Peace Literacy: Skills for building stronger communities | Global Connections Call Notes 10.2.24

Introduction

This month Euphrates team up with Weave Peace +Justice group to introduce you to Paul Chappell. Paul's an international peace educator, Founder of the Peace Literacy Institute. He graduated from West Point, was deployed to Iraq, and left active duty as a captain, realizing that humanity is facing new challenges that require us to become as well trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war. Chappell created Peace Literacy to help students and adults from all backgrounds work towards their full potential and a more peaceful world. Peace Literacy empowers us to create peace that is realistic, resilient and sustainable, while helping us develop our full capacity for empathy, conscience, reason and realistic hope.

PAUL’S PRESENTATION

Background & Childhood

I’m grateful for everyone being here and giving me your time and just being here for this very urgent topic that becomes, as you know, more urgent every day. I come from an unusual background to be working for peace. I graduated from West Point. I served in the army for seven years. I was deployed to Iraq and left the Army as a captain. But what initially got me interested in peace is growing up in a violent household. My father fought in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He had a lot of war trauma, which he brought home with him. And growing up in a violent household, I developed a lot of behavioral problems as a child. I was kicked out of elementary school for fighting. I was almost kicked out of middle school. I was suspended in high school for fighting. And I also grew up with very strong feelings of alienation, especially racial alienation, because my mother's Korean, my father's black, and I grew up in Alabama.  All of that trauma, and all the rage, mistrust, and alienation that resulted from that trauma caused me to develop a mass shooter personality in high school, and every day in high school, I would fantasize about shooting the kids in my classes. In this picture, you can see my trauma, my rage, my mistrust, and my alienation. So one reason why I'm sharing this is because I'm not alone in this. Countless people walk the terrain of trauma, rage, alienation and mistrust, and mass shootings are just one manifestation of that terrain. So I'm just going to ask you to put in the chat – what are other problems that can emerge from this terrain of trauma, rage, alienation, and mistrust?

…These are great responses, social decline, addiction, societal violence, hate speech, extremism, lack of self-worth, sense of purpose, absolutely social anxiety . . .

Human Needs: Expression & Explanation

So we're going to talk about the human condition. What does it mean to be human? Our shared humanity is, what do we have in common, regardless of race, religion, nationality, gender, even time period. I'm going to start with this question, what are our human needs? What do we need as humans? Because that's a good place to start when we think about what it means to be human and the human condition. So just type into the chat what you think our different needs are because, how can we be happy? How can we be confident? How can we be secure if we don't first understand what those needs are? How can we start this whole peace process if we don't know what we need as humans? 

--Connection, peace, love, respect, connection, love, security, solitude, safety, belonging, freedom, feeling of importance…

Expression

Someone mentioned Maslow's hierarchy. So when people think of needs, they typically think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? They think of at the bottom, having food and safety and shelter, then above that, you have love and belonging. Above that, you have esteem, and at the top, you have self-actualization. But we're going to talk about some needs that people almost never say when I ask this question. First thing we're going to talk about is the human need for expression. Now why are we going to start by talking about the human need for expression? Think of it this way, when we come out of our mother's womb, before we have our first meal, we have the capacity to cry. Babies typically start crying as they take their first breaths of air. So expression is our first need to activate. It activates before we have our first meal. Expression activates as we start breathing when we're born. That is how primal, how early expression activates in humans and many other animals. 

Here's the thing about expression, the reason why babies cry, the reason why puppies cry, the reason why so many animals express themselves so young, is they use expression to get their physical needs met, right? Babies cry so they can get their diapers changed, or they're hungry, or they're cold, or they're hot, or they're thirsty, right? Or they're uncomfortable in some way, or they want to be held. People think of physical needs coming before non-physical needs. They think of at the very bottom of the pyramid, you have food and safety and shelter. But we and many other animals use expression to get food, safety, etc.

