsolete. The growth of knowledge is advancing exponentially, yet not nearly as fast as the need for understanding and solutions at which it is aimed. As concerns sustainable development specifically, it is impossible to predict with reliability what will be the key issues on which people will need information in five, ten, twenty or fifty years. It is predictable, however, that such developments will not fit neatly into the existing and artificial sub-divisions of knowledge which have been in place for more than a century. Hence, understanding and solving complex problems is likely to require intensified co-operation among scientific fields as well as between the pure sciences and the social sciences. Reorienting education to sustainable development will, in short, require important, even dramatic changes, in nearly all areas.
60. The importance of education was underscored at the at the nineteenth Special Session of the General Assembly (23-27 June 1997) convened to review the implementation of Agenda 21 five years after Rio. The resolution adopted by the session emphasized that a “fundamental prerequisite for sustainable development is an adequately financed and effective educational system at all levels, particularly the primary and secondary levels, that is accessible to all and that augments both human capacity and well-being. Even in countries with strong educational systems,” the resolution continues, “there is a need to reorient education, awareness and training to increase widespread public understanding, critical analysis and support for sustainable development. Education for a sustainable future should engage a wide spectrum of institutions and sectors and should include the preparation of sustainable development education plans and programmes”. In the sections that follow, a number of key issues relating to education’s role in sustainable development will be briefly examined.

IMPORTANCE OF BASIC EDUCATION

61. Inherent in the concept of sustainability is the vision of a more equitable world. This can only be achieved by providing the disadvantaged with the means to advance themselves and their families. And of these means, the most essential is education, particularly basic education. Over 100 million children between the ages of 6 and 11 never attend school and tens of millions more enter school only to drop out within a few months or years. Moreover, there are over 800 million illiterate adults, most of whom have never been enrolled in school. The first requirement in the quest for development and equity must be to change this situation and make schooling of quality available to all. But that goal, alas, is still far off. For the present, the challenge is to make the best of an unfortunate and unjust situation.
62. The World Conference on Education for All used the term ‘basic education’ to refer to all forms of organized education and training that meet the basic learning needs of individuals, including literacy and numeracy, as well as the general knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that they require to survive, develop their capacities, live and work in dignity, improve the quality of their lives, make informed decisions and continue learning. The Conference consciously choose to define education in terms of learning outcomes rather than levels of instruction.
63. Given the situation today in many developing countries, it does not suffice to orient formal education towards sustainability. Attention also has to be given to those who are presently unserved or poorly served by schools. This is a large group, well over a billion people, and a vital one for the future. Girls and women, the mothers of today and tomorrow, are in the majority. They are, or will be, the first and most influential teachers of their children. The goals of educating young children are focused on ensuring their health, development, happiness, well-being and adjustment to the environment in which they live. If these goals are not achieved, the future of the child is compromised and the prospects of sustainable development diminished.
64. Basic education provides the foundation for all future education and learning. Its goal, as concerns those in the pre-school primary school-age population, whether enrolled in school or not, is to produce children who are happy with themselves and with others, who find learning exciting and develop inquiring minds, who begin to build up a storehouse of knowledge about the world and, more importantly, an approach to seeking knowledge that they can use and develop throughout their lives. Basic education is aimed at all the essential goals of education: learning to know, to do, to be (ie., to assume one’s duties and responsibilities) and to live together with others, as outlined in Education: the Treasure Within, the report of the Independent Commission on Education for the 21st Century Report published in 1996 by UNESCO. It is, thus, not only the foundation for lifelong learning, but also the foundation for sustainable development.
65. Basic education for adults is aimed at empowerment. It is, in the words of the Amman Affirmation, the document summing up the mid-decade review of progress towards Education for All, “…the key to establishing and reinforcing democracy, to development which is both sustainable and humane and to peace funded upon mutual respect and social justice. Indeed in a world in which creativity and knowledge play an ever greater role, the right to education is nothing less than the right to participate in the life of the modern world.” In sum, if our vision of the future is a world based on democracy, striving to achieve greater social justice and economic opportunity, and concerned to improve the quality of life and preserve the environment, then basic education has to be the first order of business, for it holds the power to contribute to all of these goals by enabling people to take their destinies into their own hands and play their role in shaping the common destiny of humanity. Sustainable development cannot be achieved by a small minority on behalf of the vast majority. It will require the contribution and commitment of each and all. That is why it is essential to give all people the means – starting with basic education – to participate in shaping a sustainable future.

WHAT CHANGES DOES SUSTAINABILITY REQUIRE?

66. In spite of the considerable progress which has been made, there are still enormous barriers to reorientation of formal education to sustainability, barriers that cannot be addressed by the efforts of individual teachers or even schools, no matter how committed they might be. Effectively overcoming such barriers requires commitment by society as a whole to sustainable development. Such commitment would involve all of society’s stakeholders to work collaboratively and in partnership, including industry, business, grassroots organizations and members of the public, to develop policies and processes which integrate social, economic, cultural, political and conservation goals. A sustainable society will be one in which all aspects of civic and personal life are compatible with sustainable development and all government departments at all levels of government work together to advance such a society.
67. Education plays a dual role, at once in both reproducing certain aspects of current society and preparing students to transform society for the future. These roles are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, without commitment of all of society to sustainable development, curricula have tended in the past to reproduce an unsustainable culture with intensified environment and development problems rather than empower citizens to think and work towards their solution. The role of formal education in building society is to help students to determine what is best to conserve in their cultural, economic and natural heritage and to nurture values and strategies for attaining sustainability in their local communities while contributing at the same time to national and global goals.

Curriculum reform

68. To advance such goals, a curriculum reoriented towards sustainability would place the notion of citizenship among its primary objectives. This would require a revision of many existing curricula and the development of objectives and content themes, and teaching, learning and assessment processes that emphasize moral virtues, ethical motivation and ability to work with others to help build a sustainable future. Viewing education for sustainability as a contribution to a politically literate society is central to the reformulation of education and calls for a ‘new generation’ of theorizing and practice in education and a rethinking of many familiar approaches, including within environmental education.
69. Education for sustainability calls for a balanced approach which avoids undue emphasis on changes in individual lifestyles. It has to be recognized that many of the world’s problems, including environmental problems, are related to our ways of living, and that solutions imply transforming the social conditions of human life as well as changes in individual lifestyles. This draws attention to the economic and political structures which cause poverty and other forms of social injustice and foster unsustainable practices. It also draws attention to the need for students to learn the many processes for solving these problems through a broad and comprehensive education related not only to mastery of different subject matters, but equally to discovering real world problems of their society and the requirements for changing them.
70. This kind of orientation would require, inter alia, increased attention to the humanities and social sciences in the curriculum. The natural sciences provide important abstract knowledge of the world but, of themselves, do not contribute to the values and attitudes that must be the foundation of sustainable development. Even increased study of ecology is not sufficient to reorient education towards sustainability. Even though ecology has been described by some as the foundation discipline of environmental education, studies of the biophysical and geophysical work are a necessary – but not sufficient – prerequisite to understanding sustainability. The traditional primacy of nature study, and the often apolitical contexts in which is taught, need to be balanced with the study of social sciences and humanities. Learning about the interactions of ecological processes would then be associated with market forces, cultural values, equitable decision-making, government action and the environmental impacts of human activities in a holistic interdependent manner.
71. A reaffirmation of the contribution of education to society means that the central goals of education must include helping students learn how to identify elements of unsustainable development that concern them and how to address them. Students need to learn how to reflect critically on their place in the world and to consider what sustainability means to them and their communities. They need to practice envisioning alternative ways of development and living, evaluating alternative visions, learning how to negotiate and justify choices between visions, and making plans for achieving desired ones, and participating in community life to bring such visions into effect. These are the skills and abilities which underlie good citizenship, and make education for sustainability part of a process of building an informed, concerned and active populace. In this way, education for sustainability contributes to education for democracy and peace.

Structural reform

72. Reorienting the curriculum towards sustainable development requires at least two major structural reforms in education. The first is to re-examine the centralized mandating of courses and textbooks in order to allow for locally relevant learning programmes. Local decision-making can be facilitated through the reform of centralized educational policies and curricula, and the formulation of appropriate syllabuses and assessment policies. Nationally-endorsed syllabuses can serve as ‘broad framework documents’ which provide aims and general objectives for subjects, an overview of broad content themes, appropriate learning experiences, relevant resource materials, and criteria for assessing student learning. This type of syllabus can provide centralized accountability, while allowing schools, teachers and students to make choices about the specific learning experience, the relative depth and breadth of treatment for different topics, the case studies and educational resources used, and how to assess student achievements.
73. A second major area of structural reform is the development of new ways to assess the processes and outcomes of learning. Such reform should be inspired by what people want from their educational system, as well as what society needs. The period of profound change in which we are living needs to be taken into account by educational systems, which were, for the most part, designed to serve a society which is fast becoming history. Learning needs to be seen as a lifelong process which empowers people to live useful and productive lives. The reorientation of education along these lines – and in anticipation to the extent possible of future needs – is fundamental for sustainable development, including its ultimate objective not only of human survival but especially of human well-being and happiness. Similarly, there also needs to be a revamping of the methods of credentialing students. The various ways in which students are judged (testing, report cards, evaluations) and the basis for awarding diplomas at all levels need to reflect the reformulation of outcomes of learning towards sustainability.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM: A CASE STUDY

