In an early scene the hero, Keanu Reeves, meets in a restaurant with an elderly Chinese man. At least he appears to be Chinese. But in fact he is an alien agent, living on earth for many years and tasked to study humans. To find out what makes us tick. And most specifically, to find out if there is any hope that the destruction our species is inflicting on planet earth will be stopped by us….if in fact, whether our destructive ways CAN be stopped.

The Chinese man reports to Reeves, who has been sent as the final arbiter of our fate. Reeves will decide whether to let us persist or eliminate us so that earth itself can survive with its species and ecology intact. The Chinese man reports that he has grown fond of us. But that sadly, we are incorrigible. He tells Reeves, “The tragedy is that they know they are doomed. They sense it. But they can’t do anything about it.”

Later in the film, when the heroine discovers that Reeves will set in motion the means of our obliteration, she begs him to wait, to stop, pleading that “We can change.”

Ah. But can we? The first film by this name was about our inability to stop making war. Since we’ve (incorrectly) pretty much conceded that we can’t, the 2008 filmmakers decided they would have to take on some other of our wicked ways. They settled on our alteration of the climate and rape of the earth’s animal and plant resources.

In our real world, with respect to both issues—war and potentially fatal environmental destruction—the verdict is still out. Maybe we can’t change. Maybe we are a kind of planet-wide cancer that needs to be excised for the planet’s well-being?

A Future Without War—this website’s entire work—is premised on the knowledge that humans are in fact capable of radical social/behavioral change. We could end the practice of war if we decide to do it. War is a matter of will….not biology.

If you’d like
• historical examples of how we have changed radically and rapidly and even purposefully before, and
• discussion of why we could end war and what it would take to do it,
here are two recent works of evolutionary biologist Dr. Judith Hand that can swiftly provide insight for you, your students, your friends and family, for all of us:

Essay: “To Abolish War.”

DVD: “No More War: The Human Potential for Peace.”

WARMONGER

Rick Santorum - Presidential Candidate

Former Pennsylvania Governor Rick Santorum is a warmonger. On 1 January 2012 on “Meet the Press” he said about Iranian nuclear facilities that if he were to become President, “We will degrade those facilities through airstrikes, and make it very public that we are doing that.”

In this country of free people he must be allowed to be a candidate for the highest leadership office in the land. He should also, however, REGULARLY be outed by all responsible media as a warmonger.  And all citizens in tune with their humanity should, on that single fact alone, reject his candidacy outright, strenuously, and vocally.

Presidential candidate Santorum is not the only self-identified warmonger running for the highest office in the land. Texas Governor Rick Perry has stated that were he to become President he would reinvade Iraq. But Governor Santorum so clearly illustrates how to define and spot a warmonger that he serves as role model.

If the citizens of the world want peace, they must learn to identify and quarantine warmongers. No warmonger should ever be allowed into a position of significant leadership affecting decisions of war and peace.

In the DVD “No More War: the Human Potential for Peace,” I defined a warmonger as a leader who so desires to dominate others in his (or her) world–be that a small tribal world or a world that spans continents–that they are willing to kill other human beings to do it. They kill or get others to kill for them.

Domination/control allows the aggressor access to valuable resources that belonged to the defeated people, or the ability to force upon the defeated a worldview that benefits, in the long term, the agenda of the aggressor. War is an act that serves to magnify the aggressor’s power.  

Warmongers do not raise an army in defense when attacked, action that while tragic is arguably necessary.  They stir up a war. They demonize some other humans, assure their tribal members or society that those other humans are a mortal threat that can only be dealt with by taking up weapons to kill. No other means, such as sanctions, community isolation, negotiation or compromise, will do, they argue. Whatever problems exist between the groups can only be solved by killing. By war.

The DVD also points out that in all societies, the percentage of men who are actually warmongers is extremely small. (Warmongers are overwhelmingly men. Viewed historically, the percentage of powerful women who launch wars is tiny – see Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace, Hand 2003). The vast majority of all humans, male or female, have no desire to band together to go kill other people. Making war is the desire of a tiny few, who by these acts seek power and domination.

Quoting from the DVD regarding the warmongers among us, “We need to recognize, leash, and muzzle them before they lead us into wars. They are a tail that has been wagging the dog for far too long.”

We don’t need to suffer the agonies and destruction of armed, killing conflicts. We can choose otherwise. And key to successfully creating a future without war is the ability to recognize and reject the alarmist, self-serving cries of warmongers.

In fact, it is a mutilation. Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang were interviewed about how this fabulous heroic icon will be improved. She will no longer be the daughter of an Amazon Queen. She will be the daughter of Zeus, a god-king.

Wonder Woman - 2011

In a photo provided with the article, we see the new and improved Wonder Woman. Her fists are clenched. Her face is not calm and firm with resolve; it’s contorted with rage. She does not wear her golden lasso, a way to extract truth from the bad guys without torture. Instead she grasps a gratuitous bloodied sword, an eternal symbol of violence and gruesome death.

 It is not enough that she have her classic heroic strengths: “beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules.”

Wonder Woman - Daughter of Diana, the Amazon Queen of Themiskyra

Through the years, readers knew her as a woman sent to bring peace from her Amazon home to the world of men. A woman whose Amazon training also gave her limited telepathy, profound scientific knowledge, the ability to speak every language known to man, super breath, ventriloquism, imperviousness to extremes of heat and cold, the ability to ride the air currents as if flying, microscopic vision, the ability to bestow wisdom to other beings, the ability to throw her tiara with such skill it could stop bullets, and much more. No, these powers put to the defense of the good are not sufficiently “understandable.” She must be the daughter of a male god and brandish a blood-covered sword.

I read this article at my small table in Starbuck’s, then sat transfixed with tears in my eyes for a long time. A tight knot of righteous rage at what they propose to do to this beloved heroine tightened around my heart.

This corporate takeover of the female icon who uses nonviolent means in the struggle for peace and justice by the warrior, bloody culture of violence is an abomination.

You are now aware of what DC Comics intends to do. You may want to protest in whatever way you are able. I hope that all women’s organizations, women’s studies departments, peace groups, and groups or individuals who understand the value of Wonder Woman as a female champion for justice and peace will rise up, and, if possible, put a halt to this attempt to kill her by mutilation.

The stories we imagine, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell our children. They define who we are. They shape our worldview. They shape the future we create, for ourselves and most critically, for our children and the generations to follow us.  

We do not need Wonder Woman to be the avenging, sword-carrying daughter of a dominating god-king. To what kind of future does such a heroine lead us?

Film by J. Hand - No More War: the Human Potential for Peace

Today, the 21st of September, is the International Day of Peace. My contribution to the cause this year is to create a film of my 55 minute lecture “No More War: the Human Potential for Peace.” and launch it yesterday at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice in San Diego.

