Think Peace - Part 4
Peace - becoming a society
The fourth of six articles exploring the meaning of peace.
To become
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
Robert Louis Stevenson.
The concept of peace in the Abrahamic traditions is based on a Semitic root meaning essentially health and wholeness within and between people. From this root are derived Hebrew's shalom, Arabic's salaam and Aramaic's shlomo. As the previous article suggested, shalom - to use the Hebrew version of the term - is a state of wholeness, in which we flourish in relation to one another, as well as the process by which we become whole and flourish. This is the biblical 'peace', of which the prophets, including Jesus, spoke.
This article explores the idea that peace, as a process, involves our coming to grow and flourish as individuals and communities: 'To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming…'
'Becoming a person'
The process of coming to flourish as an individual - or failing to do so - is of course an interest of psychologists and psychotherapists in particular. Of these, a number believe that a desire to flourish is a common, even universal mark of our existence, in that the healthy person takes an active interest in the course of her life. Often referred to as the tendency to 'self-actualisation', the suggestion is that each one of us, given favourable conditions, will tend to become more fully who we are, or 'actualised', as a person. [footnote 1] In other words, there is a general will in every person to become shalom - that is, less oppressed and more free; less fragmented and more whole; and generally more authentic in the way we live and better able to flourish.
One of this theory's best-known proponents was the psychologist Carl Rogers, who pioneered the now common 'person-centred' counselling method, which aims to facilitate the continuous and life-long self-actualisation process of persons. Rogers described the client's process in these circumstances as one of 'becoming a person'. He believed that self-actualisation was the aim of a human being and therefore the goal that counsellors should try to facilitate in partnership with their clients. Self-actualisation is not a perfect theory and has its critics, but Rogers' and others' counselling practice supports its essential insights with clients making better choices, becoming less oppressed and more fully who they are when conducive conditions are present. [footnote 2]
Crucially, self-actualisation is only possible in mutual relation to others, as a number of writers have shown. A core condition of self-actualisation is 'a facilitative relationship with other persons', according to the psychologist C H Patterson. [footnote 3] The philosopher John Macmurray argues at length that we can only develop a self in a truly personal sense through a process of relating to others. [footnote 4] The psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman states that recovery from trauma 'can take place only in within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation'. [footnote 5] Hence, becoming a person is a social process; only when we can become persons together can we become persons individually. [footnote 6] The physical sickness that children develop when denied loving relationships shows their critical importance in development. [footnote 7] There is also evidence that statistically, individuals enjoy better health when cooperation rather than domination is the main organising principle in society. [footnote 8]
By implication, when we behave in ways that undermine facilitative relations with others, for example by seeking to dominate our context, we endanger our own satisfaction as individuals. In this respect, physical violence is generally self-defeating as a means of achieving growth and satisfaction, whether of an individual or a nation. [footnote 9]
Becoming a society
The evolution of self-actualisation as an idea has taken place in the domain of psychologists, whose primary interest has typically been the mental and emotional life of the individual. [footnote 10] However, the argument in this series of articles is that a commitment to peace involves a loyalty to society and our ecological context at large, rather than only to our own interests as individuals. In other words, shalom implies not only the process of becoming a person but also that of becoming a society.
A limitation of the self-actualisation idea is that it does not do adequate justice to the fact that groups, as well as individuals, can flourish. For example, the members of a sports team have a common desire to improve their game as a group, and not only as individuals. If they value their individual performance but not that of the whole group, they will not improve as much as a team that values both aspects of their performance together.
We might therefore recognise 'social actualisation' as the process of communities and societies coming to flourish. This extends the idea that self-actualisation is a social process anyway. We might also ascribe the same tendency to flourish to the wider natural world with the term 'ecological actualisation', being the way an ecosystem develops towards its 'climax' form. [footnote 11] So shalom, as wholeness or flourishing in relation to one another, suggests the 'actualisation' of the individual person, society and the ecosphere. Insofar as we flourish and love the whole in which we flourish, we belong to the process of the actualisation of the individual, society and ecosphere; that is, to the process of peace, as shalom.