74. What does reorienting education towards sustainability mean in practical terms? This is the question that educators immediately want to know. Does it mean adding courses to an already overweight curriculum? Will it require new teaching approaches and methods? New physical facilities, equipment and textbooks to be purchased from an already severely pinched budget? Is it something that can be achieved in a month, a school year or several years? While the reform of education in this direction is still more talked about than put into practice, there are examples emerging which shed light on how to move in this direction.
75. One example is that of the Toronto (Canada) Board of Education which recently undertook a reform of its curriculum through a massive community consultation. Thousands of parents, students, staff and members of the public contributed to full day community consultations aimed at exploring how education should respond to the demands of a changing world. The focus of the inquiry was the question “What should students know, do and value by the time they graduate from school?” Although the notion of ‘sustainability’ was not imposed, it emerged as an essential requirement in the course of the consultation.
76. The education that parents and the community wanted for their children was in many respects hardly revolutionary or even surprising. The six graduation outcomes specified were: literacy; aesthetic appreciation and creativity; communication and collaboration; information management; responsible citizenship; and personal life skills, values and actions. These differ from most traditional curricular objectives in that they are broader and more closely related to the needs and organization of life than to the requirements and structures of schooling.
77. The essence of the Toronto reform is that the curriculum is no longer focused exclusively on the traditional core subjects of language, mathematics, history, etc. Informed by the new vision of what the community felt tomorrow’s students would need to know and be able to do, these disciplines underwent major revision. Mathematics, for example, now includes the skill of comprehending extremely large and extremely small numbers – e.g., ppm and ppb – which are essential to being environmentally literate and capable of understanding relative risk factors both in personal life and at work. Health now includes environmental issues including cancer, allergies and food additives as well as ‘consumerism’.
78. Much of the success of the Toronto reform is due to the fact that it was not – and was not seen to be – an effort to change education to meet goals set by an elite or unduly influenced by outside pressures. The impetus to change came from within. The new curriculum had equal or greater academic rigour, but far greater relevance to life outside school walls. What it demonstrates is that education for sustainable development is simply good education, and that good education needs to make children aware of the growing interdependence of life on Earth – interdependence among peoples and among natural systems – in order to prepare them for the future.
79. Toronto had one great advantage in implementing its curriculum reform: well- educated and well-trained teachers. In reality, what students learn is not necessarily what is written in the syllabus; it is what the teacher delivers in the classrooms. By far, the most frequent cause of curriculum failure is inadequate teacher training. In Toronto the development of the curriculum itself constituted an informal type of training in which thousands of teachers were involved. This was followed up by more formalized sessions and by systematic provision for teachers to upgrade their qualification through university courses and other forms of training. The lesson in this is that efforts to adapt education systems to sustainable development have to consider not only the question, “what are the essential messages that must be delivered?”, but also and equally, that of “how will teachers be trained to put those messages across powerfully and effectively?”.
80. In general, reforms aimed at sustainability will require much more of teachers than do traditional curricula. Students will have to be more actively involved in individual and collective activities. This will require teachers to play new roles which, in turn, implies a need for increased training and support. Educational reforms, like the movement towards sustainable development itself, requires holistic and systematic thinking; piecemeal approaches will not suffice and can not produce the required results.

REFORM AT DIFFERENT SCALES

81. It must, of course, be recognized that curriculum reform can take place in different ways and on different scales. If schools are granted greater autonomy, as proposed above, significant reforms could take place within schools or even classrooms, rather than at the national, provincial or district levels. Certain of these reforms would be aimed at changes in particular lessons or courses rather than for the curriculum as a whole. Such reforms would not be sufficient to fully orient the curriculum towards sustainability, but they could nonetheless be highly valuable. It is also necessary to recognize that schools and school systems in many developing countries are struggling under enormous burdens. They have insufficient resources to implement their present programmes of study – often only four or five textbooks are available for a class of fifty or more – and no means to aim at the more ambitious objectives that were possible in Toronto and in other industrialized countries. This inequality in educational resources and, hence in opportunities, is itself one of the major causes of unsustainability. If schools are to be a means to the reform of society, it is then essential that society at all levels – local, national and international – invest adequate attention and resources in its schools.

CONTRIBUTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

82. It is clear that the roots of education for sustainable development are firmly planted in environmental education. While environmental education is not the only discipline with a strong role to play in the reorienting process, it is an important ally. In its brief twenty-five year history, environmental education has steadily striven towards goals and outcomes similar and comparable to those inherent in the concept of sustainability.
83. In the early 1970s, the emerging environmental education movement was given a powerful boost by the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, which recommended that environmental education be recognized and promoted in all countries. This recommendation led to the launching in 1975 by UNESCO and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) of the International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP), which continued until 1995. The influence of the IEEP – and the national and international activities which it inspired – has been widely felt and is reflected in many of the educational innovations carried out in the last two decades.
84. That work was inspired largely by the guiding principles of environmental education laid down by the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education held in Tbilisi in 1977, which followed a comprehensive preparatory process which included the International Workshop on Environmental Education held in Belgrade in 1975 to draft the concepts and vision which were later taken up by governments in Tbilisi. These encompass a broad spectrum of environmental, social, ethical, economic and cultural dimensions. Indeed, the recommendations of the Rio Conference, held fifteen years later, echo those of Tbilisi, as is evident in the following quotations from the report of the 1977 conference:

“A basic aim of environmental education is to succeed in making individuals and communities understand the complex nature of the natural and the built environments resulting from the interaction of their biological, physical, social, economic and cultural aspects, and acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes and practical skills to participate in a responsible and effective way in anticipating and solving environmental problems, and the management of the quality of the environment.”
“A further basic aim of environmental education is clearly to show the economic, political and ecological interdependence of the modern world, in which decisions and actions by the different countries can have international repercussions. Environment should, in this regard, help to develop a sense of responsibility and solidarity among countries and regions.”
“Special attention should be paid to understanding the complex relations between socio-economic development and the improvement of the environment.”

85. These principles were successfully translated into educational goals and, with greater difficulty, into schoolroom practice in many countries.
86. The motto of the environmental education movement has been: ‘think globally, act locally’. Over a period of more than two decades, it developed a highly active pedagogy based on this premise. In the early grades, in particular, the emphasis was upon learning the local environment through field studies and classroom experiments. By starting in the primary grades, before the process of compartmentalization that marks secondary and particularly higher education sets in, students were encouraged to examine environmental issues from different angles and perspectives.
87. The influence of environmental education in promoting interdisciplinary inquiries can be seen at all levels of education. A course on environmental economics, for example, looks to anthropology for insights and source material. It studies the decline of ancient civilizations – e.g., the Sumerian and Mayan and that of the Easter Islands – which exploited their environment without due regard for its sustainability. Equally valuable lessons might be drawn from tribes and groups that faced challenging environmental conditions, but survived against difficult odds by developing an awe, love and respect for nature. In many such cultures, the environment was placed in the sphere of the sacred and used according to a set of well-defined rules that, whatever their origins, served to prevent the over-use and exhaustion of natural resources. Environmental education has also found original ways of looking at and measuring human impact on the environment, such as the ‘ecological footprint’, which estimates the number of acres of land required to sustain individuals according to their lifestyles and patterns of consumption. Innovative work has also been done in the field of environmental health by relating illness to environmental stress and ways of life.
88. In brief, the record of the environmental education movement is one of resourcefulness, innovation and continuing accomplishments. Lessons learned from environmental education provide valuable insight for developing the broader notion of education for sustainable development.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY

89. A basic premise of education for sustainability is that just as there is a wholeness and interdependence to life in all its forms, so must there be a unity and wholeness to efforts to understand it and ensure its continuation. This calls for both interdisciplinary inquiry and action. It does not, of course, imply an end to work within traditional disciplines. A disciplinary focus is often helpful, even necessary, in allowing the depth of inquiry needed for major breakthroughs and discoveries. But increasingly, important discoveries are being made not within disciplines, but on the borders between them. This is particularly true in fields such as environmental studies which are not easily confined to a single discipline. Despite this realization and a broadening support for interdisciplinary inquiries, the frontiers between academic disciplines remain stoutly defended by professional bodies, career structures and criteria for promotion and advancement. It is no accident that environmental education and, more recently, education for sustainable development, has progressed more rapidly at the secondary and primary levels than within the realm of higher education.
90. Yet, higher education has an indispensable role to play. This is true both in the area of research and in the training of specialists and leaders in all fields. A failure to develop educational programmes related to sustainability in universities and specialized institutes has, therefore, an impact on society as a whole. It is, for example, increasingly important to include appropriate materials on sustainable development in the programmes of study of journalists, engineers, managers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, economists, administrators and numerous other professions. Universities could also render a valuable service by building components of sustainable development into the special programmes for teachers, senior managers, local leaders such as mayors, parliamentarians and others in leadership positions. Universities also play a key role in international cooperation and would do so more effectively it they gave fuller consideration to the needs of scientists and social scientists from developing countries, especially as concerns interdisciplinary inquires into environment and development issues.
91. Fortunately, the situation appears to be evolving in a favorable direction. Faculties of economics, for example, are adding specialists in environmental economics to their staffs who, by the very nature of their work, are required to develop expertise in scientific and other disciplines. As students arrive at the university from secondary schools with experience in and a taste for interdisciplinary work, universities in many countries are slowly adapting to meet their needs and demands. Major research projects, such as that on climate change, are also developing in specialists the habit of working across disciplines. Ultimately, the growing necessity for interdisciplinary inquiry can be expected to reduce the resistance imposed by entrenched habits and conservative institutional structures.