I invite you to check out the trailer on the AFWW website or on YouTube.

Sarah Hrdy

The filmpresents a compelling argument that if we chose to do it, we can achieve what no people before us could: a future without war. From the work of the anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, it explores cutting edge hypotheses on the origins of cooperation, altruism and empathy.

Frans de Waal

Using the work of the primatologist Frans de Waal it explores the origins of a sense of fairness and morality.

Douglas P. Fry

From the work of the anthropologist Douglas Fry on simple and complex hunter-gatherers it explores the possible origins of war.

Judith Hand

From her own work on the biology of war the film considers why men and women, in general, differ when it comes to using physical aggression to resolve conflicts, including the conflict that is war. A proposal is offered that the time is right for us to mount a global, social transformation movement to abolish war and reasons are given for why we can, at this time, embrace the goal of ending war with confidence. Why participation of women as full partners with men in decision-making positions is a necessary condition, not an option, is stressed.

Mohandas Gandhi

Two complementary elements of a nonviolence campaign to end war that are derived from the efforts of the famous nonviolent social transformer Mohandas Gandhi are introduced: Constructive Program and Obstructive Program. For Gandhi, Constructive Program was to teach Indian villagers how to be self reliant and independent and to work to eliminate the worst aspects of the caste system. His Obstructive Program involved the use of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Suggestions are offered for ways viewers can be involved in this great cause.  The website also offers the opportunity to purchase a digital download of the full film ($ 5.95 USD).

We can end war. The fist step, the crucial step, is to decide to do it.

Here are some things advanced cultures or nonviolent cultures have outlawed as being barbaric.

(actually, in nonviolent cultures, some of these behaviors are unthinkable…there is no word for them in their language):

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Murder

Slavery

Vivisection

Cannibalism

Rape

Gladiatorial death games

Headhunting

Infundibulation

Torture

Child labor

Use of children in pornography

Sex with a child

Human experimentation without consent

A Future Without War asks: When do we finally outlaw war?

If you are curious about the ways of living and conflict resolution in nonviolent cultures, check out this fascinating website.  PeacefulSocieities.org

Here you will find a map showing the centers of distribution of over 80 cultures identified by anthropologists as being nonviolent.

I live in the Western World, with access to all possible media. Since my view is that in order to change a culture, I need to know what I’m up against, I follow the news.  Most of us working for change do.  And it can be depressing in the extreme.

Follow all the negative news about what humans are doing around the world and it’s tempting to find it all too daunting. To find our situation hopeless.  Big wars and petty wars mar the planet’s face: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia.  In a peaceful country, a fanatic takes a notion to keep his culture safe, decides to do what he can about it, and slaughters nearly forty people, most of them teenagers.  Try to convince enough people to have smaller families and learn to live sustainably so we can prevent a disastrous change in our global climate and the stupidity and stubborness of thought that blocks all progress practically makes one weep.

Consider the behavior in this photo….is this what life should be about?

I will confess to having the thought cross my mind now and then that what I’m doing, well, is it really worth it?  Maybe getting us to change is a hopeless cause? And I’ve had the even more insideous thought, are we worth saving?Maybe it wouldn’t be all that great a tragedy if the planet eliminates our cultures, given that we are causing extinctions of plants and animals at an amazing rate.  And maybe we are just too stupid to save, even if one wants to.  Be honest.  Hasn’t thoughts like these crossed your mind, at least once?

Earlier in the year I accepted the opportunity to present my speech, “No More War: the Human Potential for Peace” at an international conference of humanists in early August in Oslo, Norway. The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has a big conference every three years, and the theme of their 2011 meeting was peace: “Man. A Peaceful Animal?” A friend of many years was excited to accompany me.

Sami Reindeer

We both agreed that if we were going to pay the money to go that far from our homes in California, we needed to do more than just Oslo. So we added St. Petersberg, Russia, Helsinki Finland and the far northern land of the Sami, the nonviolent and nonwarring culture that specializes in herding reindeer.

Sami Father and Daughter

They are commonly called Laplanders by others, and I was eager to visit the area in person since an interest in nonviolent cultures relates directly to my work. We would then travel by ship down the Norwegian coast to Bergen, and then cross eastward to Oslo.  And after the conference, we’d do Edinburgh and it’s surrounds.  My friend plays golf.  She wanted to include a pilgrimage to the home of golf, St. Andrews.

Catherine's Palace - Russia

It took us a month. And there was so much that I saw and learned on this trip that I scarcely know where to begin.

Each country had at least two fabulous highlights. St. Petersberg displays the opulence and sophistication of the time of tsars….they wanted to outdo Versailles, and they did. I haven’t seen China yet, but so far, in all my travels I have never seen anything to equal the Opulence or tsarist Russia. Catherine’s Palace, The Winter Palace, the Hermitage. Great beauty on display, something we do well…create astonishingly beautiful things.

Swan Lake

The architecture, richly embellished with gold, was beautiful. We also went to the ballet.  In my mind, the perfect choice: Swan Lake. Also marvelously beautiful in sight and sound.

In Finland I started learning about the Scandinavian way of life. What I learned about the so-called “Swedish model” will help me structure my next book on war.  These are people doing their best to pursue an ethos of peace.

While in Russia, my Mac laptop computer had stopped working, and I was in a panic since my speech is a slide show and the computer was essential. Happily, in Helsinki I eventually found a computer repair shop that would diagnose and treat on the spot…all I needed was a new battery. The willingness of so many people who sympathized with my stress and went out of their way to get me to the help I needed to fix my problem was a reminder of how very helpful people are to each other.  It’s another of our very best traits.

Mural of Sami Village

Then in northern Finland we visited and learned about the reindeer herding Sami. They are one of the over 80 nonviolent and nonwarring cultures I refer to in my speech. Others are the Amish in the U.S. and the Hopi of the U.S. Southwest. Anthropologists consider the Norwegians have also embraced a nonviolent, nonwarring cutlure. Think of it.  They have shifted from living by a Viking ethos to living by a peace-seeking ethos.

Seeing the Sami museum and having a chance to ask some questions of a young Sami woman and her father was invaluable. And the experiencing “the midnight sun” was a unique thing to see. This planet has truly fabulous sights to delight.

One of the questions I put to the young women was “What is the social status of Sami women. Is your culture, in fact, egalitarian?”  She looked a bit puzzled, then said, “Of course women and men are the same. We all do the work.”  This was confirmation of what experts and experience indicate about so many nonviolent cultures, that they are socially egalitarian. It was also a reminder to me that we really do have within us the power to live in communities that if not purely egalitarian, at least approach that condition.  So working toward that end is NOT a fruitless effort to reach some impossible goal.

