The Future of Peace (Review)
THE FUTURE OF PEACE
By Scott A Hunt
347 pages, $24.95
HarperSanFrsancisco
Reviewed by Colman McCarthy
Not to be a quibbler right off, although it can be enjoyable in perverse moments, but Scott Hunt is a bit grandiose when claiming that he is writing about “the world’s greatest living peacemakers.” Assessing greatness is a speculative exercise, at best. The greatest peacemakers could include the unknown practitioners of nonviolence who never win peace prizes or public acclaim. And what of those who are hailed, like Gandhi, Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein? All were emotionally violent toward their wives—peacemakers everywhere but home..
That aside, Scott Hunt combines admirable legwork and headwork in traveling the world to interview five men and four women who have labored long and mightily to decrease violence and increase peace. Hunt, who teaches Buddhism at the University of California, begins in Burma with Aung San Suu Kyi, and proceeds to the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India; Hanan Ashrawi, Uri Avnery and Shulamit Aloni in Palestine and Israel; Thich Quang Do in Saigon, Vietnam; Oscar Arias in Costa Rica; Maha Ghosananda in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Jane Goodall in San Francisco.
“These people,” writes Professor Hunt, “are gifted with an irrational faith. Their faith is irrational in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They maintain their vigil for peace, day in and day out, not matter how dismal their situation becomes. These are people who look into the gloom and see the foundations of light, who fail to be dissuaded from doing what is morally correct despite years of setbacks or minutes gains, who show us in their words and deeds how we can turn our torments into triumphs.”
The excellence of Hunt’s reporting is the historical and cultural context in which he places each of the peacemakers. The lesson to be learned is that paths with no obstacles probably aren’t leading anywhere. Several in the group suffered imprisonment, others have toiled on the fringes of politics, and a few, including Oscar Arias and Hanan Ashrawi, are well-read intellectuals advancing ideas unlikely to be embraced in their lifetimes.
For many of his interviews, Hunt went to the homes of the peacemakers. He turned on the tape recorder, threw out questions and allowed the thoughts to flow. In the San Jose home of Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica is asked by Hunt the familiar question that all peacemakers eventually face: “Is violence an inevitable expression of human nature?”
No, Arias replied, but subduing it will take structural changes in political and economic systems. Where to start? “It begins with education, teaching our children the values of peace.”
By coincidence, a few days before Hunt’s interview, Arias spoke at a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of the abolition of Costa Rica’s armed forces. “Who would have thought,” Arias muses, “that eliminating the military would be possible? As Costa Ricans, we hope to present our nation as an example of the type of steps that human societies can take in creating a new culture of peace….We do not believe that acts such as abolishing armies are utopian or ridiculous It is the horrific levels of world military spending that are ridiculous, especially in the light of the tremendous human needs that exist. In this context, Costa Ricans merely want to be reasonable; that is why we insist on declaring peace in the world.”
While president, Arias displayed the toughmindedness that peacemakers are often accused of lacking. In 1987, he not only told Ronald Reagan to his face that his idolatrous backing of the contras was doomed and stupid, but went further by banning contra cheerleaders Oliver North, John Poindexter and other rightwing henchman from entering Costa Rica. With the U.S. breaking international law by its support of the murderous contra, in the view of Arias, why let in lawbreakers?
All of Hunt’s interviews are flavored with such anecdotes, spicing the text with solid storytelling. More important, the spiritedness of his prose, as well as his personal commitment to nonviolence, places him in the company of such living peace writers authors as Frida Berrigan, John Dear, Richard Deats, Shelley Douglass, Joan Kroc, Nathaniel Mills, Angie O’Gorman, Michael True, and many others.
If Scott Hunt has a follow-up book in mind, those are a few peacemakers to start with. There is no shortage of others, too—only a shortage of writers with the energy to track them down.
Colman McCarthy, who first wrote for NCR in 1966, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington. His recent book is “I’d Rather Teach Peace” (Orbis)