IV. SHIFTING TO SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLES: CHANGING CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION PATTERNS

92. The effectiveness of awareness raising and education for sustainable development must ultimately be measured by the degree to which they change the attitudes and behaviors of people, both in their individual roles, including those of producers and consumers, and in carrying out their collective responsibilities and duties as citizens. Both of these roles – the private and the public – are indispensable and mutually reinforcing. A willingness to change one’s lifestyle or pattern of consumption is essential but insufficient in itself to bring about societal change. Similarly, one’s action as a citizen, no matter how responsible and far-sighted, is inadequate if one’s individual behavior and lifestyle are wasteful or destructive. Sustainable development requires both individual enlightenment and responsibility and appropriate policies and action by public authorities and the private sector. If, for example, an individual wishes to use public transportation to reduce urban congestion and pollution, this choice can be effective only if such transport exists and, for most people, will become habitual only if the it is both economic and convenient. In short, the move toward sustainable lifestyles is not merely a matter of individual choice; it also requires collective action and responsibility.

INDIVIDUAL CHOICES AND LIFESTYLES

93. The caretaking consumer insists upon purchasing products that are kind to the environment. While this choice is often regarded as a virtuous one and as a burden on the consumer, that need not be the case. It is, for example, possible to develop automobiles that would provide the same comforts as present models, but would go twice as far on a litre of fuel. Production close to home – the site of consumption – is also more energy efficient and, in the case of food, offers greater freshness as well. The resistance to ‘green choices’ often comes not from consumers, but from producers who must change their modes of operation and make substantial investments in new means of production and distribution. Yet, ultimately, the producer must provide what the consumer demands. In this way, alert and informed consumers can exercise an influence on what is produced and sold.
94. Eco-efficiency, ie. increasing the added value of our activities while reducing our use of resources and the impact on the environment, may have an important role to play in safeguarding the environment. Eco-efficiency calls for better management of existing processes or products to reduce waste, use less energy and facilitate reuse and recycling. New and alternative technologies may also allow for cleaner production. Brazil, for example, is one of several countries that has established training programmes for industrial designers aimed at creating more efficient products. There is also a growing tendency for ecologically responsible firms to assume responsibility for a product throughout-life-cycle: selling the product, maintaining it and recycling it when it is no longer needed. A more radical approach is to look at the underlying need that a consumer meets through consumption, rather than at the means which are currently used to meet that need. For example, the primary use of a car is to provide mobility. Providing suitable, reliable alternatives – such as public transport, car-sharing schemes, home shopping or interactive communications – may enable consumers to meet their needs while having a lower impact on the environment. Eco-efficiency may thus entail a switch in thinking from the supply of products to the supply of services.
95. All of these notions are included in the concept of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘sustainable lifestyles’. Sustainable consumption does not necessarily mean consuming less. It means changing unsustainable patterns of consumption by allowing consumers to enjoy a high quality of life by consuming differently. For example, consumers might be encouraged to buy products which have a longer life, which can be easily repaired or updated. Policies to influence consumption patterns need to work with the market and recognize consumers’ needs and desires, thereby helping consumers make informed choices. Here, too, education has an important part to play.
96. Obviously, sustainable consumption has a different meaning when applied to the poor in developing countries and to the socially-excluded in developed countries. For the poor, sustainable development is not only about preserving the environment, but also and even mainly, it is about providing for human needs such as food, clothing, shelter, health care and security. However, even in the poorest countries, sustainable consumption means avoiding waste. The special session of the United Nations General Assembly on the follow-up to the Earth Summit emphasized the need for developing countries to promote sustainable consumption patterns in the development process.
97. To sum up, the individual through wise consumer choices and responsible behavior can certainly play a useful role in reducing waste and favoring products that do less harm to the environment. These are valuable and practical contributions, but also symbolic ones. The willingness of citizens to sort their trash for recycling, for example, sends a message to elected officials that voters are concerned about the environment.

COLLECTIVE DECISION-MAKING

98. The engaged citizens of a democratic society can exercise a strong influence on behalf of sustainable development through their civic role as well as through their behavior as consumers and producers. Individual lifestyles are inevitably strongly conditioned by public policies. Sorting trash, for example, serves little purpose if the collection service then throws everything into a dump. Individual action must be complemented and supported by public policies at all levels.
99. The main instruments of public policy are laws and regulations, tax and fiscal policies (ie. the use the government makes of public revenues), and social instruments, especially education (see Part III above). Regulation is the most direct approach: the production and use of certain toxic chemicals or other environmentally harmful products are being controlled and phased out in many countries as less dangerous substitutes are developed. Tax policies, including subsidies, are highly effective in influencing relative prices. Ecological tax reform usually consists in heavily taxing environmentally harmful products and favoring products that are kinder to the environment through reductions in taxes or through subsidies, designed to make such products more competitive. Norway, for example, is moving towards a revenue-neutral tax reform in which taxes on harmful products are used to subsidize ‘green’ products and services. An important part of such reforms is to correct the negative incentives in present tax codes. In the United States, for example, it is estimated that the total subsidy to automobiles – through building and maintenance of roads and other measures – amounts to some $300 billion dollars annually. In European countries, by contrast, the automobile is a major source of state revenues. This difference is reflected in fuel prices: a litre of fuel in many European countries costs more than a gallon (nearly four times as much) in the United States.
100. Finally, governments and public entities such as schools and hospitals have enormous purchasing power. If procurement policies favor the purchase of environmentally friendly products, producers come under enormous pressure, both directly in the marketplace and indirectly through banks, insurance companies and others who are fearful of the consequences and liabilities they might incur.
101. In sum, in democratic societies public policy responds to the will of the people. It is here that public awareness and understanding of the need for sustainable development best expresses itself through support for laws, regulations and policies favourable to the environment. People express their preferences as they decide how to spend their money, as well as through the ballot. Public action, through voting or otherwise, is contingent on more than ‘public awareness’. What is needed is an understanding of the issues, and of the likely consequences of a given purchasing or electoral decision. For this reason, growing attention has been given in Europe and elsewhere to ‘ecological audits’ and labelling which allows producers of environmentally benign products to advertise this fact to the public. Electoral choices are, of course, effective in terms of sustainability only to the extent that the public is well informed. Public understanding is the foundation for people to fulfill their roles as responsible citizens, consumers and public-spirited individuals.

V. ETHICS, CULTURE AND EQUITY: SUSTAINABILITY AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE

102. Sustainable development calls for comprehensive change in the way society operates. Production and consumption must be restructured in ways that better meet the basic needs of all in an ecologically responsible manner. The present disparities between rich and poor – unimaginable wealth at one extreme and desperate poverty at the other – have to be reduced. Population growth must be moderated and ecologically unsound practices quickly reduced and eventually eliminated. These steps call not only for practical action, but also for fundamental changes in perceptions and values, indeed, for a renewal of culture that will enable societies to confront the major challenge of the 21st century: the quest for sustainable development.
103. Ethical values are the principal factor in social cohesion and, at the same time, the most effective agent of change and transformation. Achieving sustainability will depend ultimately on changes in behavior and lifestyles, changes which will need to be motivated by a shift in values and rooted in the cultural and moral precepts upon which behavior is predicated. Without change of this kind, even the most enlightened legislation, the cleanest technology, the most sophisticated research will not succeed in steering society towards the long-term goal of sustainability. Education in the broadest sense will by necessity play a pivotal role in bringing about the deep change required, in both tangible and intangible ways.

SOME ETHICAL PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABILITY

104. Like the notion of sustainability itself, the ethics of sustainability can not be defined or detailed simply. In fact, thinking along these lines in just emerging, as we struggle to combine existing notions to develop a new, integrated ethical concept for the future. For the moment, it is possible to indicate a few new lines of thinking in terms of principles which associate values such as human rights and responsibility, intergenerational equity, solidarity, justice, democracy, freedom of expression, and tolerance.

The ’ethic of time’

105. The last few years have been marked by a thorough assessment of the worrisome trends of our times and the negotiation of international, regional and national action plans to redress these trends before they become irreversible. We have at hand, therefore, the diagnosis and in many cases the cure to the ills of the world. What is needed is to take corrective action before it is too late, action which may be costly or unpopular, but which must transpire nevertheless. The need to improve the world is obviously not new. What is new is the risk of irreversibility and all that it implies for the future of society as we know it. The notion of an ‘ethic of time’ is the moral imperative to take action before reaching the point of no return.
106. Within this notion of time, there is also that of ‘anticipation’ and ‘prevention’. Those in a position to effect change – governments, international organizations, scientific institutions and universities, business and industry – need to shake off inertia and the temptation to find short-term half-way solutions. They need to take up the challenge of doing what all agree needs to be done. While this may seem self-evident, the assessment of progress made five years after the Rio Conference has revealed that in fact little real change has taken place. Despite all efforts and good intentions, we have so far been unsuccessful in coming to terms with the future. The balance sheet of Rio+5 is harsh proof of the futility of shallow responses to complex and grave problems. The question is: How long can we wait to adopt a new ethic for the future, an ethic which will drive us to rectify our current path and to anticipate our future needs, regardless of how broad or how deep the required changes need to be.