Two key ideas that we have uncovered, expression is a foundational need that can help us get all of our other needs met. That's not just true with kids and babies. It's true with adults. Right? Think about how adults get food and safety. They get it through expression, but also, expression greatly enhances cooperation. We get all these things through cooperation, and that's made possible by expression. Here's another really key point - when people don't have food, and their physical need for food increases, their need for expression will also increase. So if an adult doesn't have food or safety, their need for expression will not go away. It will go up. When people lose their jobs or there's high inflation, or they're hungry or they don't feel safe, people are going to have a greater need to express themselves. When people don't have safety, and their physical need for safety increases, their non-physical need for expression will also increase. When there's a violent attack, when there's a mass shooting, when there's a terrorist attack, when there's lack of food, lack of water, the human need for expression is going to go up, and that's very important to understand, because humans can express themselves in all kinds of different ways when they don't have their physical needs met.

Let's come up with a list of all the different ways human beings can express themselves, right? And that'll include digital technology. So type into the chat all the different ways humans can express themselves. Think about not just expression that's been around for thousands of years, but also new kinds of expression made possible by digital technology. What are all the different ways that humans can express themselves?

… rioting, crying, hugging, anger, art, tattoos, video, emojis, selfies, wailing, writing, mourning, singing, dancing, art, music, crying, drawing, protest, ignoring, silence, listening…

Listening can be a form of expression – that's interesting, right? Think about what you can be expressing when you're listening. You can be expressing empathy and respect. You're almost always expressing through body language and facial expressions, right? You might eat a few times a day, but if you think about body language and facial expressions, you're almost always expressing yourself. Think about tattoos. Think about bumper stickers. Think about people dyeing their hair. Think about clothing. Think about aggression and violence as forms of expression. Think about the fact that humans can turn anything into expression, right? So now think about what nonviolence is really about. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, understood that when people don't have safety, when people don't have food, or when people don't have non-physical needs met, such as dignity and self-worth, their need for expression is going to go up dramatically. Nonviolence gives humans a new way to express their grievances. Organized strategic nonviolence is a way for humans to express their grievances, to resolve problems, because Gandhi and King realized that if people don't have a healthy way to express themselves, they will use an unhealthy way, right? And if people have no other options, and they're hungry, they're not safe, they're not being treated well, that expression will typically come out through violence – a riot, some sort of violent rebellion or violent act. So nonviolence is a way to give people an alternative, more effective form of expression to deal with their grievances. 

Think about the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The First Amendment is about expression. It's freedom of religious expression. It's freedom of speech. It's freedom of assembly, which is a form of expression. It's freedom to petition the government, which is a form of expression. And the reason why expression is the First Amendment is that expression is the right that empowers us to protect all of our other human rights. Think about when we're born, expression, along with breathing, is the first need to activate, because expression empowers us to get all of our needs met. Expression is first again in the US Constitution, because expression is the human right that empowers us to protect every other human right. Nonviolence is a strategic way to harness the power of expression towards solving root causes of problems. 

Explanations

So we talked about expression and how primal it is, right? When we don't have our physical needs met, our expression goes up, and expression helps us get our physical needs met. Let's talk about another need that people don't usually mention when I ask this question, but I'm sure you all have seen this just every day. Think about the human need for explanations. As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet when lightning strikes the ground, we say, why did that happen? Humans need explanations for things. We come up with religious explanations, scientific explanations, philosophical explanations, for what we see around us. When bad things happen to us, we need to know why. We say, why did that happen? When there's no food, we want to know why. When we're not safe, we want to know, why am I not safe? When people lose their jobs, they want to know, why did I lose my job? Why is the economy bad? Why is there inflation? Why did the candidate that I support lose the election?

This need for explanation activates at a very early age - around age three. Three-year-old children are asking questions. Why is the sky blue? Why does it rain? Where do babies come from? When people have relationship problems, they want to know, why did this person break up with me? Why did this person cheat on me? Why is this person upset today? Our need for explanations is so incredibly powerful that if people don't have an accurate explanation, they will often come up with an inaccurate explanation. 

Think about huge social issues. Think about climate change. That's an argument over an explanation. Is climate change being caused by humans or is it not being caused by humans? Think about the 2020 presidential election, there is a big argument over why Donald Trump lost the election. For some people, the explanation for why he lost the election was because he got less votes. For some people, the explanation for why he lost the election is because the election was stolen from him. So explanations have huge, huge consequences, right? Explanations can cause civil wars. Right now, inflation – people want an explanation for it. Our need for explanations gives people in power an opportunity to give people inaccurate explanations. 