A burden of choice
Whatever tendencies we may have towards peace individually and collectively, clearly we still have to choose it in order to realise it. Much stands in the way. As those on the political Left point out, social, political, cultural and material circumstances are often disempowering and hinder our flourishing. As those on the Right point out, we all have to take responsibility for the courses of our lives. As religious traditions often point out, we can easily succumb to our ignorance, lust or fear: ignorance, insofar as we are uncertain about what the best choices actually are; fear, insofar as we are afraid of choosing; and lust, insofar as we allow ourselves to be seduced into making self-defeating choices. [footnote 12] The problem is not so much that we fear (as Jacques Brel remarked, 'The man [sic] who has no fear is not a man.'), but when we allow fear to displace love in the way we live.
In this light, the prospect of peace - becoming a person, a society, a community of nations - is always possible but never assured. We need social, cultural and material conditions that are not debilitating but rather empower us (all of us) to take responsibility for our lives and societies. We need then to choose to take that responsibility, rather than turn from it. And we need courage, wisdom and love to lead our choices, rather than fear, ignorance or lust for power. Such is peace's burden of choice, whether of an individual, a community or a nation.
Creating space for grace
Gérard de Nerval:
Man! Free-thinker! You believe you alone think
In this world where life bursts forth in all things?
Your freedom brings power to your hand
But from all your counsel the universe is absent. [footnote 13]
The challenge of peace is great: to realise love, wisdom and courage in the way we relate to one another consistently, even when circumstances make that choice difficult. As many people of faith insist, in order to choose peace consistently, we need to be sustained in love, wisdom and courage - to feel that the universe is in solidarity with us as we turn towards peace.
Julian of Norwich on being sustained:
And the Lord showed me more, a little thing the size of a hazelnut, on the palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and wondered, 'What is this?' And the answer came, 'It is all that is made.' … In this little thing I saw three truths. The first is that God made it; the second that God loves it; and the third is that God sustains it. [footnote 14]
Many people of faith, including many Quakers, have understood the meaning of 'God' and God's immanent presence in terms of a power that sustains. To encounter this is to know something of the meaning of 'grace' and so to recognise the possibility of peace. I cannot imagine how peace could endure if grace, however it may come, is unfelt in society at large, or if the 'counsel of the universe', whatever it may be, is unheard.
By definition, grace is a gift that is given and an unprompted one at that, but that is all the more reason to develop attentiveness to it. We can do this by creating spaces in which we actively invite grace and become more responsive to it. Prayer, ritual, symbols, stories and communing are ways that religious communities may seek to do this. In so doing, we may move from simply praying for peace into something much more valuable and engaged: praying for the love, wisdom and courage to take part in peace.
'Weapons of mass seduction'
The importance of being sustained in choosing peace is underlined when we are encouraged to make choices that are self-defeating and harmful. Many such enticements are embedded in social structures and pervasive throughout everyday life.
Consider, for example, the way the Armed Forces attract new recruits. The Government spends 'an enormous amount of money on recruiting', attracting some 25,000 young people from the age of 16 every year. [footnote 15] To this end, the recruitment publicity portrays life in the Army as ennobling and empowering for young people, yet is virtually silent on the primary requirements of soldiering: to be prepared to kill, as well as risk death and serious injury. Rather, it claims that those joining up 'all want the same thing: to get the most out of life' and so characterises life in the Army primarily as a subsidised self-development opportunity. [footnote 16]
The only published Ministry of Defence study on the social backgrounds of recruits shows that the Army draws mainly from the socio-economic margins. [footnote 17] It shows that most recruits are from 'broken homes' or 'deprived backgrounds' and left school with no qualifications, and that 40% of respondents in the study joined up 'as a last resort'. [footnote 18] I saw recently an army recruitment ad above a urinal in a depressed area of Hull. Its sordid message, Hold a real gun in your hand, by associating manhood with the power to kill, exemplifies the brazen enticement extended to young people marginalised by socio-economic circumstances. Some recruits undoubtedly do enjoy army life; others find such slogans empty and disingenuous when faced with the training regime and war itself. [footnote 19] More British soldiers in the Falklands conflict have committed suicide since the action than died during it, and we can expect that a quarter of soldiers now in Iraq will suffer serious psychological problems afterwards. [footnote 20] Yet leaving the Forces is made difficult by obliging recruits to remain there for four years after their 18th birthday. Not only would this be unlawful in civilian employment, it would be superfluous if recruits really were 'getting the most out of life' while in the military.
