In terms of resolution and true peace, those who understand crisis in the psychological sense realize it is a necessary and desired stage. So creating crises in order to foster resolution is what I think you’re getting at here.

To me peace is much like love. Love is both a noun and a verb.

When I tried to define love I came up with this ” compassionate action “. If a flower is dying, you may feel compassion for it, but it is when you get the water from the well and bring it to the plant and water everyday that you fully embody loving that plant.

Peace is both a noun and a verb.

Peace is a level of consciousness ( individual, group and collective). Peace also is used to define the level of conflict within and between people and groups of people.

It seems pretty easy to recognize someone being at peace but much harder to recognize and agree with people in their attempts to doing peace ( unless they are meditating). Dave holds the belief that Obama would lessen conflict between nations if he would only enter into more non violent conflict with Dave’s choice of the most responsible for conflict : the hawks at home and in Israel and the autocrats in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Dave writes ” so that we can focus less on demonizing our enemies and dominating them, and less on securing our own markets and narrowly conceived interests, ”

I ask you the readers wether Dave is not also guilty of demonizing his personally selected enemies of peace. His choice : the hawks of the US and Israel and the autocrats aof Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Again, it is in the eye of the beholder. I could argue that Dave is being narrow in his approach which are reflecting promoting his interests and dominating his enemies.

Perhaps someone else in the world has a different set of demons than Dave for Obama to confront ?

I do not know what will bring peace to our world, I admit it. That said, I found nothing in Dave’s presciption for Obama that would bring the world any closer to peace. I do on the other hand respect Dave’s rght to vent.

It’s a frustrating gig trying to do peace.

God bless the peacemakers

As one who is constantly accused of being a “negative naysayer,” mainly by the owning-class positivity cult (See Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America), I’ll answer your questions simply:

I was on the receiving end of all that stuff you said while I struggled to put food in my mouth (and later with my wife and kids into “our” mouths), tried to work ethically in increasingly unethical workplaces, tried to be true to what I know could be and should be, trying to form, then advocate for, a new bottom line (Thanks Rabbi Lerner for articulating what I always knew in my guts was right), and trying not to get sent off to the war-du-jour or become homeless. I succeeded in not getting sent off to war but I failed at avoiding becoming homeless… the subprime did me in. Six months on the street with my family… not so great. meanwhile the owning-ruling class occupying both parties pretty much violated every value I’ve ever held and breeched my trust and the Constitutional contract with all of us, and made boatloads of money doing it.

So, what was your question or concern really all about?

I like, a lot, what you say about peace. Last June we did a writing evening about peace with Tikkun Toronto, and the big breakthrough in planning was the realization that like everything else there’s a dark side to peace. There’s peace between countries, as the Chinese want peace in Tibet. There’s peace in the family, which w’re all encouraged to keep by not raising certain issues. If peace becomes another idol (why won’t those pesky Palestinians stop protesting and be peaceful?) it’s as false as any idol. All goals, most of all the valid ones, need to be sen in a state of dynamic tension with each other, not as absolute monoliths.

http://thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c37_a3572/News/National.html

“Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is its CREATIVE and constructive resolution without dishonesty, oppression or violence.” Aminah Carroll

“Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is its constructive resolution without dishonesty, oppression or violence.” Aminah Carroll

First of all, there are an awful lot of people here on one of my favorite blog spots who actually must think Obama IS the Messiah. My questions to you negative naysayers are these:

Are you among the too many who watched while others received the Nobel Prize for signing bits of paper and making promsies never kept. Are you now among the lots of negative voices on the far right and shamefully, on the Left, decrying this great honor given to our remarkable and honorable president–the first global leader who is a peace builder, though not a pacifist, since the first George Bush.remember, george Bush left us stronger in the Middle East and among arab nations a friend–or have you forgotten so soon–because he is not a “liberal”?

Where have you been while we have been increasing the National debt by billions to murder innocent civilians around the globe because they are a religion that became verboten under GW Bush?
Where have you been while we have been spending trillions to enrich a global oligarchy of world powermongers who have no loyalty to anything but their own pocket and continued instability at home and around the world to pad profits? And who are even now stymying every effort of Obam’s to erein in our Congress which is in the pocket of the lobbyists?

Where were you while your brothers and sisters in America have been dying for scores of years in this rich nation because the basic decencies that allow an individual to have a successful life: food, shelter, education, health care and work were all placed out of reach of the poor, working class, and working poor middle class?
Where were you while double income upprer middle class plutocrats made it necessary for the working class to ahve two fulltime wages , the single wage earners in the middle class to work two jobs, and the poor and those who could no longer put food on their tables turned to black market crime and attendent violence all across America as not the economic engine of choice but of necessity?

President Obama offers us the capacity and the means to reclaim democracy and scuttle plutocracy; to build a better world instead of ever bigger burying grounds for the Common Good.

Let’s recognize his capacity and our need to support him not to bealbor him because he is the only one who really knows what is going on at the top and he is doing his best as an honest ethical compassionate and brave human being to lead and guide people who are corrupt, cynical, detached, and highly judgemental…on all sides of the political specctrum…many of whom could never have achieved a high school diploma if placed in his baby shoes.