Oslo City Hall - Nobel Ceremony

Norway…well, I suppose the success of my talk in Oslo has to count as a highlight. But also having a reception in the very Oslo City Hall where the Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded was a total delight. We learned about the history of the design and construction of this magnificent facility. The architect, and those seeking to have a city hall, wanted to have a structure that would be “the people’s building.”  The Parliament has their building. The King and his family have theirs. This was to be a beautiful building for the people, and it should reflect the importance of the people.

The scandinavian model is staunchly democratic.  It is the people who decide what the government is to do. A very high percentages of Norwegians vote (on average, 80%) and they have many referenda.  Here was a reminder that if the people of a culture, even a culture that has had the vote for some time, feel that their voices count, they care and they vote.

Norwegian Confirmation Ceremony - by Arid Nybo

I also attended a humanist confirmation ceremony for teens, something traditionally Norwegian.  It used to be done by the Luthern Church, the country’s predominant faith, but humanists have also begun to provide secular ceremonies that celebrate the transition from childhood to adulthood. The young people take classes that include instruction in ethics, the Norwegian ethos, the responsibilities of adulthood, sex education, humanist philosophy, and so on.

A public building that had a formal feel was the site for the ceremony, and the young people wore fancy dress of their choosing.  Their proud parents were present. They could invite a given number of friends and family.

There was music, dance, poetry, and some spoken words. Very uplifting and hopeful. A lovely event. All children deserve such care and concern. We could use something like these classes and culminating ceremony for the many young people in the U.S. that have no such equivalent.  Because we do not meet this need of a great many of our young people for a passage to adulthood under the care of adults, we end up with a lot of them in our prisons or bearing children when they are way too young to give a child proper care.

And finally, medieval Edinburgh….and going to the fabulous Highland Scottish Tattoo (in the rain no less)…and seeing how very different Scotland is from England, and being in the place where Bonnie Prince Charlie was born, and going through Edinburgh castle and on and on. Like I say, the whole thing verged on mind-blowing.

So I came home exhausted, but also inspired, and reminded:  WE ARE WORTH SAVING!!!  The things of beauty that we have created should not perish because we blindly, lazily, or stubbornly let our capacity for stupidity and short-sightedness overwhelm our brilliance and goodness.

by Judith Hand

“The comings and goings of everyday life…take place within a framework of basic assumptions, settled relationships, familiar patterns of behavior and an established division of resources. But it is less immoveable than it looks. The framework itself may be subject to alteration, adaptation, slow erosion or radical upheaval.”       Trevor Noble - Social Theory and Social Change, 2000

A Great Dilemma and a Great Challenge

Adapt or die! This Darwinian imperative is arguably truer for us today than at any time in our brief history on earth.

Many of us look into the years ahead with dread, aware of monumental, self-inflicted problems that seem to be spinning us out of control: poverty that triggers revolution and war, the cruelty of slave and sex trades, the waste of lives due to drug addictions, violence in our homes and communities, the unsustainable consumption of life-sustaining resources. Then there are the potential horrors of newfangled weapons of mass destruction. Global climate change could result in—or trigger—a global pandemic, mass starvation, massive refugee problems, or global economic collapse.

Our political, cultural, and ecological world is shifting with such speed that we can scarcely catch our breath, and the shifting can’t be stopped (e.g., Fukuyama 1999; Hawken 2007; Korten 2006; Toffler 1970, 1980). The scary truth is that we may not have time to adequately respond should any of these onslaughts escalate into catastrophic proportions.

And our dilemma? We have nowhere to flee. There are no unoccupied lands with fresh resources and no other human competitors. Pioneering on a new frontier has always been part of our survival strategy. As long as parts of our world remained empty of humans, we could move to where as yet unexploited resources of food, water, and shelter were available.

No more. The elimination of this option has enormous consequences. Between Malthus’s 1798 predictions that the demands of population growth could exceed Earth’s resources and the warning of the 1968 modern-day Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, who gave us his book The Population Bomb, we had some modest reprieves. For example, the “Green Revolution” gave us added crop productivity, and the spreading “demographic transition” slows our global increase in population size.

But the planet’s basic resources—most notably now, water—are not limitless (Kunzig 2011) and the potential for conflict escalates.  Our populations continue to grow and consume. “Business as usual” may fail to mitigate, let alone prevent, cataclysmic changes, thereby halting the march of civilization and even, conceivably, ending Earth’s experiment with highly intelligent and highly technological life. Homo sapiens may become as extinct as the dinosaurs.

 A new survival strategy is urgently needed. There must be a cultural revolution, an upheaval in the framework of assumptions that currently underlie our behavior. We need an adaptive shift in worldview large enough to deal with the messes we have created. Another word for worldview is paradigm. The great challenge our dominant cultures face to save us from ourselves is to create a major paradigm shift…maybe more than one…in how to live together and resolve our conflicts and how to live in harmony with the planet that sustains us.

Moreover, to avoid the worst possible consequences of our behavior, that upheaval needs to be swift, and it needs to happen now. Elsewhere I explain why, within limits and without being able to control all unknowns and unpredictables, we can in fact purposefully and significantly shape our destiny (Hand 2010). A major commitment to action now is critical. In ten years it may be too late to prevent descent into social chaos or another dark age.

Swiftness of change, however, is not enough. It would be tragically short-sighted if we don’t also do the work necessary to ensure that the positive shift we decide to create endures.

Given that we can choose to shape a better future, how do we move from here to there? What follows is an introduction to two complimentary kinds of efforts, Constructive and Obstructive Program. Pursued simultaneously, these would give us the best chance to foster a rapid transformation of our cultures that can carry humanity into a future of great achievement for generations to come.

How Cultures Change

Change Generated from Two Different Processes

First, how do cultures change? An excellent recent book on the subject is Social Theory and Social Change by Trevor Noble (2000). He reviews influential theories of major thinkers from Adam Smith to postmodernist theories of the late twentieth century, presenting as he says, “an appraisal of their strengths and weaknesses.”

Trevor Noble - Social Theory and Social Change

Relevant to our consideration of paradigm shift, he compares Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Weber argued that “ideas and values are crucial to shaping human action and thereby bring about change.” In contrast, Durkheim argued that “changing ideas and values are themselves the product of social change.” In other words, make a social change happen, and eventually ideas and values will change to match. As with so many areas of human behavior, the truth is that both of these are true, depending on what change is being studied and studied at what point in time.

For us to purposefully hasten the kind of upheaval shift required, we need to work using both approaches. Constructive Programs, which will be described shortly, work primarily by processes of education and making gradual changes in existing institutions. They engage in endeavors that teach, apply, and spread new ideas and values suitable to creating and sustaining the new future these activists are working to create.

