“Peace on Earth” and “Good Will to Men” (cartoons anyone?)

I just came across these great cartoons. The first one was called “Peace on Earth”. According to Wikipedia:

“Peace on Earth is a 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon short subject directed by Hugh Harman, about a post-apocalyptic world populated only by animals.

Two young squirrels ask their grandfather on Christmas Eve who the “men” are in the lyric “Peace on Earth, good will to men.” The grandfather squirrel then tells them a rotoscoped history of the human race, focusing on the neverending wars men waged. Ultimately the wars do end, with the death of the last man on Earth, a soldier. The cartoon features an original song written to the tune of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”.

According to Hugh Harman’s obituary in the New York Times[1] and Ben Mankiewicz, host of Cartoon Alley, the cartoon was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize However, it is not listed in the official Nobel Prize nomination database. Mankiewicz also claimed that the cartoon was the first about a serious subject by a major studio. In 1994, it was voted #40 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. It was also nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons), but lost to The Ugly Duckling, a Silly Symphonies short by Disney.”

The second cartoon, “Good Will to Men” was actually a remake of the first, done by the Hanna-Barbara animation studio. According to information I found here, the second film was done…”in Cinemascope widescreen format, and updated with some even more sophisticated methods of killing each other since 1939 (such as nukes).”

These are really very interesting cartoons, both apocalyptic and uplifting.

IGbarb says: Check it[them] out!

Some peace quotes–and thoughts about them

Over the centuries many, many wonderful and inspiring things have been said about peace. You’d think these wonderful thoughts would have been more taken to heart. I mean, consider this from the Buddha:

“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.

or, this one from Albert Einstein:

“Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”

And old Ben Franklin said these famous words (though I’m not sure I entirely agree):

“There was never a good war or a bad peace.”

Martin Luther King had much to say about the subject, of course. For instance:

“One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.”

Going “way back” again, here is one I like very much is from the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse:

“If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.”

And, finally, from the New Testament:

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.”

There are literally thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) more, and I encourage you to find some that inspire you. Everybody should read and think about these “gems”, and pass them on. It is interesting that most if not all the great thinkers through the ages have been, at least at some point in their lives, for peace; and yet we still hear about how Utopian and unrealistic “dreams” of peace are.

(the quotes above can all be found here)

You may have wondered…

…who had the URL www.worldpeace.org ? Well it turns out it is The World Peace Prayer Society. If you go to there homepage you will immediately see a very nice video of children from many cultures saying (in various languages): “May peace prevail on earth!” (which is, in fact, their prayer for peace). This video was on CNN, but I have to admit I don’t remember it. It is touching and the children are beautiful. You can learn about the origins and history of the organization here — they are non-profit and non-sectarian, btw.

This organization put up what they call a “peace pole” in memory of 9/11 and on the site people have added their thoughts about the tragedy and prayers for peace. You can add one if you want. You can also get and put up your own “peace pole” with the prayer on it. The site says there are more than 200,000 in places all over the world

You can also see the prayer–”May peace prevail on earth”–in many languages, and read about the organization’s activities at the UN and elsewhere.

I like this short prayer…you can think about and say it many times during a day. Here’s an idea: say it (even just to yourself) whenever a thought of war comes into your mind.

May peace prevail on earth!

Peace Murals

I just ran across references to peace murals in various places, and found some pictures. These are great!

Have a look at:

the Images of Peace Mural in the San Fernando Valley (LA)

these done at schools

this one in Northern Ireland

this one from the Levellers site.

and this one from the Adelaide, Australia, Civic Centre

This is just a very small sampling (I bet you can find many more).

This is such a good idea! We have plenty of images of war all around us, and there is a crying need for more images of peace.

Is war good for the economy? It depends…

Some people think that war, meaning really the arms industry is good for the economy, and they usually have figures to prove it. This is probably, seen from a long run perspective, a mistaken idea. There is no doubt that if your economy has a lot of military oriented production and you reduce that production, jobs will be lost, with all the knock on effects that entails. However, it is not entirely reasonable to justify arms spending in economic terms. Why? simple. If you invest in arms, you get some economic growth, sure; but eventually you end up with a product that doesn’t produce anything else (a tank, a plane, etc…) and becomes obsolete. However, if you take the same amount of capital and invest in almost anything else, you produce something that contributes to the production of other things–like cars that help people go to work, etc…

Now, this is not an argument against military spending. Rather it is an argument against justifying military spending in economic terms. Military spending should be justified (only) in regard to security needs.

