Negative Peace, Positive Peace

Negative Peace, addressing conflict by way of use of arms, killing, threats simply further breeds a vicious cycle of unrepentant and unending war. Eventually, everything leads to the peace of the cemeteries. Everything is silent, because everyone is dead. Yet, the SOURCES of conflict remain to fester, endlessly haunting, wreaking havoc on everyone. That's what's happening in the case of Syria now. Ralph Summy, I think correctly surmises that the lynchpin that needs to be overcome by all parties concerned is MISTRUST/DISTRUST.  Unless, mistrust/distrust is overcome by the stakeholders, Positive Peace won't be possible. Positive Peace entails an inherent goodwill, honesty, courage, and reasonableness from parties involved in a conflict. For such, Positive peace therefore isn't any less taxing than negative peace. Imagine, to be required to have the goodwill not to kill one who may want to kill you even if you have the capacity to do so. Imagine, to humbly listen to the complaints of the other about your mistakes and the sins you committed on the other, and for the other party/ies to also have the same humility as they listen to you when it's your time to enunciate. Imagine, to fearlessly and  squarely face conflict and the people who are supposed to have caused, meant you harm while at the same time to have that calmness to unflinchingly engage with them in  dialogue. Imagine, not to let your irascible propensities take over, but instead to have your reason guide and enlighten you, as you and the other parties navigate your multilateral way through the maze of long-held prejudices, biases, animosities, all because you all would want to eventually find consensus which you know won't be a once-and-for-all magic antidote; i.e., you know that such consensus is but one of those which will need to be continually, persistently nurtured, not only temporarily, but permanently. And, all these, with the overarching awareness that you and the others may not actually be able to enter the fabled land of milk and honey yourselves; that you're but just one of the many still to come series of baton bearers who won't actually be the ones crossing the finish line. Positive Peace, anyone?

STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE VIA THE PDAF CAPER INFLICTS DAMAGE ON REAL, CONCRETE PERSONS

The Napoles-PDAF scandal is among the blatant manifestations of structural violence which plagues our society. Adding insult to injury is the alleged involvement of supposedly the people's representatives, yes, the senators and congressmen. But the worst thing of all is that the structural violence also translates to personal violence. Farmers who are supposed beneficiaries of the absconded largesse by bogus NGOs, aren't anonymous, faceless, abstract beings. They also are real, concrete, flesh-and-blood, hungry, and angry human beings. For every peso which the PDAF thieves indulged themselves in, are real persons whose children have missed real breakfasts, lunches, dinners; children who  haven't been able to attend school anymore because their farmer parents who needed real help were simply used as anonymous names to fill-up the PDAF scammers' infernal documents; of real people who may have committed suicide, or have gone insane due to all the stress, pains, sufferings, of all the frustrations after all their travails due to the El Ninos, Pablo, Sendong, Ondoy, Habagat, etc., which in turn were used by the soulless syndicates as rationale to corner all those PDAF monies.  For all these, and MORE, thus the government has ALL the DUTY to make sure that the PDAF schemers and all their collaborators, conduits, allies, protectors, purveyors, and what not, in the PDAF crime must be brought (even dragged) into this hallowed country's courts of justice, and meted out with all the liabilities and accountabilities which their horrendous actions mercilessly and unconscionably inflicted against us, THE PEOPLE, Pnoy's real BOSS. 

POSITIVE PEACE; SOCIAL JUSTICE

Discussed with my Philosophy of Peace students today Ralph Summy's and Johan Galtung's notion of POSITIVE PEACE, i.e., the situation where the basic needs (survival/subsistence, well-being, identity, and freedom) of every individual in society are adequately met. The other name of positive peace is SOCIAL JUSTICE. And of course, all these are a VISION, something which we always aspire for, but also something which realistically we won't be able to witness to come into FULL FRUITION in our lifetime. I believe that one archetype of a leader who wholeheartedly embraced the idea of the unreachable-but-worth-pursuing VISION was Moses. he concretely, flesh and blood struggled for his own people, but he himself wasn't allowed to enter the land flowing with milk and honey. He humbly accepted his role and thus didn't usurp the power which he clearly knew to have come from a power greater than him; and that such power was for the sake of a people whose welfare and well-being are greater than that of his own.