Page 11 - Geopolítica del Mundo Actual. Una Visión Multidisciplinar

GEOPOLÍTICA DEL MUNDO ACTUAL. UNA VISIÓN MULTIDISCIPLINAR:
Cultura de Paz, Conflictos, Educación y Derechos Humanos
PEACE, PEACEBUILDING, PEACE EDUCATION
Johan Galtung
Overflying a land called Peace in my intellectual helicopter I see three territories with simple names: Past, Present, and Future. And next to Peace a similarly divided land called Health. In both lands research is going on--more at the individual level in Health, and more at the collective level in Peace- -to avoid suffering, called disease in Health, and violence in Peace.
And to obtain joy, bliss, total realization of the individual self and-or the collective Self, the ultimate good, the summum bonum. Two simple words for that are exactly Peace and Health, also avoiding the ultimate negatives of violence and disease.
Sounds important. But do they teach that to common people? Is real Health Education, and Peace Education, going on?
We spiral down to Health-Present to find out. They divide diseases into three: “traumas” to body-mind- spirit; “contagious” diseases caused by micro- organisms; and the “modernization diseases” that are cardio-vascular, malignant tumors, and others. For traumas they teach care, first aid like stopping bleeding and mouth-to- mouth breathing against drowning. For contagious ills they teach hygiene, washing hands and body, protection against heat,
cold, humidity and drought, and keeping distance. For modernization diseases the education seems more vague, but there is much about body weight, right food, water and air, no smoking, something, not much, about stress and strain, and early warnings.
When we then move on, into Health-Future, there is much about strengthening the body, with right nutrition, and with exercise.
In Health-Past the focus is on living with the consequences.
In short, some ideas about curative medicine, preventive medicine, and how to live with chronic diseases. Not bad.
Informed by this excursion, we then enter Peace. In Health they try to overcome diseases and their aftermath, in Peace to overcome violence and its aftermath. Violence, also of various kinds, physical and verbal, to the body, mind and the spirit, direct violence caused by acts of commission, structural violence upheld by acts of omission, cultural violence legitimizing them, In Health we did not find cultural disease justifying diseases, except as a memory of olden times, disease as God’s punishment or at least His finger. But sometimes disease is used as a cause of health, like fever from an infection used to destroy cancer cells. The causes of violence-peace, like the causes of disease-health, are complex.
A simple helicopter overview:
* for Peace-Present the problem is unresolved
conflicts, and the name of the curative
11