A Vision of Peace

(This is the vision statement for the World Beyond War white paper A Global Security System: An Alternative to War. Continue to preceding | following section.)

We will know we have achieved peace when the world is safe for all the children. They will play freely out of doors, never worrying about picking up cluster bombs or about drones buzzing overhead. There will be good education for all of them for as far as they are able to go. Schools will be safe and free from fear. The economy will be healthy, producing useful things rather than those things which destroy use value, and producing them in ways that are sustainable. There will be no carbon burning industry and global warming will have been halted. All children will study peace and will be trained in powerful, peaceful methods of confronting violence, should it arise at all. They will all learn how to defuse and resolve conflicts peacefully. When they grow up they may enlist in a shanti sena, a peace force that will be trained in civilian-based defense, making their nations ungovernable if attacked by another country or a coup d’etat and therefore immune from conquest. The children will be healthy because health care will be freely available, funded from the vast sums that once were spent on the war machine. The air and water will be clean, soils healthy and producing healthy food because the funding for ecological restoration will be available from the same source. When we see the children playing we will see children from many different cultures together at their play because restrictive borders will have been abolished. The arts will flourish. While learning to be proud of their own cultures–their religions, arts, foods, traditions, etc.–these children will realize they are citizens of one small planet as well as citizens of their respective countries. These children will never be soldiers, although they may well serve humanity in voluntary organizations or in some kinds of universal service for the common good.

(Continue to preceding | following section.)

 

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