Perhaps most questionable of all is the recruitment of under-18s, which account for 40-50% of new recruits. [footnote 21] Amnesty International is among the civil society groups sharing Quakers' opposition to this. At 16 or 17, we are not considered wise enough to vote or adult enough to drink; however, with little notion of war we are entitled to sign a contract committing us to the Forces until the age of 22. [footnote 22]
Disingenuous recruitment publicity, the targeting of minors and oppressive terms of contract all conspire against a person wanting to make an informed and responsible choice whether or not to join the Armed Forces.
* * *
Even when we are free to make responsible choices, there is no guarantee that we will. Take, for example, life in Uxbridge where I live, which is in many ways typical of municipalities across the Western world. A small town of 15,000 on the edge of London, Uxbridge largely reflects the prevailing Government vision for municipal society: economically buoyant with low unemployment. [footnote 23] In these terms, Uxbridge is a success story in being more 'free' than most of the world. However, while others will experience the town differently, to my mind it seems far from 'choosing peace' in the sense of a community 'becoming all it can be', flourishing in relation to itself.
The town centre is home to some 300 shops, 200 of which are housed in two shopping malls, and almost all belong to large chains. About 100 shops sell clothes or footwear and 14 cut hair. By contrast, there is no independent grocer or baker and nowhere can sell a tin of paint or a box of nails. As for the town's cultural resources, a multiplex cinema shows Hollywood blockbusters but there is no venue for theatre or live music apart from the church. Uxbridge's only public artwork is a small statue entitled Anticipation that depicts a family apparently out shopping. There is very little green space in the town centre but there are plans to remove a small stand of trees, which the council says darkens the street and blocks the line of sight between the two shopping centres (which darken the street considerably more). The trees would be replaced by a hard landscape 'feature' to enchant shoppers as they move between the centres.
Personally, I find it horrifying that the central focus of a whole community should be shopping. True, many other towns in the world face far graver problems, such as poverty and war. However, this only underlines the value of the freedom we have and invites us to ask why we use it in some of the ways we do. One of the reasons is that the corporate interests behind consumer culture are adept at persuading us to make choices that serve them. For example, a supermarket chain professes to be 'helping you spend less every day' while actually employing all manner of stratagems to persuade you to spend more, and has just announced annual profits of £2bn. [footnote 24]
Now shopping centres are embellishing the false promise with devices associated with religious buildings. The name of Uxbridge's newest centre, The Chimes, most obviously recalls a church, as does its logo, a ringing church bell. Two large columns flank the entrance, which leads into a spacious thoroughfare with a high ceiling, again like a church. This culminates in the central focus of the structure - a vacuous circular atrium covered with a glass dome. Just as traditional church architecture would use devices to suggest greatness, meaning and hope (often as a means of social manipulation), so now consumer culture is making use of similar devices to attract us.
Corporate interests now dominate municipal spaces, brandishing consumer culture as its weapon of mass seduction. This is not to suggest that shopping is always problematic, but that the unquestioning celebration of consumer culture surely is. When the wantonly acquisitive act is valued as therapeutic and existentially meaningful; when this means that other, perhaps more vital wants and needs go unmet; and when this reality becomes as pervasive as it has, then we surely face a major everyday obstacle to choosing peace, in the sense of becoming a flourishing society.
As such, the 'neoliberal' assumption - that economic development will deliver us into a condition of social flourishing and freedom - is not being borne out. The economic success of Uxbridge has not led to a healthier, greener town; community-building events such as festivals and sports days; venues for theatre, music and film; or deeper citizens' engagement with local democracy. On the contrary, it seems that as creativity and community are marginalised, so local culture is becoming homogenised and, perhaps most significantly, our hopes and expectations of municipal life are diminished.
Peace, as flourishing society (shalom) is never an inevitability, always a responsibility, even when we are free from pervasive repression, poverty and violence. Since we have the power not to choose peace, it is imperative that we do, and that a social conversation takes place about what peace means in practice. If there are those who seek peace even in communities where freedom is constrained by violence, poverty or corruption, then it cannot be beyond those of us living in conditions of greater freedom at least to try to do the same.