Obstructive Programs, which will also be described shortly, work aggressively to directly change behavior, usually through changing laws, and once the behavior is changed, the society at large eventually comes to accept and embrace the values lying behind the laws until, eventually, a worldview that reflects those values becomes the working paradigm, accepted by virtually everyone without thought. I think of the tactics of the former activists as “good works” (Constructive Programs) and the tactics of the latter as “nonviolent persuasion” (Obstructive Programs).

The bigger the evil to be rooted out, the greater will be the difficulty in shifting the underlying paradigm. For example, in the case of segregation by race or class, at some point the paradigm that some people are inferior to others must be replaced by the paradigm that says that all men, and women, are created equal. We can make laws that require equal treatment because at least a few people have decided that the old paradigm is no longer valid or acceptable. It may be, however, a very long time before the majority of people accept as truth the new paradigm, that all are of equal worth. Nevertheless, a great many people who may still be a minority believe, and act on their belief, that working for a change they desire is a worthy and worthwhile goal.

The Speed of Change

Does this mean that all cultural change is inevitably slow? How rapidly can humans bring about a purposeful social change in a deeply embedded paradigm when sufficient resources are applied? Consider some examples. To end the practice of foot-binding in China, a deeply embedded practice of nearly a thousand years, it was necessary to outlaw it, and then work to change the Chinese underlying concept of what makes a woman beautiful. In 1911 the New Republic of China government outlawed foot-binding. Although practiced in secret for a time, it is now defunct. The behavior of a thousand years changed in less than one hundred.

Another example; if women are to be granted equality to men, a deeply embedded evil we are still working on, it is necessary to change the underlying paradigm of belief that women were created as a second thought or to be the helpers of men, not creatures different from but of value equal to men. In many countries we made laws that grant rights to women, and as women achieve education and take places as equals in various spheres of achievement, the underlying paradigm of female inferiority is shifting…slowly, and from a global perspective unevenly, but with increasing speed. For example, it was only roughly one hundred years ago that women began to secure the right to vote in countries here and there, and we now have women as heads of NGO’s, corporations, and governments.

One of the most impressive cultural change projects, because of the massive shift in thinking that was involved, was the Christianization, by the Catholic Church and others, of most of Latin America, in many societies often in less than one generation. Although many elements of traditional beliefs have persisted in some places even to the present day, many long-practiced behaviors changed. More modest clothing was adopted. Taking multiple wives was eliminated. Where it had been practiced before, head hunting ceased as the new value system spread.

I'm Just Too Busy

In short, we are not passive victims of culture and circumstance, unable to plan and guide a social upheaval great enough to shove history toward something grand as opposed to brutal. Likewise, we can not claim that we are too busy or that change would take many centuries, too much time to merit our investment in the effort now when we have so many pressing problems. Under the right conditions, cultural transformation can be stunningly swift.

The process of relatively rapid, purposeful change—as opposed to change by the slow, hidden hand of Adam Smith, or from blind, long-term underlying social trends—purposeful, rapid change typically has two phases:
• first you change the behavior itself, usually through changed or new laws, but sometimes in the past it has been at the tip of a sword,
• and then if conditions (social, economic, ecological) are favorable and all goes well, continued education and experience of the new way of living results, over time, in a shift in paradigm….the desired change in thinking and belief.

Mohandas Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi, arguably the foremost master of social transformation by nonviolent means, engaged in both kinds of efforts already mentioned: what he called “Constructive Program,” and what others have called by way of parallel construction, “Obstructive Program” (Nagler undated). We’ll consider first the nature of Constructive Programs: why they are essential to shaping a paradigm shift, and of strategic importance, why they are key to ensuring that the desired change endures. We’ll also consider why Constructive Programs alone are not likely to produce the swift shift—the transforming upheaval—that we so urgently need.

Why Constructive Programs are Essential

Examples of Gandhi’s Constructive Programs were efforts to teach Indian villagers how to be self-reliant (a man who depends on others for his life essentials is not an entirely free man), and his work to end evils of the “untouchable” class system. Gandhi recognized that unless you prepare at least some people, a sort of critical mass, with skills and values that can make them leaders, participants, and examples after the struggle for change succeeds, a “revolution” is not likely to  endure.

The good news is that legions of people are hard at work on problems that bedevil us. These are efforts undertaken at the level of homes, communities, and nations around the globe.

For example, there are people concerned with the waste of human and physical resources from wars. To prevent wars, there are projects to intervene and facilitate resolution between parties in conflict. War recovery projects work with physically or mentally injured survivors; if their needs are not met, they retain mental wounds that generate another cycle of violence. Educational projects directed at young people teach the skills and values of peaceful living to upcoming generations. Abolishing war has been my principle focus, and this evil has many tentacles. To provide a way for me to manage my thinking, I placed the diverse good works efforts into nine categories (Hand 2005a). To indicate that all are equally critical to a campaign to end war, the project logo arranges them in a circle, not a list (Hand 2005b) in order to convey their equal emphasis.

Other individuals are deeply troubled by well-documented changes in our global climate patterns, particularly the historically very high levels of atmospheric C0₂ and increasing overall climate heating. So we have educational films such as “Inconvenient Truth” by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. We have educational efforts by projects like 350.Org, which seek to increase awareness of the perils of these effects and to urge citizens to take action and to contact their government’s decision-makers. Scientific groups which collect and analyze data create documents to advise decision-makers and inform citizens and the media.

Rates of poverty are another concern, and many activists trace the problem to too much globalization, and to too much control of people by the decisions of distant, impersonal corporations. So we have projects favoring local control of things affecting people’s lives, such as growing their own staple foods, control of their fresh water supplies, and finding locally generated ways of making a living.

Defense Budgets in Billions - 2009 - World 5 Biggest Spenders

Global political unrest and instability affects everyone in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, like increasing the price of goods like oil, or diverting financial resources from positive, even critical, needs a society may have instead into war budgets. So we have think tanks studying how to shift our economies away from the damaging effects of unregulated capitalism and offering warnings about the ills that result from corporate domination of entire markets.

These kinds of constructive programs and many more spread new ideas and new values that are key to significant change. They are the “good works” upon which we build. They prepare the ground for living in that future we must create. They are essential because unless we shape them in necessary directions, any of these problem areas could pose an insurmountable barrier to the desired revolutionary shift. Furthermore, unless the values behind such projects take hold in a critical mass of global citizens as the paradigm shifts, any progress will be doomed to long term failure.

Why Constructive Programs Alone Are Unlikely to Foster Rapid Change

It is now necessary to explore the painful truth that as wonderful as such good works are, they alone are unlikely to foster the rapid shift our current dilemma requires. Given time, educational and social projects based on new values can transform individuals, change communities, and shape history in powerful ways. Such movements gave us nurses, hospice care, food relief, the principle of rights to health care and education. They promote the values upon which we have established principles of human rights in government constitutions and at the United Nations.

