Peace, Justice & Conflict Transformation

Too often in our world, we think of peace as the absence of war. We allow ourselves to believe a false narrative that the most conducive way of solving our problems is through violence and the oppression of our enemies. We often fail to realize beyond our own small, closed space of reality that there 7 billion others out there who are equally as bound to this world as we are, just as there were billions before us, and just as there will be billions after.

We fool ourselves into believing that we must triumph over others in order to get what we want. It is often the case that we attempt to justify our wars, citing the good of our people, or the evil of theirs. As I explain these things, what is coming to your mind? Do my words illicit any emotion inside of you? At one point in time, I believed the idea of peace for peace's sake to be impossible, a dream drowned by humanity's violent, blinded pass. But as I have grown into the man I am today, I have seen that the hope of a world of peace can be found in every single one of us.

I do believe that we are all very "different" and that these differences can lead to conflict, but to believe that this is what defines us is pure fallacy. We all feel pain. We all feel love. We are all human, standing under the same beating sun, on the same giant rock, in the same giant sky. We are all headed in the same direction, from dawn to dust. When we all can accept, like many of us have done, the fact that what makes us different makes us beautifully similar, that when we come together as the one people that we are we can do anything, and that violence and war are man made, and not the result of something inherent to us all, we will live in a world of peace.

But where do we begin? How can this be done? Just as our journeys begin with one step, peace begins with one person. Let the ideology of peace inside of yourself, and soon it will be passed on to those who surround you. Go out into this world with no intention of spreading the message, but merely acting under the principle of peace, and you will soon realize that peace is born more out of what you do, and less by what you say. You will soon see that the love for humanity that you hold will spread like wildfire, consuming hate from within. Live by and understand that peace is more than just the absence of war, violence and conflict, but an ideology that opens humanity to endless possibility.

Blake Gerstner
Peace, Justice and Conflict Transformations Program Scholar/Intern