Trouble in the global village
The failure to 'choose peace' at a personal level can have tragic results when reflected in the political realm. For example, Saddam Hussein's biography is a catalogue of dysfunctional relationships that undoubtedly contributed to his lust for power. [footnote 25] When he was a child his peers bullied him in the streets because he alone went barefoot. His family did not care to provide shoes for him; his father drank away most of the family income and was rarely home. Out on the streets, Saddam learnt their ways, especially that he could obtain much through violence, and he later rose to political prominence by putting that principle into effect. One day, a Kurdish negotiator visited Saddam and was puzzled to see 'over 12 pairs of very expensive shoes' lined up next to his office bed. [footnote 26] Did Saddam see in his long line of shoes a promise that he could never be humiliated again? Is that what he hoped his brutal leadership would ensure?
Of course, Saddam has not been alone as a national leader in failing to recognise that to flourish always means to flourish in mutual relation to others. The militant supremacism of successive United States governments and the xenophobia of some European leaders are just two examples of relational dysfunction writ large. It seems that all of us carry personal difficulties into our relationships with the world, often harmfully. This may be inevitable, but the consequences are magnified through the privilege of power.
The precarious international relations of our day reflect this. Whilst we all want to flourish, nations habitually relate to one another in paranoid, psychopathic and neurotic ways, as Philip Seed notes. [footnote 27] If we imagine the planet as a school playground and each of the nearly 200 nations a child, a few children would be stockpiling food while most would be chronically ill or starving. Most of the children would not be able to read or write; many would be bullied routinely and bloody brawls would be erupting all the time. Eight children representing the nuclear powers would have their own piles of hand-grenades, each prepared to use theirs first against the others 'if necessary', while several others would be building their own grenade stockpiles for their own 'vital security interests'. With no teacher in this playground to care for the children's well-being and challenge wrongdoing, we might wonder how we have survived and boggle that actually these are not children in this imaginary playground at all, but adults just like us.
Yet still the world has achieved much in the direction of peace nonetheless. The United Nations, for example - its shortcomings aside - is based essentially on achieving justice and peace through trust and cooperation, for which nation states must voluntarily devolve some of their power to the international community. As such, it is an extraordinary achievement of relationships and evidence that choosing peace can be possible even when conditions do not seem conducive to it.
A story of separation
Arguably, the burden of choice to become a person and a society is at the heart of the story of 'The Fall' in the Book of Genesis. Within the meaning of its narrative, Adam and Eve are faced with a choice about how to live and they see in the Tree of Knowledge a promise of power and greater freedom. Although God has warned them that this promise is ultimately false, they are seduced into accepting it and so make a choice that puts them in tension with God, the Creation and themselves.
For some, Genesis describes a part of history, but we can also approach the text meaningfully as a drama set in the here and now, in which we all play the parts of Adam and Eve. As such, the story is a warning to be aware of what we invest our faith in when we choose how to live.
A determining factor in this choice is whether we allow ignorance, fear and lust for power to lead us in our choices or love, wisdom and courage. For example, we could ask whether the war over Iraq reflected a loving desire to uphold a downtrodden people, the wisdom of applying appropriate means for noble ends, and the courage to make difficult moral choices in the face of widespread political opposition. And we could ask similarly whether it was a war based on the arrogance of power, led by ignorance and fear of 'the other' and with the aim of extending strategic power in the Middle East.
A more questionable aspect of the fall story is the stark simplicity of the solutions that it offers to the questions that it raises. Within the narrative's meaning, the fruit is clearly forbidden and the result of defying God an unambiguous fall from grace. In the real world our choices are more often between two rights or between two wrongs, as Wolf Mendl points out. [footnote 28] When Adam and Eve listen to God, they clearly hear, 'Don't eat that fruit!' When we listen to God in the real world, we seem to hear different things. Tony Blair and Rowan Williams differed on the question of whether war against Iraq could be justified, for example. We can only understand 'God' and 'the truth' through our relationship to them, which will differ depending on the context in which we find ourselves. In the real world, attaining the moral high ground for its own sake is politically pointless. Rather than conceive of the aim of faith witness as a way of 'being right' in the world, we might instead see it as a way of participating in a social conversation, in which there are many different voices concerned with looking for meaning and truth. Only insofar as that social conversation is genuinely present, as it was manifestly not in the run-up to the Iraq war, for example, is democracy meaningful.
