Envisioning a peaceful world through sustainability

Last summer we traveled from Bloomington to San Francisco, mostly on bicycle, to interview people who are making the choice to become more sustainable.

There were businesspeople, homemakers, teachers, journalists, architects, farmers and foresters.

The people we met ran the gamut, but they were all trying to make a difference.

Monday night, as part of Peace Week, we’re going to give a talk about how we can all start to make a difference and why it’s important to make those choices.

In our minds, it comes down to this: we won’t achieve peace in the world until our lives have become sustainable.

The two go hand in hand. 

The good news is that living sustainably is something we have the tools and expertise to do. It’s not easy, and it requires conscious effort, but it is possible. 

As we have gone along our journey of trying to become sustainable, we’ve even found it to be rewarding and challenging in a way that has enriched our lives beyond our expectations.

But let’s talk briefly about peace and violence. There are two kinds of violence: personal and structural violence. 

Personal violence is the direct violence we often associate with fights or wars. Someone hits or shoots or stabs someone else. This is something we should do all in our power to eliminate in our world. 

But we often overlook structural, or indirect, violence.

To simplify a bit, structural violence occurs when a person’s potential is hampered by societal, institutional, environmental or cultural factors.  When one segment of society is limited to substandard opportunities, as in the segregated educational system that preceded the civil rights movement in the US, they are the victims of structural violence.
 
We desire a positive peace; where there is an absence of both personal and structural violence.

The case for sustainability comes in here.  The business-as-usual model is producing all kinds of unsustainable outcomes in our world.  Climate change, peak oil, persistent chemical pollutants, man-made droughts ... the list goes on and on.  All of these environmental problems are rooted in choices we’ve made as people. 

It’s important to realize that repercussions are being felt already.  Farmers on marginal cropland have been forced out by the droughts that are exacerbated by global warming.  Watersheds poisoned by agricultural runoff are, in turn, poisoning and killing people all over the world.  This is structural violence brought on by our collective choices to live unsustainably. 

The good news is that we can change.  As we have traveled across the country on bicycles interviewing hundreds of visionary and common-sense people, we’ve learned a few things on how we as individuals and collective society can shift to a more sustainable, peaceful world. 

Join us Monday night to learn more about our connections to the world and get tools to bring about positive peace and change to our homes, businesses, institutions, and greater world.    


Andy Davis and Melissa Henige 
“Envisioning a Peaceful World Through Sustainability”
7 p.m. Monday
Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center