Helena Hill Weed - Jailed for Carrying a Banner

But when an evil is deeply entrenched and supported by a worldview that justifies the evil, good works alone are usually insufficient to produce profound change with any great speed, if ever. For example, if a paradigm underlying a culture is that women are not fully human, and certainly not sufficiently intelligent or of a temperament to govern, it may take a very long time for educational efforts alone to give women their full rights. Achieving any significant change may require the application of Obstructive Program.

Slave Auction Havannah

Likewise, if a paradigm underlying a culture is that owning slaves is a venerable, acceptable behavior if only groups that are not highly developed socially or intellectually are enslaved, it may take a very long time for educational efforts alone to even begin to end an officially accepted trade in human beings. Again, it may take the application of Obstructive Program to change laws, backed up by consistent enforcement of those laws.

The Power of Obstructive Programs

Because Constructive Programs work slowly, to produce the immediate change in behavior that we need it becomes necessary to invoke revolutionary upheaval. Thus, savvy strategy turns to Obstructive Programs. Examples of actions which qualify as Obstructive Programs are sit-ins, marches, boycotts and fasts. Harvard University Professor Gene Sharpe has presented detailed explorations of the use of nonviolent actions in a series of papers and books: the forms these actions take, the conditions under which they succeed or fail, and the conditions under which they persist after the sought for change has been achieved (see e.g. Sharp, 2005). The number of examples he analyzes, successful and unsuccessful, runs into the hundreds.

Over time, such efforts using nonviolent tactics have been given different names: civil disobedience (Thoreau), satyagraha (Gandhi), soul force (Martin Luther King, Jr.), nonviolent direction action, nonviolent struggle, and my term, nonviolent persuasion. The American suffragists and Martin Luther King, Jr. used Obstructive Program (confronting the “system” using nonviolent civil disobedience), as have virtually all of the numerous successful 20^th century nonviolent (velvet) revolutions (Sharp 2005; Stephan & Chenoweth 2008). The protestors in Egypt’s Tahrir Square used nonviolent persuasion.

Alice Paul

To learn how obstructive programs work we could examine movements of, for example, Alice Paul and other American suffragists, or Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., and especially Mohandas Gandhi as already described. These efforts did not take hundreds of years to change behavior. Their results have persisted, and acceptance of the values underlying them continues to spread. The concept that women have the right to vote continues to spread. Indians are still in charge of their own fate. And the concept that a people should not be governed by a foreign power also continues to spread.

Gandhi Leads Salt March

Gandhi, for example, began his life’s work in South Africa, but his greatest effort was to pressure the British to grant India, his homeland, independence. Note that Gandhi isn’t famous for his efforts at Constructive Programs, things like teaching villagers to be self-reliant or ending the worst excesses of the “untouchable” class system. He is famous for his brilliant use of satyagraha as part of a well-planned campaign to persuade the occupiers to leave. Examples are his famous salt march; the boycott against imported British products such as linens; and inviting his own arrest for organizing these protests, resulting in long years spent in prison. We know him for these things because it was his nonviolent confrontation that applied an unyielding pressure to bring about change that no amount of education or pleading was going to achieve.

To produce a swift change in behavior it is essential that we fully grasp this important lesson: Gandhi’s Constructive Programs alone would not have delivered victory. That unless we apply nonviolent persuasion in a strategic manner, we are not likely to get out of the dangerous ditch into which we have dug ourselves in the time we have available.

Summary and Recommendations

John Lennon Memorial

Most humans would like to be positive dreamers. We’d like to have a sense that human destiny is heading for grand things. At the minimum, we’d like to put our feet onto a path that would lead our children and theirs into a safe, fulfilling future.

We can do that, if we decide to make it happen. We humans are a supremely adaptive species, without peers in adaptability, and are at our best in a crisis.  There is consensus that civilization as we know it and planetary ecology as we’ve known it, have reached crisis. This is actually a great moment of opportunity, the time for a revolution that bends the arc of history toward a future of equality, justice, peace, and ecological sustainability. And we will need evolutionary leaders, to lead both the constructive and obstructive projects (e.g., Manga, Undated). Changing direction is a matter of vision, of will, and of heart.

Where would I concentrate the most possible resources at this critical juncture? I  believe that we must first tackle the causes of global climate change. We can’t know for certain how dire the consequences of these changes are going to be. The best scientific estimates are sufficiently grim, however, to require that we act, guided by advice from the most knowledgeable among us. If we do not act, entire countries and entire major coastlines of other countries could be eliminated by flooding. Our refugee problems would likely create political and social chaos…which often leads to war.

And to act effectively will take money—lots of money. The single most immoral, even stupid, behavior into which the majority of governments pour vast sums of financial and human resources is war. I have elsewhere made a case that a concentrated effort to abolish war would provide a unifying cause that could kick off the kind of action, of both Constructive and Obstructive programs, needed to make a great cultural shift (Hand, 2011). It would, in addition, free up enormous financial resources desperately needed for the climate-induced struggles we face…and a host of other challenges besides. Win-win

I end with two recommendations for cultural change activists:

• Acknowledge that both Constructive and Obstructive Programs are essential to major paradigm shift.
• Unite EVERYONE seeking to create such a shift. For maximum effect—and we absolutely need to be striving for maximum effect—the growing numbers of diverse organizations, projects, and thinkers focused on creating a paradigm shift need to unite under one umbrella. In unity there will be global power and global visibility.
• Design a campaign that can achieve global visibility. Now, in 2011, the world at large has little to no awareness that anyone is working seriously to change history in a positive way, let alone that there are many such efforts. What world citizens see, at best, is a great many organizations with good intentions making a bit of progress here and there….with no unified plan and no significant effect. That global perception must change, and only a very high profile campaign can create the needed level of awareness. Based on an already proved mechanism developed by the International Committee to Ban Landmines, I have offered an outline for how to design a campaign with a global orientation and extremely high profile.  It would provide a mechanism to embrace virtually all campaigns, organizations, and individuals at the grass roots that are now, or would like to be, working to produce a great and positive paradigm shift. And its high profile participants and its ability to unite legions of efforts would make the movement impossible to ignore (Hand 2011).

Burj Dubai

United, the species that built the pyramids and can design the fantastic architectural wonder Burj Dubai, that put men on the Moon and is making plans to set up a base on Mars. That species is fully capable of creating a huge and positive shift in the way we live with each other and with Mother Earth that is both rapid (the result of Obstructive Program) and enduring (the result of Constructive Program).

• Portions of this essay are taken from two articles: To Abolish War (2010, Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research 2:44-56); and Shaping the Future: a Proposal for Creating a Paradigm Shift for the Security and Wellbeing of All Children Everywhere. 
 Ehrlich, P. R. 1968. The Population Bomb. NY: Ballantine Books.