Complexity as an ethical issue

107. Problems related to sustainable development are characterized, inter alia, by their complexity. This complexity must be communicated and understood, even though to do so is not easy or necessarily palatable. The simplification of complex issues – so often observed today – is not only fraudulent in that it misrepresents reality, but also irresponsible on the part of those who understand these issues. It is here that the scientific and intellectual communities bear a particular moral responsibility, to ensure that decision-makers as well as the public are fully cognizant of the multiple dimensions of the problems they face. To the extent that knowledge will be the driving force of change, the link between ethics and science will be key to solving many of the problems of the future.

Continuity: the ethical link between past, present, and future

108. Each action ‘today’ is a step towards creating ‘tomorrow’: this has always been true. However, never before has the weight of today – with the full cognizance of those ‘in charge’ – been so determinant of humanity’s future. Nothing less than the viability of our planet is at stake. Humanity is thus in a position of power as well as responsibility not only towards the people alive on Earth today, but also towards generations yet unborn who will have no choice but to accept the reality which we will have created. In considering the ethics of sustainability, our moral responsibility towards future generations is of primordial importance. In living up to this responsibility, we must strive to achieve balance and continuity between meeting the needs of today without compromising those of the future, and without losing the memory of what history has already taught us. Recognizing the intergenerational dimension of sustainability is, of course, not new: the report of the Brundtland Commission marked the beginning of thinking of development in terms of the future as well as the present. What is still lacking is a meaningful adjustment of our way of life to reflect this ethical imperative.
109. In November 1997, UNESCO adopted a Declaration on the Responsibilities of Present Generations Towards Future Generations, which aims to ensure through action today a viable future for the coming generations. The Declaration is the fruit of a co-operative effort undertaken since 1994 by Commandant Cousteau’s team and UNESCO, involving researchers and government experts before the final adoption by UNESCO Member States. Its preamble recalls certain fundamental principles: “the necessity for establishing new, equitable and global links of partnership and intra-generational solidarity [...] the avowal that the fate of future generations depends to a great extent on decisions and actions taken today and that present-day problems, including poverty, technological and material underdevelopment, unemployment and exclusion, discrimination and threats to the environment, must be solved in the interests of both present and future generations”.
110. The 12 articles of the Declaration put forward proposals on what can be done to safeguard the needs and interests of future generations in the fields of education, science, culture and communication. Concerning the environment, for example, Article 4 states that “the present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations an Earth which will not one day be irreversibly damaged by human activity. Each generation inheriting the Earth temporarily shall take care to use natural resources reasonably and ensure that life is not prejudiced by harmful modifications of the ecosystems and that scientific and technological progress in all fields does not harm life on Earth.” The idea is reinforced in Article 5 which stipulates that the present generations “should ensure that future generations are not exposed to pollution which may endanger their health or their existence itself.” Emphasizing the importance of culture, the Declaration considers it the responsibility of the present generation to “identify, protect and safeguard the tangible and intangible cultural heritage and to transmit this common heritage to future generations” (Article 7). This is also the thrust of the articles concerning development and biodiversity. There is, on the one hand, the questions of ensuring “the conditions of equitable, sustainable and universal socioeconomic development” (Article 10) and, on the other, of protecting the “human genome, in full respect of the dignity of the human person” (Article 6).

CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY

111. While culture is elusive to definition, it may be taken to refer to all those mentally generated forms of organization created, preserved and transmitted within a social group or, in a wider context, the human species. Culture includes our whole system of beliefs, values, attitudes, customs, institutions and social relations. It shapes the way we perceive the world (including ourselves) and how we interact with it. To the extent that the global crisis facing humanity is a reflection of our collective values, behavior and lifestyles, it is, above all, a cultural crisis.
112. Culture is, therefore, an inextricable part of the complex notion of sustainability. It can be seen as an arbiter in the difficult trade-offs between conflicting ends with regard to development goals. As pointed out in the report of the World Commission on Culture and Development set up jointly by UNESCO and the United Nations, culture is not only the “servant of ends but … the social basis of the ends themselves”, a factor of development but also the ‘fountain of our progress and creativity’.
113. For example, changing wasteful patterns of consumption, particularly in the industrialized countries, is an area where culture will clearly have an instrumental role to play. Changes in lifestyle will need to be accompanied by a new ethical awareness whereby the inhabitants of rich countries discover within their cultures the source of a new and active solidarity which will make it possible to eradicate the widespread poverty which now besets 80% of the world’s population as well as the environmental degradation and other problems which are linked to it.
114. For all the people of the world, culture is a very practical, concrete determinant of sustainable development. The kind of change required by sustainability implicates each community, each household, each individual. Successful solutions to problems at this level of society will need to be rooted in the cultural specificity of the town or region if the people are to be supportive of and involved in such change.
115. And yet the cultural diversity of humankind is today in jeopardy. In this respect, a parallel can be drawn between biological diversity and cultural diversity, which may be seen as aspects of the same phenomenon. Just as the multitude of diverse species and life forms that constitute the Earth’s biological diversity have evolved to adapt to different geographical and climatic conditions, so the adaptability of the human species is expressed in humanity’s cultural diversity. Just as nature produces a variety of species adapted to their environment, so humankind develops varied cultures in response to local conditions. Cultural diversity may thus be seen as a form of adaptive diversity and, as such, a prior condition to sustainability. The present trend towards globalisation is threatening the richness of human cultures, and has already destroyed many traditional cultures. The argument for halting the loss of species is also applicable to the loss of cultures, and the consequent diminishing of humanity’s collective repertoire for survival.

TOWARDS A COMMON ETHIC

116. Today people are more aware than ever of global realities. We are beginning to understand the impact of our individual and collective actions on ourselves and on the biosphere as a whole. The concept of sustainability is in itself a reflection of this new awareness. Perhaps we are beginning to move towards a new global ethic which transcends all other systems of allegiance and belief, which is rooted in a consciousness of the interrelatedness and sanctity of life. Would such a common ethic have the power to motivate us to modify our current dangerous course? There is obviously no ready answer to this question, except to say that without a moral and ethical foundation, sustainability is unlikely to become a reality.

EDUCATION, ETHICS, AND CHANGE

117. In the early 18th century, the bases of the industrial revolution that was then beginning did not exist: neither mentally, nor socially nor technically. But the vision of a society organized in a new way and operating by new rules took root. At the close of the 20th century, it is clear that societies are beginning to consider the concept of sustainable development and, in some cases, to confront the profound changes that it implies. Fundamental social changes, such as those required to move towards sustainability, come about either because people sense an ethical imperative to change or because leaders have the political will to lead in that direction and sense that the people will follow them. Human societies are skillful at estimating risks, dangers and limitations. They are much less experienced in calculating their own potentialities: their capacities to invent, innovate, discover, reorganize, create, correct and improve. Societies need to be convinced of the need for sustainable development, in order to show their capacity to devise solutions to the problems confronting them.
118. It is in this context that education an public awareness are seen as essential to bringing about conditions conducive to sustainable development. Ethical values, such as equity, are shaped through education, in the broadest sense of the term. Education is also essential in enabling people to use their ethical values to make informed and ethical choices. Over time, education also powerfully affects cultures and societies, increasing their concern over unsustainable practices and their capacities to confront and master change. Indeed, the potential of education is enormous. Not only can it inform people, it can change them. It is not only a means for personal enlightenment, but also for cultural renewal. Education not only provides the scientific and technical skills required, it also provides the motivation, justification, and social support for pursuing and applying them. Education increases the capacities of people to transform their visions of society into operational realities. It is for this reason that education is the primary agent of transformation towards sustainable development. It is also for this reason that society must be deeply concerned that much of the education presently on offer falls far short of what is required. Improving the quality and coverage of education and reorienting its goals to recognize the importance of sustainable development must be among society’s highest priorities.

VI. MOBILIZING FOR ACTION

119. While sustainability is a long-term goal for human society and a process which will necessarily need to take place over time, there is a sense of urgency to make progress quickly before ‘time runs out’. We are therefore faced with a tremendous challenge, a challenge of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity. We are pressed to act even as we are still working out new concepts and new methodologies. We are pushed to change structures and mindsets, yet there is no obvious path, no model which shows the way. Experimentation and innovation are the watchwords, as we search – often simply through trial and error – for adequate solutions. And we must do all this in a climate of sweeping economic, social and political change, while being exhorted to ‘do more with less’.

AN INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION

120. We do have an internationally negotiated framework for action which has been hammered out during the series of United Nations conferences dealing with different aspects of sustainable development, beginning in 1992 with Rio (environment and development), and followed in 1994 by Cairo (population), in 1995 by Copenhagen (social development) and Beijing (women), and in 1996 by Istanbul (human settlements). Each of these conferences, as well as the three conventions on biological diversity, climate change, and desertification, contain explicit recommendations or whole chapters devoted to education and public awareness. The international consensus which these agreements represent is a solid and comprehensive basis for moving forward.
121. At the heart of this new international consensus is a new vision of education, public awareness and training as the essential underpinning for sustainable development, a linchpin to support advances in other spheres, such as science, technology, legislation, and production. Within the action plans, education is no longer seen as an end in itself, but as a means to:

bring about the changes in values, behavior and lifestyle that are needed to achieve sustainable development, and ultimately democracy, human security and peace;
disseminate knowledge, know-how and skills that are needed to bring about sustainable production and consumption patterns and to improve the management of natural resources, agriculture, energy and industrial production;
ensure an informed populace that is prepared to support changes towards sustainability emerging from other sectors.