What is propaganda? Propaganda is an inaccurate explanation for something, right? Why might somebody want you to have an inaccurate explanation? How can people benefit by giving you an inaccurate explanation for your problems? It can manipulate you. But here's the thing, when we don't have our physical needs met, our need for explanations goes up dramatically. And explanations help us get our physical needs met. If you understand why things happen, it helps you get food, that helps you get water, that helps you get safety, right? If people in the past, if their crops are dying, if there's a drought, if there's violent invaders coming in, they want to know, why is this happening, right? Their need for explanations doesn't go away. It's going to go up.

Thinking again about nonviolence, nonviolence has a lot to do with human explanations by thinking about what are the actual root causes of problems. The explanation for segregation in the American South is that segregation exists because black people are subhuman. Nonviolence comes along in the American South and says that this is not the accurate explanation, there was a deeper explanation, a more accurate explanation for why segregation exists. Nonviolence offers explanations in the context of systems and patterns of thinking. As King would say, instead of thinking about evil people, thinking about evil systems and how those systems corrupt people's ways of thought and ways of being, and that allows you to access a deeper layer of explanations, a deeper explanatory framework that is much more capable of explaining problems than just seeing the surface issues of this person doing that, but why is this person doing that? What is the reason behind their behavior? That's another reason why nonviolence is so powerful is because it allows humans to deepen their explanations for problems. 

We're going to talk about just a few more needs here. If you look at Maslow’s needs, expression is nowhere, explanations is nowhere. Something that three-year-old children need and even babies need, expression, is nowhere on the hierarchy of needs.

Additional Needs

Purpose and meaning is really, really powerful, right? I'll just talk about this briefly. If you think about what is more important for humans, food or purpose and meaning? People might say food, but think about this in another way. Purpose and meaning helps us get food. Purpose and meaning increases our motivation, it increases our courage, it increases our resilience, so that we can more reliably get our physical needs met.

The philosopher Frederick Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” And Jesus, as you all know, said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Now, what great military leaders have realized, and what great peace leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., realized, is that if you give people enough purpose and meaning in life, people will willingly give up safety. They will willingly give up food. They will willingly die for a cause. If a military leader tells people that they're fighting for their country or they're fighting for their freedom, people will willingly give up safety, willingly suffer from hunger, willingly die for a cause. When Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. tell people that they're struggling for freedom and for justice, people will willingly get beaten up, willingly go to jail, willingly die for a cause. Purpose and meaning is such a powerful need that people will give up safety and food for this, right? People will hunger strike. People will starve themselves to death if they believe it serves a higher purpose. That's how incredibly powerful this need is. It can actually override physical needs, and it can help us get physical needs met by helping us overcome adversity.

Nurturing relationships – this is also really important. Think of trust as the foundation of nurturing relationships. The human need for trust. Every human on the planet wants to be around people they can trust. Nobody here on this call likes to be betrayed. No human likes to be betrayed. Every human wants to be around people they can trust. Nobody wants to be with people who are going to betray them, right? We all crave trust, and when we don't feel safe, our need for trust increases. That's a really important thing to understand. When humans don't feel safe, their need for trust is going to go up, because trust is the primary way through which humans feel safe. You can be living in a fortress with armed guards and security cameras and concrete walls and barbed wire, but if you can't trust anybody, you will feel very unsafe. If you're unable to trust anybody, if you're paranoid, if you're alienated, not able to trust anyone, you will feel much less safe than somebody living in a strong community who has strong bonds of trust. And that person might be living in less physically safe circumstances, but they will feel much safer. 

The primary way through which we feel safe is through social connections, through being able to trust those around us. And then think about a country where people don't trust anyone, or where trust is very fractured, and how much less safe people are going to feel.

Inspiration is very important. If you watch a movie like 300, Braveheart, if you read about the Civil Rights Movement, if you read about World War 2 and Winston Churchill, when people don't feel safe, when people's physical need for safety is not met, what do effective leaders always do? They always give an inspiring speech. Effective leaders know that when people don't feel safe, the most immediate need you have to feed is you have to inspire people so that they can overcome their fear. You can inspire people through your words or actions.

