Well, the nice thing is, if you go looking for peace, you'll generally find that the peacemakers, bless them, are happy to welcome you. :)
Let's see; there's Christian Peacemaker Teams. (http://www.cpt.org/)
There's also the Non-Violent Peaceforce. (http://www.npcanada.org/)
Or you can always consult your local Quaker (http://ottawa.quaker.ca/).
Or swing by PERC (http://www.perc.ca/) and look up Mike Kulbars. Telling him I sent you, while not strictly necessary, will probably amuse him. :)
Any of these will get you going in the direction you want.
One of the hardest things about much of this is that it appears as insubstantial as a soap bubble in the face of all the hard-edged violence out there; believing in its potency isn't easy.
That's not "one of the hardest things". That is THE hard thing. Always.
Believing in its potency isn't enough. Though it is worth noting that if violence had as much power to do good in the world as we like to think it did we'd be in Paradise by now.
Waging peace doesn't necessarily work the way you think it will, and it doesn't always work for _you_.
The example you cited is well-chosen; if you do a really good job of making peace, everybody will move on without thanking you, because they will think they did it all themselves. The advanced class is realising that they did, and being okay with that. Peacemaking is sort of reverse kaijitsu, actually; it's the art of using other people's strength FOR them. What you did there is called them to attend; the rest was theirs.
Dropping your ego in public is a powerful act, moreso for you because you are male, and it's the heart of non-violent conflict resolution and intervention.
Dropping your weapons and standing up open handed is another powerful act.
Either can make people consider more clearly the environment that they are in. A lot of nonviolent intervention lies in helping people to notice that they are not in as much danger as they feel like they are in by showing your own willingness to be vulnerable and engaged. If that makes sense.
But still. This shit can get you killed. On the other hand, THAT shit (violence) can also get you killed, as you know, and furthermore if I'm hearing you right you've come to where you don't want it in your life anymore.
I didn't become a pacifist by intellectual convincement, not really. There was some of that, a lot of it really, and I can make you a pretty good intellectual case, though probably not in an lj comment's space, but it came along in odd chunks, more or less as I needed it and could absorb it.
I became a pacifist the way some people go to AA: This isn't working and it's injuring me and it's injuring the people who deal with me and it doesn't really matter if I think I CAN quit or that quitting will work, it's a matter of knowing that I CAN'T continue and continuing will NOT work.
And that's all I've got for now. Ask me another question and it'll start me off on a different chunk of it, probably. But here is some interesting reading:
Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to. (http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/02/liberating_iraq.html)
In insomnia there is wisdom?
Let's see; there's Christian Peacemaker Teams. (http://www.cpt.org/)
There's also the Non-Violent Peaceforce. (http://www.npcanada.org/)
Or you can always consult your local Quaker (http://ottawa.quaker.ca/).
Or swing by PERC (http://www.perc.ca/) and look up Mike Kulbars. Telling him I sent you, while not strictly necessary, will probably amuse him. :)
Any of these will get you going in the direction you want.
One of the hardest things about much of this is that it appears as insubstantial as a soap bubble in the face of all the hard-edged violence out there; believing in its potency isn't easy.
That's not "one of the hardest things". That is THE hard thing. Always.
Believing in its potency isn't enough. Though it is worth noting that if violence had as much power to do good in the world as we like to think it did we'd be in Paradise by now.
Waging peace doesn't necessarily work the way you think it will, and it doesn't always work for _you_.
The example you cited is well-chosen; if you do a really good job of making peace, everybody will move on without thanking you, because they will think they did it all themselves. The advanced class is realising that they did, and being okay with that. Peacemaking is sort of reverse kaijitsu, actually; it's the art of using other people's strength FOR them. What you did there is called them to attend; the rest was theirs.
Dropping your ego in public is a powerful act, moreso for you because you are male, and it's the heart of non-violent conflict resolution and intervention.
Dropping your weapons and standing up open handed is another powerful act.
Either can make people consider more clearly the environment that they are in. A lot of nonviolent intervention lies in helping people to notice that they are not in as much danger as they feel like they are in by showing your own willingness to be vulnerable and engaged. If that makes sense.
But still. This shit can get you killed. On the other hand, THAT shit (violence) can also get you killed, as you know, and furthermore if I'm hearing you right you've come to where you don't want it in your life anymore.
I didn't become a pacifist by intellectual convincement, not really. There was some of that, a lot of it really, and I can make you a pretty good intellectual case, though probably not in an lj comment's space, but it came along in odd chunks, more or less as I needed it and could absorb it.
I became a pacifist the way some people go to AA: This isn't working and it's injuring me and it's injuring the people who deal with me and it doesn't really matter if I think I CAN quit or that quitting will work, it's a matter of knowing that I CAN'T continue and continuing will NOT work.
And that's all I've got for now. Ask me another question and it'll start me off on a different chunk of it, probably. But here is some interesting reading:
Violence is not a way of getting where you want to go, only more quickly. Its existence changes your destination. If you use it, you had better be prepared to find yourself in the kind of place it takes you to. (http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/02/liberating_iraq.html)