122. These action plans are to be implemented not only for international institutions such as the United Nations system, but also and most importantly by national and local entities. A range of ‘major groups’ – including women, youth, farmers, parliamentarians, scientists, business and industry and others – are called upon to participate, as well as governments and non-governmental organizations at all levels.

CHAPTER 36 OF AGENDA 21

123. Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, entitled ‘Promoting education, public awareness and training’, provides an umbrella for all action related to education for sustainable development, including that foreseen by the other UN conferences. The chapter is sweeping and comprehensive in scope. In addressing three programme areas (A. Reorienting education towards sustainable development; B. Increasing public awareness; C. Promoting training), Chapter 36 encompasses all streams of education, both formal and non-formal, including basic education and environmental education.
124. After the Rio Conference, governments decided to establish within the United Nations the intergovernmental Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) which meets each year to monitor the implementation of Agenda 21. Chapter 36 was reviewed in 1996 at the fourth session of the CSD, which decided at that time to adopt a special work programme which outlines priorities for action within the vast scope of Chapter 36. Work programmes are initiated by the Commission for themes considered of particular importance and for which it wants some concrete action to be taken on its behalf. In addition to education, the CSD has work programmes on changing consumption and production patterns, technology transfer, and indicators for sustainable development.
125. The work programme of the CSD on Chapter 36 focuses on the priorities outlined in Box 1, and identifies the key actors for each priority. This work programme is now being developed in more detail by UNESCO as Task Manager, for review by the sixth session of the CSD in April 1998. As Task Manager, UNESCO acts as a facilitator and mobilizer within the UN system and with other key institutional partners, governments, major groups and the private sector.
126. At the nineteenth special session of the United Nations General Assembly held in June 1997 to review implementation of Agenda 21 five years after Rio, the work of Chapter 36 was given further impetus by the reaffirmation of governments of the importance of education in achieving sustainability, as reflected in Box 2.

ACTION AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL

127. It is at this level that overall strategies for sustainable development must be given clarity and impetus and the need to integrate education into them in creative and effective ways recognized and acted upon. This involves the national government – which has the leadership role – major NGOs and associations, citizens groups, including corporate citizens, educational and other specialized institutions. Also involved are the agencies and organizations of the United Nations system which are endeavoring to work closely together with national authorities in implementing the recommendations of the various international conferences that have pointed the way towards sustainable development. The media should also be engaged to explain the purposes and goals of programmes and in making government plans and action known to the public.
128. What should be done at the national level?
129. Governments should play a leading role in explaining the vision and benefits of sustainable development to the public. It should do so through all means available, public and private. As already noted, the media have an important role to play, including both the most modern and the most traditional media. The national school curriculum, at all levels, must incorporate the messages of sustainable development. These messages must also be emphasized in pre-service and in-service programmes of teacher training. Specialized institutions of all sorts should be actively involved. The relationship between environmental factors and health problems, for example, should be explained by doctors, nurses and hospitals.
130. Government leaders have to translate the concept of sustainable development into clearly definable steps and goals. Such goals should be set for every sector. There should, for example, be a clear timetable for reorienting the education system with the necessary budget and resources to achieve the goal. In many countries, national strategies or plans for sustainable development are instrumental in mobilizing and focusing efforts around national priorities. Such plans also exist within some regions, such as the Action Plan for the Sustainable Development of the Americas, adopted in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 1996.
131. It is essential that national leaders demonstrate that there is political will to give priority to sustainable development and that they see public awareness raising and education and training as essential means for achieving national objectives.
132. The civil society at all levels, especially the national, should express its support for vigorous action aimed at advancing towards sustainable development. Organizations with specialized interests and competencies should not only support government action, but also monitor and assess them within their areas of competence and keep the public informed of both progress and problems. Teachers associations, for example, should carefully assess the progress being achieved in reorienting the education system towards sustainability and should keep both their members and the public-at-large informed of the situation.
133. Increasingly, the United Nations system recognizes that the national level is where actions in support of sustainable development are most effective. The United Nations system also recognizes that to be effective in promoting such action it must work as a team, not as a collection of individual organizations and agencies, in close cooperation with national partners.

ACTION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

134. The axiom ‘think globally, act locally’ is as true today as ever. The role of the local community is of particular importance because the movement towards sustainable development can not succeed on a ‘top down’ basis alone. What is needed is not only passive consent, but also active involvement on the part of the people. Actors at this level include the community and its leaders, local government, NGOs and associations working in the community, the private sector, local departments and services of national government, and of course people of all ages including youth. In a growing number of communities, local Agenda 21 groups have been established and are taking the lead in mobilizing support for local initiatives. Local needs will evidently determine local priorities and actions. It is important, however, for the local community, in consultation with national leaders and national government, to understand its place in the ‘big picture’ of national and global action for sustainable development.
135. What should be done at the local level?
136. The meaning and vision of sustainable development should be disseminated, discussed and debated in order to promote understanding and win community support. These discussions should take place in all community settings and institutions, including in schools.
137. The need for sustainable development at the local level must be understood. Practices that are not sustainable should be identified. Possibilities for correcting them can then be discussed and explored. It is critically important that the entire community, especially women, be involved in this discussion. Women, especially in rural communities, usually play a key role in the economic as well as in the social and cultural aspects of life. The local community and the household are important entry points for messages on sustainable development, especially for adults and out-of-school children. The schools, too, at all levels, should be actively involved in both discussions about and action to achieve sustainable development.
138. By words and by deeds, the local community can demonstrate its support for action at the national and global level to support sustainability. A willingness to address local problems sends the message that the people are ready and expect the government to act.

BOX 1

WORK PROGRAMME OF THE CSD:
EDUCATION, PUBLIC AWARENESS AND TRAINING*

Priorities Agreed upon by the CSD	Key Actors Cited by the CSD
A. Develop a broad international alliance, taking into account past experience and promoting networks	UNESCO as task manager, in partnership with UNEP, IUCN and other key institutions
B. Integrate implementation of recommendations concerning education, public awareness and training in the action plans of the major UN conferences and conventions	UN system, Governments, major groups
C. Advise on how education and training can be integrated into national educational policies	UNESCO, in cooperation with other governmental and non governmental organizations
D. Refine the concept and key messages of education for sustainable development	UNESCO
E. Advance education and training at national level	Governments, with assistance from the UN system and others
F. Provide financial and technical support	Developed countries, international organizations, private sector
G. Develop new partnership arrangements among different sectors of society. Exploit the new communications technologies. Take into account cultural diversity	Educators, scientists, Governments , NGOs, business and industry, youth, the media, other major groups
H. Work in partnership with youth	Governments and all relevant stakeholders
I. Analyse current investments in education	Bretton Woods institutions
J. Take the preliminary results of the work programme on Chapter 36 into account in the 1997 review	Secretary-General of the United Nations
K. Make relevant linkages with the CSD programme of work on changing production and consumption patterns	UN system, Governments, NGOs

*Summary of the decision of the 4th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (New York, May 1996) concerning Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, prepared by UNESCO as Task Manager.

BOX 2

EARTH SUMMIT + 5

Overall Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of Agenda 21*
CHAPTER 36:
PROMOTING EDUCATION, PUBLIC AWARENESS AND TRAINING

Education increases human welfare, and is a decisive factor in enabling people to become productive and responsible members of society.
A fundamental prerequisite for sustainable development is an adequately financed and effective educational system at all levels, particularly the primary and secondary levels, that is accessible to all and that augments both human capacity and well-being.
The core themes of education for sustainability include lifelong learning, interdisciplinary education, partnerships, multicultural education and empowerment.
Priority should be given to ensuring women’s and girls’ full and equal access to all levels of education and training. Special attention should also be paid to the training of teachers, youth leaders and other educators. Education should also be seen as a means of empowering youth and vulnerable and marginalized groups, including those in rural areas, through intergenerational partnerships and peer education.
Even in countries with strong education systems, there is a need to reorient education, awareness and training so as to promote widespread public understanding, critical analysis and support for sustainable development.
Education for a sustainable future should engage a wide spectrum of institutions and sectors, including but not limited to business/industry, international organizations, youth, professional organizations, non-governmental organizations, higher education, government, educators and foundations, to address the concepts and issues of sustainable development, as embodied throughout Agenda 21.
[Education for a sustainable future] should also include the preparation of sustainable development education plans and programmes, as emphasized in the Commission’s work programme on the subject adopted in 1996.
The concept of education for a sustainable future will be further developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, in cooperation with others.
It is necessary to support and strengthen universities and other academic centres in promoting cooperation among them, particularly cooperation between those of developing countries and those of developed countries.

*Extract from the report of the 19th Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations (June 1997) (A/S-19/29, paragraphs 105-106).