One thing that Maslow's hierarchy does not take into account is the human potential for just mental collapse. In reality, when people don't have any food and safety, people are going to often panic and be terrified and be hopeless and be in despair. And that hierarchy just doesn't take any of that into account, right? Think about panic, despair, fear, and hopelessness. Inspiration can help people overcome that. Purpose and meaning can help people overcome that. Nurturing relationships, in the form of trust, can help people overcome those obstacles. We need to be inspired, because people need motivation and courage to overcome any mental roadblocks they're having.

Think about belonging again. People think of belonging as being above physical needs. But we get our physical needs met through being members of a community, right? Two-year-old children can't feed themselves, they can't really protect themselves. It is through belonging that we reliably get all of our physical needs met. This is the foundation. We're born into a community, right? And that's how we really get our physical needs met reliably.

Self-worth, very powerful need. Think about how much human behavior is driven by the need for self-worth, and think about this question, what is more important for humans, self-worth or staying alive? It depends upon the person. Julius Caesar said, “Prestige has always been of prime importance to me, even outweighing life itself.” And there are many people who will risk their lives if their self-worth is attacked. Think about youth gang violence, boys and girls. Youth gang violence all over the world, and think about incidents of youth gang violence. Most incidents occur when somebody feels disrespected. They feel that their self-worth has been attacked, and they will risk dying or going to jail to try to redeem their sense of self-worth. When someone’s self-worth gets shattered, they can feel like they're almost dying in a way, right? So, self-worth can be very fragile. People can risk their lives. They can risk all kinds of things. They might duel. They might fight when their self-worth is under threat, because they will interpret it as their life being under threat. Think about youth gang violence all over the world, the most common cause in terms of what instigates the actual act of violence, I'm not talking about the root causes, but the trigger, is people feeling disrespected. You disrespected me. Now I'm going to risk my life or risk going to jail to try to redeem my sense of self-worth by taking part in some sort of violent, risky retaliation.

Need for challenge is very important, and we could talk a lot more about that. And transcendence, transcending our sense of time, feeling a sense of timelessness. And we could talk a lot more about transcendence. 

Non-Physical Needs and Tangles of Trauma

Something to think about with these non-physical needs is that trauma can get tangled up in them. And when trauma gets tangled up in these non-physical needs, it creates these distortions that we call tangles of trauma. So when trauma gets tangled up in our need for purpose and meaning, it can lead to meaninglessness or nihilism. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for nurturing relationships, it can lead to mistrust, where we develop a persistent inability to trust other human beings. So again, trust feels wonderful. Every human on the planet wants to be around people they can trust. Nobody wants to be betrayed. But because of trauma, whether it's racial trauma or war trauma or childhood trauma or any kind of trauma, can create this tangle of mistrust, where you develop this persistent inability to trust other people, right? So even though trust feels great, it's hard to trust people because of this past trauma. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for explanations, it can lead to disillusionment or a ruthless worldview. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for expression, it can lead to rage, where rage becomes people's preferred method of communication. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for inspiration, it can lead to numbness or cynicism. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for belonging, it can lead to alienation. Alienation is so dangerous. 

There's a writer named Peter Vronsky. He writes about serial killers, and he says, what is the most common characteristic of all serial killers? You could also add mass shooters. What is the most common characteristic that all serial killers and mass shooters have in common? Feelings of alienation. So what is more important for humans, food or belonging? People do not become mass shooters and serial killers because they lack food, but people can become mass shooters and serial killers because they lack belonging and they're suffering from alienation. Typically, there are other causal factors, but that tends to be the most common causal factor. 

When trauma gets tangled up in our need for self-worth, it can lead to shame and self-loathing. Again, every human wants to feel worthy. Who doesn't want to feel worthy? Everybody wants to feel worthy and good about themselves. But when trauma gets tangled up in that, it can lead to these persistent feelings of shame and self-loathing, where people have a very difficult time feeling worthy because of past trauma. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for challenge, it can lead to helplessness. When trauma gets tangled up in our need for transcendence, it can lead to addiction or addictive behavior. 

Think of all of these non-physical needs as being interconnected, like organs in your body. Think about how our self-worth can dramatically affect how we express ourselves. If a person has very wounded, very damaged self-worth, that can dramatically affect how they express themselves. If a person has very healthy self-worth, that can dramatically affect how they express themselves. Think about how our explanations can affect our self-worth in powerful ways. One of the issues with little children at around age three developing a need for explanations and asking why is that when they suffer from things and when they are abused, they will tend to blame themselves. For example, if their parents get divorced, they will say, Oh, it must be my fault. Or if a child is abused, they might think, Oh, the reason I'm being abused, I MUST be worthless. I must have done something to deserve to be abused. Again. If people don't have an accurate explanation, they will often come up with an inaccurate explanation.