Fukuyama, F. 1999. The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. NY: Simon & Schuster.

Hand, J. 2005a.  Summary of the Nine Cornerstones. http://afww.org/Summary.html (accessed June 2011).

———2005b. The AFWW Logo Explained. http://afww.org/logo.html (accessed June 2011).

——— 2010. To Abolish War. Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research 2:44-56.  Link to web page.

———2011a. Paradigm shift and a future of peace. Available at http://wp.me/p45hl-aB (accessed 22 June 2011)

———2011b. Shaping the Future: a Proposal for Creating a Paradigm Shift for the Security and Wellbeing of All Children Everywhere. Available at http://www.afww.org/ShapingTheFuture.html. (accessed July 13 2011).

Hawken, P. 2007. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. NY: Viking.

Korten, D. C. 2006. The Great Turning: from Empire to Earth Community. San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler.

Kunzig, R. 2011. Population 7 Billion. National Geographic 219(1): 32-69.

Malthus, T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population, in Oxford World’s Classics reprint.

Manga, M.   Center for Evolutionary Leadership. http://www.evolutionleader.com/default.htm (accessed July 2011).

Nagler M. Hope or Terror? Gandhi and the Other 9/11. Tomales, CA: Metta Center for Nonviolence Education. Free pamphlet download at http://tinyurl.com/yglxjws (accessed 23 February 2010).

Noble, T. 2000. Social Theory and Social Change. NY: St. Martin’s Press.

Toffler A. 1970. Future Shock. NY: Random House.

——— 1980. The Third Wave. NY: Bantam Books.

Sharp, G. 2005. Waging Nonviolent Struggle. 20^th Century Practice and 21^st Century Potential. Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers Inc.

Stephan M. J. & Chenoweth E. 2008. Why civil resistance works. The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. International Security, 33 (1) 7–44  Available from  http://tinyurl.com/5ko7s9 (accessed 26 February 2010).

Muller and Wrangham (Eds.)

In the magazine American Scientist, Craig Stanford (2009) reviewed a book with a rather imposing, and also fascinating, title: Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans: an Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression Against Females. It is a collection of contributions by noted anthropologists and primatologists, edited by Martin M. Muller and Harvard professor Richard W. Wrangham (2009).

The book has chapters devoted to male behavior in a wide cross section of primates. All the contributions are given special credibility because they are written by noted experts in each field.

Rape of the Sabine Women

As Stanford points out, the entire volume, while being written in solidly academic terms, addresses a very hot social problem: is rape a crime of sex, or violence? Or is it actually part of a very broad male pattern to control women’s sexuality in general?

The book begins by clarifying the definition of sexual coercion. There is direct coercion…when a male uses force and intimidation to immediately perform a sexual act with a female. This is what we generally regard as “rape.”

But it becomes very clear that there is also indirect coercion, and this can take many forms. For example, when a female chimpanzee or baboon comes into reproductive condition (i.e., heat), many male primates, typically those of high status, “guard” the female against approach to or contact with any other males. Other males foolish enough to approach are driven off. Or if a female approaches and has sex with a male of her choosing and the dominant male discovers this, he may chase and bite her, a punishment for her straying behavior.

 The bottom line is that male primates not only coerce females directly, they use a variety of indirect behaviors to coerce the physically less powerful sex. Rape, it seems, is part of a general male concern with controlling female sexuality.

Males that may not rape may engage in other forms of coercion. In other words, socially coercive males are not just attempting to have sex with a particular female, they are trying to control female sexuality in general. (Anyone who follows the abortion debates, fights, and murders should hear the mental bong of a bell).

Now we come to a chapter I find especially fascinating. It is by Tommaso Paoli. Dr. Paoli studies that most unusual of primates, the bonobo. Bonobos are famous as the “peaceful” ape (a Google search will net you a number of books about them).

 They do not appear to engage in the “primitive warfare” that some of our equally close relatives, the chimpanzees, do. A gang of chimps (overwhelmingly males) will get together and go into the territory of a neighboring troop and kill any lone individual they encounter.

And when there is social stress or tension within a bonobo group, a common solution is to engage in sex to reduce it. The usual male/female sex we are used to, but they also engage in female/female sex, male/male sex, and even adult/young sex. Another name for them is the “sexy” ape. Moreover, males do not “guard” females, and inter-male aggression from fighting is rare compared to what happens between male chimpanzees.

Many others, including Dr. Wrangham (1996), have pointed out that female bonobos form very tight alliances. Bonobo female alliances, Paoli also confirms, are very strong. And here is the fascinating kicker. He offers his assessment that it is highly likely that these strong female alliances are what keep down the rates of aggression in bonobo society! Or as Stanford phrases it, low levels of male coercive behavior.

Strong female alliances! Anyone who reads my work is aware that as an evolutionary biologist I look for the roots of human behavior, its biological origins. We can learn much by studying the behavior of species both closely and distantly related to us. And there is little that is more enlightening to consider than the stark contrasts between chimpanzee and bonobo lives.

Chapters in this book are shared information about other male primates that can suggest insights into our own dilemmas with male sexual violence. They give us much to think about…and even much to act upon.

****FEMALE ALLIANCES ****
Long live female alliances! Let us strengthen them among the world’s women in order to help prevent so much violence in our social lives.

Muller M M & R W Wrangham. 2009. Sexual Coercion in Primates and  Humans: an Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression Against Females. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stanford C. 2009. Review of Primates and Humans: an Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression Against Females. American Scientist 2009: 498-500.
Wrangham R W & D Peterson. 1996. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. NY: Houghton Mifflin.

(excerpt: from a paper “Shaping the Future: a proposal to hasten a global paradigm shift for the security and well being of all children everywhere” – 2011 in preparation)

Our Dilemma

Earthrise - Apollo 8 - NASA

On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts beamed a message to earth, including the photo, Earthrise. This image of our tiny blue-and-white globe against the vast darkness of space is a powerful envisionment of something critical about our human journey; we evolved in a tiny corner of one continent, in Africa, we spread throughout a planet originally empty of humans, and now, in the words of ecological economist Herman Daly (1999), our globe is full. We have been fruitful and multiplied so that our kind occupies every niche capable of sustaining a human community.

On our lovely blue-and-white, full world, many people—thoughtful futurists or just plain folks—sense that ways of living that worked during our long journey out of Africa…well, those habits aren’t working so well any more.

Perhaps you look into the years ahead with dread, aware of monumental, self-inflicted problems that might even threatening our existence.