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_a/popups/mod01t05s01.html

War or Peace? The Evolutionary History of Human Nature

News to Know

by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell on August 1, 2013

PHOTO:

Australia’s Tiwi people were the most violent mobile hunter-forager groups in the latest study suggesting that humanity’s evolutionary roots were less violent than previously thought. However, while all people—including the Tiwi and the person in your mirror—have a sinful nature, our rebellious and sometimes violent tendencies have nothing to do with evolution. The Bible explains that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23) who like our first parents Adam and Eve rebel against God. The solution to our sin, our neighbors’ sin, and the Tiwi’s sin problem also has nothing to do with evolution but with the salvation freely available through Jesus Christ. Image: copyright Bill Bachman/Alamy through www.sciencenews.org

Abstract

A recent study by anthropologists expressing a completely different version of mankind’s evolutionary history threatens to return anthropologists to the arena to settle their differences.

War arose recently, anthropologists contend and Human nature may not be so warlike after all

War erupts between anthropologists over the true past of primitive people.

Much ink has been spilled in support of a bloody, war-like past in the evolutionary history of humanity. War is here defined as “banding together in groups to kill people in other populations” and has clear political connotations. A study by anthropologists Douglas Fry and Patrik Söderberg expressing a completely different version of mankind’s evolutionary history threatens to return anthropologists to the arena to settle their differences.

“That’s not war”

Anthropologists Fry and Söderberg of Åbo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland, reporting in the July 19, 2013, Science, express a much different point of view. They examined the recent history of 21 modern mobile hunter-gather tribal groups. Of the 148 acts of violence among these tribes, most were personal acts of revenge or jealousy, with only a third being war-related. “When we looked at all the violent events about 55 per cent of them involved one person killing another. That’s not war,” Fry says. “When we looked at group conflicts, the typical pattern was feuds between families and revenge killings, which is not war either.”1

Of the tribes they sampled, only the Australian Tiwi people ranked as habitually war-like in their estimation. Wars of the Tiwi accounted for a whopping 69 of the 148 violent deaths in the study.

Fry and Söderberg extrapolated their findings to draw conclusions about evolving humanity’s early pre-agricultural days. “It has been tempting to use these [modern] mobile foraging societies as rough analogies of the past and to ask how old warfare is and whether it is part of human nature. Our study shows that war is obviously not very common.”2

Against the Tide

Anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson of Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, says, “Fry and Söderberg go against the popular tide in science . . . and win hands down.” However, eruptions from supporters of the standard evolutionary model dispute the “peaceful primitive” they paint on a variety of grounds.

Wrangham supports the idea that war-like behavior among chimpanzees is a much better model for early man. In 2012 he published a paper proposing the “chimpanzee-based lethal raiding model, asserting that ‘humans evolved a tendency to kill members of other groups.’”3 Wrangham says that the authors of the new study also ignored data on modern hunter-gatherers—including some tribes in the study—documenting high homicide rates from the period prior to the window they targeted.

“Fry and Söderberg use the hunter-gatherer record inappropriately to push the idea that because many modern hunter-gatherers were not seen to have war, ancestral hunter-gatherers also did not often have war,” Wrangham says. He also points out that modern “primitives” are poor models for early evolving human hunter-gatherers because such groups today are more scattered, have agricultural neighbors, and are exposed to other modern influences that may alter their behavior.

Economist Samuel Bowles of New Mexico’s Santa Fe Institute criticizes Fry and Söderberg for cherry-picking comparatively peaceful tribes. Bowles did an analysis of eight violent groups in 2009, but seven of these were not represented in Fry and Söderberg’s sample. Furthermore, some tribes, including the Tiwi—the most violent group in this study and the only one of Bowles’s group represented here—live where government police or military personnel limit conflict, skewing the results still further.

Other Factors

Other anthropologists, such as Penn State’s George Chaplin, point out that war or peace may have been the result of factors having little to do with human nature—factors like population density, availability of resources, and the invention of the bow.

And while Pinker and Diamond of course lobby for their own concept of the “brutal savage” in favor of the “peaceful primitive,” Stephen Cory of Survival International accuses both of them of relying on discredited work by anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon to portray past people as far worse than the present variety. Cory says Pinker “selects highly questionable data”4 to support his position. Cory considers both Diamond’s and Pinker’s work to be “pseudo-scientific.”5

“The vast majority of us assume that war is ancient, that it’s part and parcel of human nature,” contends Fry. “These types of perceptions have very strong influences on what goes on in current-day society. There’s so much discussion of killing and raiding,” he says, that we ignore the historical mechanisms for mediating conflict that he believes every early society had. “Perhaps the main selection pressure was on not killing,” Fry suggests, adding that perhaps the tendency to war is not in our biology, but our sociology.

Factors That Should Be Considered

All the contestants in this battle over the evolutionary underpinnings of war base their ideas on a false foundation: the idea that mankind gradually evolved from ape-like ancestors. In this view primitive people were less evolved and less intellectual than modern man. They furthermore assume that naturalistic processes have been the only factors to shape human nature.

Evolutionary anthropologists generally consider the “hunter-gatherer” to represent the more “primitive” condition of evolving humanity. But this view is false. Biblical history describes Adam’s first “job” to be tending the garden that God provided, and Adam’s sons kept flocks and tilled the ground (Genesis 4:2–3). Genesis chapter 4 describes the establishment of a city, so we see that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was not the original condition of mankind. Following the global Flood, farming resumed as Noah planted a vineyard (Genesis 9:20). We learn of a hunter named Nimrod (Genesis 10:9) about the time of the building of the Tower of Babel, and it is likely that once people dispersed from Babel the foraging/hunting lifestyle became a necessary expedient for many. But such a lifestyle was not a symptom of evolutionary or intellectual inferiority.

Because of the sin of humans, death and violence entered this world, corrupting not only all their descendants but even the animals in the world.

Ironically, Harvard’s Richard Wrangham notes that modern hunter-gatherers may be a poor model for humanity’s past but considers violent chimpanzees to be a good one. The influence of modern neighbors is a factor for which scientists cannot control in studies like these, but at least modern people are all equally human. Humans were created the same day as apes but not from apes. Humans started their history as two sinless people made in the image of God. They—not chimps—rebelled against God. Because of the sin of humans, death and violence entered this world, corrupting not only all their descendants but even the animals in the world. Humans don’t fight because chimps and ancestral apes fight; on the contrary, chimps are violent for the same reason other animals are violent: because mankind’s sin brought violence into the good world God had made, as described in Romans 8:18–25.

It did not take long for Adam’s rebellion against God to wreak havoc on early humans, for the Bible records that Adam’s son Cain murdered his brother Abel due to jealousy. Growing violence is described in the life of Cain’s fifth-generation descendant Lamech (Genesis 4:23–24). Prior to the global Flood, less than 1,700 years after Adam’s sin and Cain’s murder of Abel, the earth was “filled with violence” (Genesis 6:11–13). We do not need evolutionary presumptions to make guesses about man’s rebellious sinful nature and horrid history of homicides and wars. God has told us the truth about our bloody past in the Bible. Thankfully, He has also told us how Jesus Christ entered this violent world and endured a dreadful death in order to secure forgiveness and an eternally peaceful future for us through His sacrifice. Read more about the salvation Christ offers in the gospel.

For more information:

· “The Search for the Historical Adam” and Population Genomics

· Archaeologists Find Farming’s Roots All Over the Fertile Crescent

· How Are Cavemen Different?

· When Did Cavemen Live?

· Who Were Cavemen?

For more information: Get Answers

Footnotes

www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-it-natural-for-humans-to-make-war-new-study-of-tribal-societies-reveals-conflict-is-an-alien-concept-8718069.html

D. Fry and P. Söderberg, “Lethal Aggression in Mobile Forager Bands and Implications for the Origins of War,” Science 341 (19 July 2013): 270–273.

www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-it-natural-for-humans-to-make-war-new-study-of-tribal-societies-reveals-conflict-is-an-alien-concept-8718069.html

https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/war-or-peace-the-evolutionary-history-of-human-nature/

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· Peace or War? How Early Humans Behaved

· By Heather Whipps | March 16, 2006 03:14am ET

· Professor Michael Bisson, archaeologist at Montreal's McGill University, sits with an actor playing the part of a Neanderthal on the set of the BBC documentary "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts," shot in 2001.

· Credit: Michael Bisson

· Depending on which journals you've picked up in recent months, early humans were either peace-loving softies or war-mongering buffoons.

· Which theory is to be believed?

· A little bit of both, says one archaeologist, who warns against making generalizations when it comes to our long and varied prehistory.

· The newest claim concerns Australopithecus afarensis, who lived approximately five million years ago and is one of the first hominids that can be linked directly to our lineage with some certainty. Hardly an expert at tearing other animals limb from limb, scientists say the small and furry creature likely spent most of its time avoiding becoming the lunch of those saber-toothed mammals you see in natural history museums today.

· That's a far cry from the spear-wielding image most of the public has of our earliest ancestors, Robert Sussman of Washington University told an audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science last month.

· "I think that the ‘Man the Hunter' model is so popular because it fits into Western thought so easily. Western humans (especially men) like to think of themselves as completely in charge of their surroundings," Sussman told LiveScience.

· Other research appearing in current scientific journals, however, paints a different picture of early man.

· Groups of humans likely engaged in occasional violent encounters in order to increase their territory, argues Raymond C. Kelly of the University of Michigan in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to Kelly, this may have continued up until about a million years ago, when distance weapons like the spear were invented and increased the risks of attacking other groups.

· How can scientists see things so differently?