We might also question the guilt that some readings of the fall story heap on Adam and Eve (and therefore on all of us) for defying God. The Garden of Eden is a prison of bliss, for it lacks any real freedom in which to exercise choice about how to live. Within the meaning of the story, I wonder whether the Tree of Knowledge, symbolising the freedom to choose to defy God, is a liberating gift to humanity. Only within the freedom to choose about how to live can we become human in any meaningful sense; and only within the freedom to defy God does it become possible to choose to love God. Not only does the eating of the fruit symbolise a fall from grace but also the point at which our specifically human story begins.
In this light, we can consider the story in Genesis in more than one way. We can read it simply in terms of a fall from grace, in which we are marked by sin from the beginning. Alternatively, we can see it as a cautionary message about how our choices can either sustain a tension between humanity and God/Creation or bring reconciliation. It warns us to beware of turning away from love and so harming ourselves or others; not to be seduced into assuming god-like powers; and to be mindful that the universe is wiser than we are. Within this here-and-now reading of the myth, we are cautioned against assuming that we can construct our personal, social and geopolitical reality on our own terms alone, in which the 'counsel of the universe' is absent. The message is a common theme among religious traditions. [footnote 29] In the extreme, the consequences of not heeding it are that our dominion becomes domination; we desire what harms us or others; we crave what promises to set us above others; we say things like, 'It's a dog-eat-dog world' and 'It's not my problem'; we are able to love only selfishly; we build towers of Babel, proliferate the weapons of war, marginalise others and rape the Creation.
At the global level, for example, states have tended to invest in their own military, economic and political power over others, rather than share power and freedom within a community of equals. By investing heavily in militarism to deliver security and prosperity, we have damaged the relationships on which these goals most depend. While global military expenditure rises towards $900bn per year, governments are failing to provide the extra $50-60bn per year needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals that could lift millions out of poverty. It is the fall story made manifest: by placing faith in our own power over others, we deepen our tension with God and make the world more insecure and violent for all.
A story of reconciliation
So we have a predicament: our human limitations make our power to choose love or evil dangerous and so our situation is precarious. As the fall story says, when we assume god-like powers, we become ashamed and hide from God, who yet beckons us into reconciliation by asking, 'Where are you?'
That the path of love and therefore of peace can only be chosen is a defining mark of our humanity. Jesus' ministry is aimed at helping us to choose love, and thus peace, so that we can answer God's question, 'Here.'
Within the meaning of the biblical stories, Adam and Eve were questioned in the Garden and succumbed to temptation, yet Jesus was tested in the wilderness and did not. If the story in Genesis tells of a separation between humanity and the power of truth that is God, then Jesus incarnates their reconciliation and points us towards doing the same.
His parables speak of a return to grace becoming possible when we recognise the false idolatry of our own self-constructed wisdom. He tells us that a deeper wisdom has accompanied us throughout our human story. God has never abandoned us or ceased trying to let us know this, yet 'they would not come' (Matthew 22:3). It is a persistent, daily and very simple revelation, according to the Gospel of Thomas:
It is not by being waited for that [the kingdom of heaven] is going to come. They are not going to say, 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it. [footnote 30]
A Quaker understanding of this might be that God and humanity begin to be reconciled when we participate in the redeeming power and truth 'spread out' within and among us. Hence, 'whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it'. (Matthew 16:25).
Peace, as shalom, is the process through which it becomes possible as individuals, communities and nations, 'to be what we are and to become what we are capable of becoming'. As the first article in this series suggested, a re-orientation of our lives is possible when we become progressively more aware of the tension between humanity and God. As Andrew Shanks has it, to encounter the world as it is to be shaken 'out of "life within a lie" - or, in general, out of the unquestioned prejudices of [our] culture - into a genuinely open-minded thoughtfulness.' [footnote 31] It is a thoughtfulness guided by questions, rather than prescriptions: by what truth will we live and what power will sustain us in it?