Nagasaki Cloud

Abject poverty that triggers revolution and wars, the cruelty of the slave and sex trades, the waste of lives to drug addictions, violence in our homes and communities, the unsustainable consumption of life-sustaining resources. Then there are the potential horrors of newfangled weapons of mass destruction, a global pandemic, or global economic collapse triggered by vicissitudes attendant upon global climate change. Can we adapt? Can we change?

Our political, cultural, and ecological world is shifting with such speed that we can scarcely catch our breath, and the shifting can’t be stopped (e.g., Fukuyama 1999; Hawken 2007; Korten 2006; Toffler 1970, 1980).

And our dilemma? We have nowhere to flee. There ARE no unoccupied lands with fresh resources and no other human competitors. Pioneering a new frontier has always been part of our survival strategy. As long as parts of our world remained empty of humans, we could move to where as yet unexploited resources of food, water, and shelter were available. Or where we could escape from other humans with whom we had conflicts if we wanted to avoid a killing war with them.

No more. The elimination of this option has enormous consequences for our survival. Elsewhere I argued that, within limits and without being able to control all unknowns and unpredictables, we can indeed significantly shape our destiny (Hand 2010; link to web page).

The Shift Movie

We are a supremely adaptive species—without peers in adaptability—and our survival instinct has been aroused. In some quarters, it is in over-drive. Many organizations and individuals are broadcasting alarms and searching for change that will save us from ourselves. A positive Global Paradigm Shift Campaign is possible. But only if our underlying worldview about how to live together and deal with conflicts changes.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as continuing to do the same thing while expecting a different outcome. Current modes of thinking and behaving have created looming problems too big for minor or even major tinkering.

The good news is that those most keenly aware of our current dangers are calling for is a shift in a fundamental working paradigm. But which paradigm?

The Trouble with Paradigms

The online free dictionary offers this definition:

Paradigm: A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline…. Applications of the term in other contexts show that it can sometimes be used more loosely to mean “the prevailing view of things.”

Because essentially all members of a group, organization, or culture embrace a paradigm, it shapes the values and decisions of virtually all members without question or thought by them. Worldview is a term close in meaning to paradigm, except possibly larger in scope.

And the trouble with paradigms is that they can be dead wrong. Here are examples of paradigms widely embraced at some time, some true and some not: 1) the world is flat, 2) people with dark skin are inferior to people with light skin, 3) the earth is the center of the universe, 4) women are not quite fully developed humans, 5) angry spirits cause diseases, 5) germs cause diseases, 6) all matter is made of atoms, 7) humans will always make war.

Note that wrong paradigms may wear out their usefulness and come to be seen as false. We aren’t eternally shackled to them. In fact, progress has often been made by challenging and then rejecting old paradigms

Shifting the Current Paradigm from What to What

To purposefully make an adaptive shift in our behavior, we require a clear understanding of the current dysfunctional (maladaptive) paradigm. A campaign that doesn’t have a precise idea of the root problem to be challenged isn’t likely to enjoy success. So, to shape a positive global paradigm shift that would free us from war, we need to answer two questions:

What exactly is the current dysfunctional paradigm that we want to shift?
What is the paradigm we want in to put in its place?

Strategic thinking can then address two related questions. First, if there is a particularly egregious “evil” produced by the maladaptive paradigm, what is it? The logic is that by tackling the most egregious evil, or a particularly outstanding evil, we direct effort at the heart of the problem. While other goals may be worthy, we will squander time and resources and risk backsliding if we don’t resolve the core problem.

And second, if we can agree on some particularly egregious evil, what is the “good thing” we could do that would most directly eliminate it? This “good thing” will be a cause around which millions will rally.

What Paradigm Needs Shifting and What is the Most Egregious Evil Product of the Current, Maladaptive Paradigm?

The project A Future Without War.org (AFWW-Hand 2005) is about creating a massive paradigm shift; obviously, to create a future without war, something huge in our worldview would have to change. War is defined as groups taking up weapons to indiscriminately kill individuals in other groups.

Pollaiuolo - Men in Battle

For AFWW, murder isn’t war. Revenge killings by individuals for perceived wrongs by other individuals also isn’t war. Addressing murder and revenge killings isn’t the goal of AFWW. The goal is to dismantle all components of the war machine—that is, to make obsolete the production and use of weapons of war, the worldview that promotes war, and ultimately war itself.

In the case of war, the maladaptive paradigm that needs to be shifted is:

Domination of others using force and violence is inevitable and hence to be endured/accommodated/worked around.

In cultures this worldview permeates, belief in the inevitability of domination of others by force and violence, including war, underlies all aspects of law and common practice—even child-rearing. In some cultures, war is justified as occasionally being necessary, even righteous. In spite of the stupendous waste of material resources and the destruction of communities and lives that war entails, we stumble forward in the embrace of what is arguably a form of social insanity.

U.S. Budget Discretionary Spending

The belief in this inevitability underlies decisions by governments deciding budgets (budget for Defense Dept is at top in red – budget for State Departmnet is the green sliver at bottom left). And because it is assumed by all of the world’s current dominant cultures, it is the single biggest barrier to ending wars. If even one of the world’s current dominant cultures operates from this assumption, it becomes a barrier to stopping the destruction since all other cultures must then defend against the aggression paradigm.

War is arguably the most egregious evil produced by this currently maladaptive paradigm, and the goal of preventing, and even ultimately eliminating, war can provide the broadest possible umbrella for unifying legions striving to be part of a positive Great Shift, but which lack coordination. Many evils challenge us, from poverty to pollution, slavery to racism. But of them all, only war kills outright and immediately. It is the finality of death for large numbers of us along with the awesome waste and destruction of resources that qualifies war as arguably our most egregious evil.

You Must Believe to Achieve

Furthermore, it is a truth of our nature that if we believe something is impossible, it is impossible. Such belief creates a psychological barrier to envisioning and working for some other possibility. Belief in the inevitability of violence and war will absolutely shape the culture a society creates, and that culture will inevitably include violence and wars. To generate a truly epic, historical, positive paradigm shift, something as big as the Agricultural, Industrial, or Digital Revolutions, we need to stop believing that war is inescapable (Hand 2005a, 2010; link to web page).

Answer to Key Question Number Two – What Adaptive Paradigm Needs to Replace the Old One?

Nonviolent cultures (Fry 2006, 2007; Peaceful Societies.org) typically share traits emerging from a paradigm that can be stated roughly as follows:

Use of force and violence on others is anathema, intolerable under any conditions.

Could we bend the arc of history toward nonviolence? The longing to do so is expressed in one form or another in all major philosophies. In some nonviolent cultures, people’s response to violent acts perpetrated on them is to flee or move away, never to fight (Fry 2006, 2007). In some, this underlying nonviolent worldview is so deeply embedded in their ethos that the very idea of using physical violence on another is literally unthinkable (Peaceful Societies.org). Violence is essentially never observed by children or adults. The point is that war is not biologically innate or socially inevitable, it is a creature of the kind of culture we create and in which we raise our children (Hand, 2009). Biologically speaking then, could we bend the arc of history away from war? Emphatically, yes. Change the culture appropriately, and you can end the violence of war.