· Generalizing

· Human evolution just isn't that simple, says Michael Bisson, professor of anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. People tend to make generalizations about our early ancestors, even though they lived for a period of several million years and include many entirely different species of hominids.

· As for the peaceful nature of Australopithecus afarensis, Bisson wholeheartedly agrees with Sussman.

· "Afarensis was small and completely non-technological. No one has ever argued that they were predatory. They are bipedal, ground-eating apes," Bisson said in an interview.

· Interpretations get trickier, however, as time moves forward and hominids become more prevalent and diverse. When humans began to eat meat and use weapons, around two million years ago, some inter-group killings were almost certainly going on in the cases where individuals encroached on each other's territory.

· Still, at this point hominids are mostly timid scavengers, according to Bisson, not mammoth-hunters.

· "The interesting thing about early hominids and meat-eating is that all of the evidence we have for it is little animals that might have been caught and dismembered by hand and big animals that were scavenged," he said. "It fades in very slowly. After two million [years ago], there's about a half-million-year transition before you get to hunting of some kind."

· Spear or tooth?

· It's around this time where mistakes can be made in the fossil record, experts say. With humans beginning to hunt animals, weapons in hand, it's easier to assume they are also killing each other. Puncture wounds in a skull from an animal bite can be mistaken as injuries from a spear attack, for example.

· The fossil record is not always an easy thing to read, Bisson explained.

· "Cause of death is almost impossible to determine on all of these (fossils)," he said. "They have almost all been subject to scavenging. Since there's no deliberate burial at that time, the bodies end up part of the food chain, so we simply can't say what happened."

· A lot can depend on how archaeological remains are interpreted. Sussman calls this the "5 o'clock news" version of history and science, one that applies to today's humans as easily as those of several million years ago.

· "Human groups are much more likely to live in peace than in war," he explained. "What we usually find is that what is reported or emphasized is any violent encounter that takes place. Thus, instead of using the actual statistics, we emphasize the rare events."

· Context of war

· Bisson agrees that the archaeological remains must be put in context depending on who makes the find, even. He pointed to the discovery of some Australopithecus remains in the 1920s, in what is now Botswana. Along with a skull, the material found included tools made from the bones of gazelles, antelopes and wild boar. The archaeologist working there mistakenly interpreted them as a cache of weapons, while later testing would show the points were used simply for digging in termite holes.

· "A lot of this stuff was written between the First and Second World War," he reasoned. "It was very easy to see warfare and violence as inherent in the human condition during a period when humanity was literally trying to exterminate itself."

· Mainstream media can also have a lot to do with what the public believes as fact.

· "No archaeologist in the last 40 years has bought the ‘Killer Ape' interpretation, but it did get ingrained in popular culture in the intro sequence to the famous Stanley Kubrick film ["2001: A Space Odyssey"]," Bisson said. In the movie, ape-like humans are shown having the eureka moment that bones can be used as weapons, thus evolving to become hunters and killers. "It's a fairly literal dramatization of the hypothesis, complete with leg bones used as clubs."

· Even if early humans were mostly cooperative with each other during the Paleolithic era—a period lasting about two million years—there is plenty of evidence to suggest that (like today), some people were just plain nasty. Cannibalism was clearly practiced in some areas, according to Bisson.

· "We know that there is at least one case of Homo erectus with extensive cuts on the cranium indicating that the person was essentially scalped and the eyes gouged out," he said.

· •Early Man Was Hunted by Birds

· •Gigantic Apes Coexisted with Early Humans, Study Finds

· •Humans vs. Neanderthals: Game Over Earlier

http://www.livescience.com/640-peace-war-early-humans-behaved.html

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Editorial

Nature 457, 763-764 (12 February 2009) | doi:10.1038/457763a; Published online 11 February 2009

Humanity and evolution

See associated Correspondence: Kutschera, Nature 458, 967 (April 2009)

Top of page

Abstract

Charles Darwin's thinking about the natural world was profoundly influenced by his revulsion for slavery.

Online collection.

Although history is not made entirely, or even mostly, by prominent men and women, two great exceptions to that rule were born exactly 200 years ago today, on 12 February 1809: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.

These men shared more than just a birthday, the loss of a mother in childhood and a date with immortality. They shared a position on one of the great issues of their age: the 'peculiar and powerful interest' of their fellow humans bound in slavery. When he circled the world in the 1830s, Darwin's delight at our planet's natural riches was repeatedly poisoned by the cruelties he saw meted out to slaves. "I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country," he wrote at the end of the Voyage of the Beagle.

A new historical study, Darwin's Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (see page 792), seeks to unite Darwin's revulsion at slavery with his scientific work. It was common at the time to believe that the different races of men had been created separate and unequal. But the abolitionist beliefs that Darwin derived from his family, friends and social setting strongly disposed him to the idea that all men — Englishman and Hottentot, freeman and slave — were brothers united in shared ancestry. The ability to see that unity-in-variety was, Desmond and Moore argue, one of the things that allowed him to perceive something similar in the natural world as a whole. As Darwin wrote in an 1838 notebook, "I cannot help thinking good analogy might be traced between relationship of all men now living & the classification of animals." When Darwin sketched life's common descent as a family tree, it was because he believed in a family tree for humans — a belief in common kinship that was not a disinterested scientific finding, but rather an expression of moral and political persuasion. Darwin's thought always extended beyond the natural world. His ideas always had, and were meant to have, a social dimension.

Lessons from history

For all Darwin's noble ambitions, the century and a half since On the Origin of Species have shown how easily his image of a fiercely competitive world can be used to bolster pre-existing positions of power and privilege with buttresses of support that seem founded in an impartial consideration of the natural world. The history of arguments about humanity based on biology — both Darwin's biology and that of others who have come after — provides a sorry rehearsal of pretexts and apologias for everything from unthinking prejudice to forced sterilization and genocide (see page 786).

This history counsels caution as ever deeper and subtler forays into the science of human nature become possible. Deciphering the traces of natural selection in the human genome (see page 776), and dissecting the genetics of neurobiology and behaviour promise a new, more detailed and complex sense of how of how evolution has given human nature a definite biological form — while at the same time throwing new light on just how deeply biology can be influenced by society and culture. This is a rich field for research in both the natural and the social sciences, especially in the form of new collaborations between them (see page 780).

It is vital, however, that this new knowledge should be judged by far higher standards than the ideology passed off as biology that blighted so much of the twentieth century. Scientists have beliefs about what is right and wrong, just like everyone else. And try as they may to put them to one side — some try hard, some not so much — those beliefs will influence the way they do science, and the questions they ask and fail to ask. The scientific enterprise as a whole has to pay particular heed to the risk that preconceptions will creep in whenever what is being said about human nature has political or social implications.

This is particularly the case when science begins to look, as moral psychology is doing, at the mechanisms by which people make decisions about right or wrong. Here it becomes peculiarly hard — and at the same time especially important — to resist the 'naturalistic fallacy' of inferring what ought to be from what is. Science may be able to tell us why some values are more easily held than others. But it cannot tell us whether taking the easy path in terms of which values we espouse is the right thing to do.

In fact, it provides us with a worked example to the contrary. The scientific endeavour itself is founded on values which natural selection would have seemed unlikely to foist on a bunch of violent, gregarious upright apes. Science tries to place no trust in authority; to some extent, society has to. Science tries to define its membership on the basis of inclusion, rather than exclusion; work on altruism suggests, worryingly, that communities more normally need an outgroup to form against. Science insists on the value of truth even when it is inconvenient or harmful; most people's beliefs tend to reinforce their self-interest.

In this unnaturalness lies the great strength of science. It is from this it derives its power as a way of understanding the world. And this is also what allows it, at its best, to resist, not reinforce, mores and prejudices that pose as truths of nature. This demanding, artificial code is what gives engaged, passionate and all-too-fallible human beings the collective power to produce results that are dispassionate, objective and reliable. And if science stays true to that code, it can act as a stern restraint on anyone seeking to go from the study of how people evolved to conclusions about how they should be treated now — to go, that is, against the values that both Darwin and Lincoln espoused.

Science can never prove humans alike in dignity, or equally deserving under the law; that is a truth that cannot be discovered. Like the ideals of malice towards none and charity towards all, it is something that must be made real through communal will.

News

· Dutch University slashes evolution staff

News Features

· The other strand

· Human nature: the remix

Commentary

Should scientists study race and IQ?

· NO: Science and society do not benefit

· YES: The scientific truth must be pursued

Essay

· A flight of fancy

Books & Arts

· A vision of humanity united

· Poems from Darwin's descendant

News & Views

· Unnatural selection

Insight

· Evolution

Articles

· A burst of segmental duplications in the genome of the African great ape ancestor

Naturejobs

· Beyond bones

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457763a.html

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The Evolution of Human Aggression

By Heather Whipps | February 25, 2009 02:59am ET

Everyone has experienced anger at one point in their lives and some of us — males mostly, going by statistics — have channeled that anger into violence, perhaps by throwing a punch during a hockey game or after too many beers at the bar.

Then there's aggression on a much more sinister scale, in the form of murder, wars and genocide. Trying to understand what fuels the different levels of human aggression, from fisticuffs to nation-on-nation battle, has long preoccupied human biologists.

Is there evolutionary reasoning that explains our aggressive tendencies?