The Gospel of Thomas:
Let one who seeks not stop seeking until that person finds; and upon finding, the person will be disturbed; and being disturbed, will be astounded… [footnote 32]
David Gee, Quaker Peace & Social Witness
Questions for reflection and discussion
1. Do you think it is right to think of peace in terms of personal and social growth, integrity and health?
2. Do you think there is any meaning in the suggestion that we are 'fallen' or is this not a helpful way to think about our human situation?
3. What can you most strongly agree with in the article and what do you disagree with?
What do you think peace means?
The purpose of this article is to help feed a conversation about the meaning of peace. Please tell us what you think about this article or send your own views about what peace means.
Write to Disarm, Quaker Peace & Social Witness, Friends House, 173-177 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ
Email disarm@quaker.org.uk
Fax 020 7663 1049
[1] Some seek to explain the purpose of any self-actualising tendency merely in terms of increasing our chances of genetic survival. There are at least three reasons why we might be cautious about claims such as these. First, since we experience the tendency to self-actualisation as a desire to flourish, rather than as a desire to survive, why should we assume that it pertains to the latter? In particular, some of the ways in which we choose to flourish appear not to have an obvious link with any putative instinctive drive to survive and reproduce; listening to music is an example. Second, if we lived our lives simply in order to survive and reproduce, would they not look rather different from the ways in which we actually do live them? The hypothesis that everything we strive to do and achieve is a subconscious strategy for survival and reproduction seems tenuous and not provable. Third and perhaps most important, whilst it is possible to argue that we seek to flourish in order to survive, the converse appears to be equally plausible and more meaningful: that we seek to survive in order to flourish. [Go back to text]
[2] For example, see Rogers, Carl R.: 'On Becoming a Person: a Therapist's View of Psychotherapy' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961) [Go back to text]
[3] Patterson, C H: 'The Therapeutic Relationship' (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1985), Chapter 3: 'The Nature of Self-Actualization' [Go back to text]
[4] MacMurrary, John: 'The Form of the Personal: Volume II - Persons in Relation' [Go back to text]
[5] Lewis Herman, Judith: 'Trauma and Recovery - From domestic abuse to political terror' (London: Pandora, 2001 - first published 1992), p. 133 [Go back to text]
[6] The converse is also true: only by becoming persons individually can we become persons together. [Go back to text]
[7] Patterson, C H, op.cit. [Go back to text]
[8] Richard Wilkinson, presentation to QPSW Annual Conference, March 2003. His book on this is due for publication in 2005. [Go back to text]
[9] Some readers may find this characterisation of nations as persons simplistic. Philip Seed and Wolf Mendl would be among those who agree. Mendl calls this a 'deplorable' habit (Mendl, Wolf: op. cit. below), and Seed observes that a nation state, unlike a person, is subject to a community of forces between which it must compromise (Seed, Philip: op. cit. below). Unlike these, I believe the connection is a valid one. First, like persons, nations make discrete decisions. For example, there are many views in Britain about whether to retain nuclear weapons but the UK will still have to make a single decision, as a person might choose whether to keep or discard a gun. Second, within every person are various forces pulling in conflicting directions, which must be reconciled into single decisions. We might tend to think of a person as an individual but inwardly we are subject to a community of conflicting interests as a national state government is. [Go back to text]
[10] In fact, Carl Rogers did draw on the example of ecosystems, as organisms flourishing sustainably in relation to one another and growing as a whole. [Go back to text]
[11] A climax ecosystem is one that has developed as far as it can within its abiotic (non-life) physical context. For example, the climax land-based ecosystem for a tropical region is generally rainforest. [Go back to text]
[12] 'Lust' here refers to desire for something incompatible with peace, as shalom (eg lust for power over others) and is not to be confused with sexual desire. [Go back to text]