Think about your explanation if you're being told, Oh, you live in segregation because you are subhuman. If you believe that, then that's going to affect your self-worth. If you have a more accurate explanation, that's going to also affect your self-worth. So explanations have a huge impact upon our self-worth. Think about how our belonging and our nurturing relationships can affect our self-worth. Think about how having a higher purpose in life can affect your self-worth, right? When all these tangles of trauma are interconnected, one reason why rage is so common as a tangle of trauma is because rage feels way better than helplessness. When you're helpless, you feel powerless. You're defenseless. You feel completely vulnerable. Rage gives you this illusion of power. So if you're suffering from the tangle of trauma of helplessness, rage can be very seductive, very alluring, because it gives you this illusion of having some kind of power and not being helpless anymore. Imagine how many societies there are where people feel helpless and powerless. You can manipulate helplessness and direct it into rage very easily, because rage feels bad, but helplessness feels way worse.  It's relative, right? 

Digital Technology Fulfilling Needs

Why is digital technology so incredibly seductive and alluring to people? Think about social media. Social Media helps people meet their need for expression. Think about how much of digital technology uses expression, texting and emojis and emails and all the social media posts and liking and commenting and think about how much of it is really about expression. Think about how much of social media use is about self-worth and belonging. Think about why the average 13, 14, 15-year-old is using social media – expression, belonging, self-worth. In adolescence, your need for self-worth and belonging skyrocket, right? 

Think about explanations. Many people use social media more for explanations than they use traditional news outlets. Fake news is so common on social media [because] people go to social media looking for explanations for why things are happening, and that's a place where people give people inaccurate explanations because they know they're looking for explanations on social media. 

Inspiration. Think about all the inspiring quotes, inspiring pictures, inspiring videos, some of the most popular social media posts inspire people. Think of nurturing, not just in terms of trust. When people hear of nurturing, they think of compassion, generosity, kindness, those are certainly forms of nurturing, but even underneath kindness, generosity and compassion, think about attention. Attention is the primary form of nurturing that we give to other humans. Kindness and compassion start with attention. You have to give someone your attention if you're going to give them your kindness and your compassion. If you think about nurturing as attention, people are desperate for meaningful attention, desperate for it, right? All the acts of nurturing that we do start with attention. Think about how much social media use is people desperately craving attention.

Attention is about quality over quantity. But if you have that void, if you have that empty stomach, you're filling it with stuff that has maybe little to no nutritional value. Then you're constantly hungry because you're not getting that nutrition, that deep nutrition of meaningful attention. We live in a society where people are starved for meaningful attention, and think about how much social media use is about attention.

Purpose and meaning. If you have a purpose in life, whether it's organizing an event or being involved in a movement or running a business or picking up a hobby, social media can help you with that. This is not all bad. There are many ways people use social media to meet their need for challenge or to help them overcome challenge, but there are things on social media actually called “challenges.” There are things called “TikTok challenges.” Challenge is a huge part of why people are drawn to social media. And transcendence, transcending our sense of time, feeling a sense of timelessness. Do people ever lose their sense of time on social media or use social media to kill time?  I was reading a study talking about how TikTok is better than other social media platforms at getting people to get lost in the moment, getting people to transcend their sense of time. The way it's designed and engineered, it’s more effective at getting people to lose track of time than other social media platforms. 

People use social media to manipulate these tangles of trauma that people have. Do people use social media to manipulate people's mistrust, manipulate their nihilism? Nihilism is an unbelievably potent and widespread tangle of trauma in our society. Nihilism is not something that people often think about, but so much of the destructive behavior we see is not just rage, not just shame and helplessness and alienation, but nihilism. It is widespread, and it is very destructive, and it is very easy to manipulate meaninglessness and nihilism. 