This is the central question that anthropologists are now asking as they meet this week at the University of Utah to discuss violence and human evolution. Speakers at the conference, "The Evolution of Human Aggression: Lessons for Today's Conflicts," intend to explore how the long process of human evolution has shaped the various ways we display aggression in modern society.

Though it may seem easier to divide the debate into two camps — those who think evolution has made humans naturally peaceful and those who think we're more naturally prone to violence, the real answer probably lies somewhere in between, said conference organizer Elizabeth Cashdan, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.

"There is plenty of evidence to support both claims: violence, reconciliation, and cooperation are all part of human nature," said Cashdan, who thinks these wide-ranging emotions all evolved because they benefitted humans in some way in the past.

Animal instincts

Evolution can explain why humans exhibit aggression because it is a primal emotion like any other, experts say.

"Emotions (including revenge, spite, happiness, anger) must have evolved because most of the time they motivate fitness-enhancing behaviors, and that is surely true for humans as for other animals," said Cashdan.

Just as compassion for your offspring increases your genes' chance of survival, violent tendencies may have been similarly useful for some species, agreed biologist David Carrier, also of the University of Utah.

"Aggressive behavior has evolved in species in which it increases an individual's survival or reproduction and this depends on the specific environmental, social, reproductive, and historical circumstances of a species. Humans certainly rank among the most violent of species," Carrier said, adding that we also rank among the most altruistic and empathetic.

In true nature-nurture fashion, though some kind of genetic preprogramming for violence may exist in humans as a result of our evolution, it is the specific environment that decides how, or whether, that biological determination is triggered, scientists say.

"Biologists speak of 'norms of reaction,' which are patterned responses to environmental circumstances. For example, some male insects are more likely to guard their mates when there are fewer females in the population, hence fewer other mating opportunities. Natural selection didn't just shape a fixed behavior, it shaped the norm of reaction — the nature of the response," said Cashdan.

In other words, though aggression for aggression's sake is rare, an intricate set of conditions could, conceivably, drive most people to violence.

Instead of competing for food, which has become relatively easy to attain in most parts of the world, today we compete for material resources, said Cashdan, and some individuals lack or lose that switch that tells us when enough is enough. Gang violence is a good example of competition for resources gone haywire, though while a gang member's desire for more things, money or partners causes problems now, it may have been the key to their survival 100,000 years ago.

Our emotions make us unique

While human aggression is a naturally evolved phenomenon we have in common with other animals, the difference between human and animal violence comes down to the complexity of the emotion driving it, said Cashdan.

"Humans are unique in the complexity of their social relationships and their highly developed social intelligence. Revenge and spite are quintessential social emotions and so are not likely to be found in many, if any, other species," she said.

Aggression in few animals goes beyond protecting one's territory, mates, offspring and food — there is some evidence that domestic dogs and chimpanzees do hold grudges, said Carrier — but human violence has evolved to stem from less typical sources.

"For example revenge killings, and the cultural institutions that support and restrain it,
shape human aggression in new ways," said Cashdan. The intelligent reasoning that lets most of us override any innate desire to be violent also makes some people, such as parents that kill their children, as well as institutions justify violence illogically, experts say.

Worry over the future

An understanding of the evolutionary roots of human aggression could help institutions make better policy decisions, according to experts.

"Evolution didn't just shape us to be violent, or peaceful, it shaped us to respond flexibly, adaptively, to different circumstances, and to risk violence when it made adaptive sense to do so. We need to understand what those circumstances are if we want to change things," said Cashdan.

Though conflicts like the ones that occurred in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s may seem a distant memory, the tipping point between peace and that sort of violence is a finer line than we think, said Carrier.

"My personal opinion is that Western society, as a whole, is in mass denial about the magnitude of the problem that violence represents for the future. We are peace-loving and want to believe that the violence and transgressions of the past will not return, but recent history and current events illustrate how easy it is for humans to respond with interpersonal and intergroup violence," he said.

This will be especially important in places where key natural resources are becoming scarce, said Carrier, who warned that "if basic resources such as food and clean water become more limiting, as many scientists believe is likely to happen as a result of climate change and energy shortages, then the environmental and social drivers of violence may become more difficult to control."

· Humans Crave Violence Just Like Sex

· Peace or War? How Early Humans Behaved

· Evolution News and Information

Heather Whipps is a freelance writer with an anthropology degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her history column appears regularly on LiveScience. [History Column archive]

http://www.livescience.com/5333-evolution-human-aggression.html

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Is this the generation that eradicates extreme poverty?

Postponed action on poverty would have a devastating affect on the "bottom billion".

Written by

Helen Clark Administrator, UN Development Programme

Published Saturday 23 January 2016

The year 2015 was a once in a generation event for the world’s citizens and for the planet. In one year, a new blueprint was created to tackle the world’s thorniest issues. Issues that affect all of us, like climate change, sustainable development and natural disasters.

From the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, from the Sustainable Development Summit in New York to the climate conference in Paris, it was a year in which the United Nations, in the words of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, proved it is able “to deliver hope and healing to the world.”

Do global agreements, like those mentioned above, matter?

Yes, they do.

In September, world leaders came together to unanimously agree to a new set of goals that would guide sustainable development for the next 15 years. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replace the previous goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs were created to tackle some of the most challenging issues then faced in development; eradicating poverty; enrolling children in school; ending hunger; turning the tide on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB; and reducing infant, child, and maternal deaths.

There has been significant progress in the areas targeted by the MDGs - progress which would have been unlikely without the focus, funding, and action around these goals.

Yet there is also much unfinished business, and the new global development agenda must overcome some major challenges:

· While the target of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 was met, it is not much fun being in the other half - the so-called "bottom billion," for many of whom life has scarcely changed.

· Child poverty is rising in 18 out of 28 EU countries, and has been linked by the International Labour Organisation to falling levels of maternal and child benefits. The era of austerity has not been kind to social protection systems in many countries.

· Gender inequality remains pervasive - despite the fact that societies are the poorer if they fail to tap the full potential of half their population. Where women are "out of sight out of mind", disempowered and under-represented in decision-making circles, meeting their needs often isn't a priority.

· The rapid pace of environmental degradation is damaging the ecosystems on which human survival and well-being depend. Species loss undermines livelihoods, health, and food and water security. While the damage done to natural ecosystems affects us all, it does affect the poorest and most vulnerable the most.

· There cannot be sustainable development without peace and stability - alas, right now the world suffers a big deficit in that respect.

Catastrophic emergencies created by war and conflict are overwhelming the international community's capacity to respond. Humanitarian relief spending has trebled in the last decade. On current trends there will never be enough money to meet the demand for relief.

It is critical that we work to reduce the demand for humanitarian support by investing in building more inclusive and peaceful societies and in disaster risk reduction. The new global agenda calls for access to justice for all, for accountable, inclusive, and effective institutions at all levels, and for serious action to tackle inequalities.

The Sustainable Development Goals are universal goals, applying to countries at all stages of development. This highlights the fact that sustainable development in the 21st Century isn't something that happens to somebody else, somewhere else. We all have a stake in it - and every country has work to do to progress towards it.

But the best agendas are mere words on paper unless they can be implemented.

The good news is that our world has more wealth, more knowledge, and more technologies at its disposal than ever before. The challenges we face are mostly human induced. We can tackle them, but not if we keep doing business as usual and expecting different results.

Radical adjustments are needed in the way we live, work, produce, consume, generate our energy, transport ourselves, and design our cities. There is capacity to be built. Governance to improve. Sweeping policy, legislative, and regulatory changes are needed. A commitment to building lasting peace and stability based on peaceful and inclusive societies is essential.

Strong leadership at all levels is needed to realize the better world envisaged in the Sustainable Development Goals. First, leadership is needed on finding the funding required. Money isn't everything, but it certainly helps, including through Official Development Assistance.

Second, broad coalitions of leaders are needed. Clearly governments acting alone can't achieve the goals envisaged by the new global agenda. Their leadership is vital, but insufficient - broader leadership is also required. That includes leadership from civil society - from our NGOs, scientists, researchers, and academia; and from local government and the private sector too.

Third, leadership is needed more than ever from the multilateral system - including from the United Nations Development Programme. Our job is to support countries to eradicate poverty, and to do that in a way that simultaneously reduces inequality and exclusion, and avoids wrecking the ecosystems on which life depends.

The new Sustainable Development Goals will guide development for the next 15 years, offering a chance to meet the global citizenry's aspirations for a more peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable future.

Yet we will be striving to achieve the Global Goals at a time when volatility is the new normal. The realities of the world we live in must be acknowledged, and more pre-emptive investment must be made in risk-informed development:

· The growing inequalities and unchecked discrimination which undermine social cohesion need to be tackled head on.

· Environmental degradation must be arrested.

· The downward spiral into conflict, instability, and crisis must be halted, and effective strategies based on building resilience must be adopted as ways of coping with protracted crises.

Ours is the last generation that can head off the worst effects of climate change. Postponed action will be too late. Ours is also the first generation that can eradicate extreme poverty and secure a more hopeful future for all. For this fearless leadership from us all is required.

Author: Helen Clark is the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and the former Prime Minister of New Zealand. She is participating in the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/is-this-the-generation-that-eradicates-extreme-poverty

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Monday, June 6, 2016

SPIRITUALITY, RELIGION, CULTURE, AND PEACE: EXPLORING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR INNER-OUTER PEACE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Linda Groff California State University

Paul Smoker Antioch College