Hold on there, a hypothetical critic might say…isn’t it true that great innovations have come from military spending? The answer is yes, but you could have gotten the same (and probably even better) if you had adequately funded “civilian” research. Now here is the crux…in the U.S. (and some other countries), we don’t like the idea of the government funding a lot of research, except in regard to the military. So, naturally, much is discovered where much is invested. This seems to confirm the idea that we “need” military spending for economic and technological reasons…heck, the internet grew out of a Department of Defense project, didn’t it? So, military spending is sometimes a substitute for a more coherent and balanced government industrial policy.

There are many, many sites on the internet that deal with this and related issues (just google something like “military spending economy” and see for yourself), and many are–no surprise–quite partisan. So, I’m just going to point you to one, and again affirm that I do not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed there (but I do think they are interesting and thought provoking).

This leads to another subject, which I hope to discuss later: war is rarely (if every) economically beneficial (when you take everything into account).

On the Nobel Peace Prize

I have sort of taken the NPP (get it?) for granted; but today I decided to learn more about it. Here, by the way, is the official site.

I learned that:

“Alfred Nobel’s will establishing the Peace Prize specified that the prize should go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Fairly early in its history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee felt clear to award the Peace Prize to organizations as well as individuals. More recently, it has extended these criteria to include contribution to the advancement of human rights.”
(I got that from the American Friends Service Committee site, btw)

You can also find comprehensive lists of all the winners. Here is one.

On the official site there is an interesting page on the “Controversies and Criticisms” surrounding the prize.  Seems pretty disabused and realistic to me.

Finally you can watch video lectures from some of the recent laureates.

Do you think all the laureates have really made important contributions to peace (read the explanation on the “Controversies and Criticisms” page for Theodore Roosevelt being chosen…very interesting)?

Some more gems found through tag surfing!

I found some interesting blog input right here on WordPress. Starting with the Asrudian Center, where there are some nice articles about Peace Studies. Here is one about John Burton (mentioned a few days ago in this blog); another about using medical analogies in peace studies; and still another about the conflicts of globalization (hmmm…that one looks sort of familiar ).

Now for something a bit more esoteric…hop over to Center for Wellbeing blog and catch the physics professor talking about a “science of peace”. Again, I’m passing this on as interesting (I’m not necessarily endorsing).

Let’s get more “peaceniks” on WordPress…IGbarb says: Ya’ll come!

What is September 21st?

Well yes, it is the first day of fall (though in fact the equinox falls on the 22nd this year I think). But it is also The International Day of Peace! This was established in 2002 by the U.N. General Assembly, so as to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly every year (nice idea…think about it ). You can learn more about this day here.

Interestingly, there is also something called World Peace Day, and I found from “googling” that the Pope had selected January 1, 2008 as the “World Day of Peace”. Here is the Pope’s message about the day.

Well there are only 362 left, and then we might have world peace everyday!

On a related note, 1986 was the International Year of Peace. Here is a statement on Peace released by the Baha’i International Community for the occasion.

Thoughts?

George C. says “Peace is Hard” (and I agree)

You might have seen this already, but I just came across it. George Clooney made a nice little video basically praising U.N. Peacekeepers. You can find it a number of places including here

IMHO, the video is well done. It makes a number of very important points, and underlines the fact that peace requires a lot of effort…that it has to be “waged”.

(and the bit about the celebrity endorsement is very good)

IGbarb says: check it out!

Violence really does breed violence

We live in interesting, not to say confusing times. In world affairs, for instance, there is no real consensus about values, norms and how to resolve things. Some say power is the final arbiter, some say we need more international law and organization, some say a bit of both. World order is not very well defined.

The actions of states, particularly the big ones, can push world order more towards order, if you will, or more toward chaos and violence. So, if the big states show contempt for international law and international institutions, this makes the views of those who only believe in power seem more plausible, and world order drifts more towards Thomas Hobbes’s “state of war” (Hobbes never actually said, btw, that the society of sovereigns was like a state of nature…go look it up ). In this context, “moderate” voices advocating diplomacy, etc.. look weak. However, if/when the leading states act to consolidate and expand international law and organization, and, generally, promote cooperation over conflict, then this becomes more acceptable, violence becomes less acceptable, and world order evolves more toward a community (of sorts).

In a nut shell violence, on almost any level, tends to validate its own further use, since it contributes to a climate in which only violence seems to be an effective way to achieve important ends. This trend can be reversed, but the longer it goes on the more intuitive it seems to become, and therefore the harder it is to conceive and promote alternate approaches to conflict resolution.