The answer to question number 4, “What is the “good thing” we could do,” becomes: Mount a Campaign to Dismantle the War Machine: Remove the Root Causes of Wars and Render War Obsolete.

The simple but profound beauty of mounting a campaign to take on the collective insanity of war is that it will give synergistic power to many urgently needed Great Change efforts, far beyond the arena of war. It would encompass causes from ending poverty to creating sustainable communities, fostering democracy to empowering women, teaching peace to devising economies that foster ecologically sustainable work, and much more.

All of these are key good works necessary to ultimately dismantling the war machine. Living under the sway of a paradigm of domination, including domination by force, we have created cultures in which struggles for wealth and power are more important than care for family and community. If we are to create safe and healthy communities, for all children everywhere, this needs to change.

This leads to a fifth key question, which deals with operation: Is there a mechanism that will allow vast numbers of people to unite and take action with great effectiveness in order to achieve the shared goal and while in the process of achieving that goal, also hasten the paradigm shift we desire?

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams

Fortunately, the answer is yes. The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and those working with her created an operating concept for the International Committee to Ban Land Mines that, with modifications, can provide the necessary uniting mechanism (Williams et al., 2008).

Working to inspire the assembly of the kind of organizing hub pioneered by the ICBL—a concept with the power to unite millions in a concerted effort to use not only good works of spreading the art of living in peace but also using nonviolent direct action to hamper and ultimately dismantle and war machine—this will be the focus of AFWW into the foreseeable future.

Daly, H. 2005. Economics in a full world. Scientific American 293 100-107.
Fukuyama, F. 1999. The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order. NY: Simon & Schuster.
Fry, D. 2006. The Human Potential for Peace: an Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence. New York: Oxford University Press.
——— 2007. Beyond War: the Human Potential for Peace. NY: Oxford University Press.
Hand, J. 2005a. A Future Without War.org. Available as the entire website:  (accessed August 2010).
——— 2009. World Peace Map – Nonviolent Cultures. Available at http://wp.me/p45hl-5b (accessed 13 March 2011).
——— 2010. To Abolish War. Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research 2:44-56.  Link to web page.
Hawken, P. 2007. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. NY: Viking.
Korten, D. C. 2006. The Great Turning: from Empire to Earth Community. San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler.
Peaceful Societies: Alternatives to Violence and War. Available as the entire website: www.peacefulsocieties.org (accessed 30 January 2011).
Toffler A. 1970. Future Shock. NY: Random House.
——— 1980. The Third Wave. NY: Bantam Books.
Williams, J., S. Goose, and M. Wareham. 2008. Banning Landmines: Disarmament, Citizen Diplomacy, and Human Security. Lanham, Md.: Bowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Women and the Earth

Empowered women, it turns out, are the catalysts for abolishing poverty and spurring a community’s or nation’s economic development.

Kristoff and Wu Dunn

The inspiring book, Half the Sky, by NY Times Reporter Nicholas Kristoff and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn tells stories from around that world that unequivocally lays out examples and data to compellingly support the truth of this powerful “woman effect.”



While others have attempted to make the same point, that women given education and some financial resources can be economic powerhouses, this husband and wife team have gathered so many statistics and personal stories into one place that it makes an especially compelling case.



Think also of the work of the Heifer Foundation. The Foundation gives income-producing livestock like a cow or a hive of honey bees, to people in poverty. The idea is that when the animals produce offspring, the recipient must pass the gift along to a neighbor. Heifer Foundation was among the first to discover and confess openly that they got the best results when they gave the gift to a woman.  She was more likely to use it in a way that benefited her family, and also her community.



Consider as well the micro-loan system developed by Economics Nobel Prize Winner, Muhammad Yunis, in which roughly 96% of loans were made to women. After some experience, Yunus also discovered that women were far more likely to spend the money successfully in creating a business, and were better than men at loan repayment. Men tended to spend on items or activities that increased their social status…if you will, things like paying for all the drinks at the coffee house or buying a flashy car. 

Each of these projects found that giving small aid to women tends to have positive financial outcome for the recipient’s family, and even their community. Reduced to simplest terms, AFWW argues that creating social stability in their community is a strong, biologically built-in motivator for women in general, and women spend and use their resources accordingly. Hence the conclusion that empowered women—with some education and financial resources—are the key to ending poverty.

But empowering women isn’t only good for ending poverty and improving the economic conditions of developing nations. One of AFWW’s major efforts is to convince a critical mass of the earth’s citizens that empowering women so that they become full partners with men in our governing bodies is also the key catalyst to abolishing war.

Why should that be so?

Well researched and carefully interpreted studies enable a firm assessment with respect to war: as groups, men differ significantly from women in their greater proclivity to use violence in many contexts, including war (Daly and Wilson, 1988; Campbell, 2005; Hand, 2003; Potts and Hayden, 2008).

Judith Hand

“ Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace” by Judith Hand puts forward a “social stability” hypothesis to explain this sexual difference (details also on a web essay). www.afww.org/BiologicalDifferences.html). Much simplified, the argument is as follows: Women invest more reproductive effort and risk in assuring the well-being and survival of their offspring than do men. Women carry an offspring to term, nourishing it within their body. They endure the risks of childbirth. They must provide milk from their bodies for many months. Then they must care for, protect, and support a child for years before it is old enough to reproduce…they key to the survival of the species. Because of this huge investment in their offspring, women, in general when compared to groups of men, are more inclined by evolved, built-in proclivities to use many behaviors that function to create a socially stable, secure community in which to raise very helpless, slow-maturing offspring to reproductive age and beyond.

Sarah Hrdy

A fine book by the anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, Mothers and Others: on the Origins of Mutual Understanding, outlines the extraordinary cooperation and effort required to rear human children to maturity. If during a violent conflict a woman looses a baby or child, she will experience far more difficulty in bearing and caring for a replacement than a man would experience in fathering one. If a woman should die in such a conflict, her still helpless young will lose their primary caregiver, a possibly fatal loss for a child. These are realities that make social stability a much higher priority for women than it is for men.

It’s this built-in female preference for fostering social stability, including working to provide a safe and healthy community in which to raise children,  that makes the participation of women as full partners with men a critically necessary component of any campaign to prevent war, maintain a truce once achieved, and ultimately render war obsolete. Ending war is in the best interests of both men and women to be sure, but it is profoundly in the reproductive best interests of women.

Thus it is that empowering women is not only a key to ending poverty, empowered women are also a key to ending war.