[13] 'Homme! libre penseur! te crois-tu seul pensant / Dans ce monde où la vie éclate en toute chose ? / Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose, / Mais de tous tes conseils l'univers est absent…' Gérard de Nerval: 'Vers dorés' (first stanza), published on the web at http://pages.globetrotter.net/pcbcr/nerval.html#or - accessed 10 January 2005. English translation by the author [Go back to text]
[14] Julian of Norwich: 'The Revelations of Divine Love' [Go back to text]
[15] Hoon, Geoffrey (Secretary of State for Defence): Minutes of Evidence, 23 June 2004, Q138, House of Commons Defence Committee Inquiry into the Defence White Paper 2003, published on the web at http://www.parliament.uk/ - accessed 8 March 2005 [Go back to text]
[16] Army Careers web site http://www.army.mod.uk/careers - accessed 8 March 2005 [Go back to text]
[17] This study was based on Army recruitment from the Cardiff area between 1998 and 2000. Cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, 'Duty of Care - Third Report of Session 2004-05' (London: The Stationery Office, 2005), p.37 [Go back to text]
[18] ibid. [Go back to text]
[19] For example, see Hallock, Dan: 'Bloody Hell - The price soldiers pay' (Robertsbridge, East Sussex, UK: Plough, 1999) [Go back to text]
[20] Mental Health Foundation news release, 27 February 2003: 'No plans in place for returning soldiers' psychological trauma', published at http://www.mhf.org.uk/page.cfm?pagecode=PRNR0303 - accessed 28 October 2004. [Go back to text]
[21] Colonel Haes: 'ATRA Duty of Care and Supervision (DofC&S) Report 98-01', p. 12, cited in House of Commons Defence Committee, 'Duty of Care - Third Report of Session 2004-05' (London: The Stationery Office, 2005), p. 159 [Go back to text]
[22] Recruitment strategies go much further in the United States Armed Forces. Among the enticements is a state-of-the-art, freely available online computer game, America's Army. This claims to simulate every major aspect of army life accurately, although in order to qualify as acceptable to a 13-year old audience, the graphic violence has been toned down - 'a small puff of blood' indicates an injury or fatality. Players can elect to pass their contact details and gaming records to a recruiter 'for the purpose of facilitating career placement within the Army'. See America's Army, online at http://www.americasarmy.com/support/faq_win.php - accessed 8 March 2005 [Go back to text]
[23] The Newspaper Society and Adweb: Demographic Profile Location Report for Uxbridge, November 2004, published on the web at http://www.nsdatabase.co.uk/locationdetail.cfm?locationid=1602 - accessed 14 January 2005 [Go back to text]
[24] BBC News, 12 April 2005 [Go back to text]
[25] See Aburish, Saïd K: 'Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge' (London: Bloomsbury, 2000) for the influence of Saddam's early life on his political career. [Go back to text]
[26] Mahmoud Othman, cited in Aburish, Saïd K: 'Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge' (London: Bloomsbury, 2000), p.178 [Go back to text]
[27] Seed, Philip: 'The Psychological Problem of Disarmament' (London: Housmans, 1966) [Go back to text]
[28] Mendl, Wolf: 'Prophets and Reconcilers' (Swarthmore Lecture, 1974), (London: Friends Home Service Committee, 1974) [Go back to text]
[29] For example, a similar story is reflected in a Chumash (native American) creation myth. This imagines that a beautiful song created the Earth from its vibrations and suggests that our troubles result from moving away from this original impulse: 'A long time ago, to begin with, there was a movement in the atmosphere, and that movement was very small. Then it began to build. It built from a particle into a wave and began to circle the earth. The wave began to take on substance. That wave became a song, and it was the most beautiful song. It circled the earth and all things came into being. As time went by, people began to move away from the song.' (From the proceedings of the Nuclear Truth Commission, 1 May 2000, cited in Atomic Mirror: 'As Time Goes By - Making the case for love in a time of fear (an annual assessment of our nuclear world)' [campaign literature] at http://www.atomicmirror.org/ [Go back to text]
[30] Saying 113, Gospel of Thomas web site, http://www.gospelthomas.com/ - accessed 19 December 2004 [Go back to text]
[31] Shanks, Andrew: 'God and Modernity: A new and better way to do theology' (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 4 [Go back to text]
[32] Saying 2, Gospel of Thomas web site, http://www.gospelthomas.com/ - accessed 19 December 2004 [Go back to text]
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