Another very dangerous tangle of trauma is cynicism. The manipulation of cynicism really undermines democratic norms, through manipulating cynicism and nihilism and ruthless worldview. For an example of a ruthless worldview, I had a violent upbringing. And if my explanation for why I struggled as a child is that humans are inherently dangerous and untrustworthy, that's just how humans are, and you have to control people so that they can't hurt you, and you have to hurt people before they hurt you – if that's my explanation, that's what a ruthless worldview is. You develop this explanatory framework for the world and for humans that smothers your empathy for people. And a very common consequence of trauma, people can fall into a ruthless world view, because their explanations for why the traumatic thing happened to them will go in a direction that smothers their empathy. I was abused because humans are inherently dangerous and untrustworthy. That's just how people are, right? What can you do about it, other than control people and hurt them before they hurt you? So another tangle of trauma that is widespread is a ruthless worldview. 

There are some things here that people are familiar with, rage, alienation, probably helplessness, probably mistrust, but nihilism, ruthless worldview, cynicism, the manipulation of those tangles of trauma are very important for understanding the current unraveling of democratic norms and the rise of the kind of extremism we're seeing in the US and around the world. It’s related to those tangles of trauma. You start to see human behavior very differently, right? And what's going on with humans. 

I want to offer you some hope here, because I was never taught how to do any of this. I was not taught how to meet my non-physical needs in healthy ways. I was not taught what any of these things were. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy, there was no analysis of trauma in that framework, or what leads people down these destructive and self-destructive paths. To give you some hope, think of it like a basketball game. Imagine if you had a basketball game and nobody was taught how to play basketball, it'd be a mess, but nobody would be shocked or surprised. That's what you should expect to happen. Imagine if you had an orchestra play Beethoven, and nobody was taught how to play their instruments, it would be a mess, right? We don't teach people how to meet these non-physical needs in healthy ways. We don't teach people how to heal their tangles of trauma. In fact, we're teaching many people the opposite. We're teaching them the reverse of this. So Peace Literacy is this idea – what if we were to educate people in all of this with the level of rigor that we educate people in math and reading and writing, starting from a very early age through adulthood? What if we taught people how to do this? One of the ideas that I realized at West Point was how the military gives people excellent training in how to wage war. But what if people were as well trained in waging peace as soldiers are in waging war? How different could our world be? 

And you think about nonviolence, again, going back to Gandhi, right? And Gandhi's birthday. Nonviolence can give people purpose and meaning, and give them a higher sense of purpose and meaning. When you think about what drives extremism, people think about belonging. Oh, it's all about tribalism, but there's a lot more going on with extremism. A big driver of extremism is the need that so many people have for a sense of epic purpose and meaning in life. People want epic purpose, right? And so extremist groups turn what they're doing into a Lord of the Rings movie or a Star Wars movie, right? It's like, oh, we're saving the world. We're saving the country. It's good versus evil. There's these powerful evil forces, and if you join this cause, you're going to be a hero and save the country and save the world. And that sense of epic purpose, that's why the “us versus them” mentality is so compelling, it’s not necessarily because of just belonging and tribalism. It's because of the epic purpose. It's like a Marvel movie or a Lord of the Rings movie or a Star Wars movie. People grew up watching those kinds of movies, and they want to be in the movie. They want that to be their life. They want the epic purpose, right? And they feel something very epic about a battle of good versus evil, in terms of fighting against overwhelmingly powerful forces, and they need you to join this cause. They're telling a hero story. All these extremist groups are telling a hero story, and there's always some sort of epic struggle involved. 

Think about nonviolence in terms of nurturing relationships. How do we build trust? How do we nurture people and nurture their full potential? Think about explanations, expression. Think about inspiration. Think about how much nonviolence has to do with inspiration and belonging and self-worth. Self-worth in terms of our basic human dignity. And basic human dignity means that we're not being objectified. We're not being treated as objects. Nonviolence can help you assert your basic dignity as a human being, your basic worth that you shouldn't be treated as an object or be objectified. Nonviolence can help people overcome challenge, and it can help them become a part of something that transcends time. So when you look at humans today, there's a huge void within us, right?

When we have that void, when we have that hunger, when we have that need, we're hungry for self-worth, we're hungry for attention, we're hungry for belonging, we're hungry for purpose, we're hungry for healthy forms of expression, all kinds of things can rush in to fill that void. And that's what we're seeing happen all around the world, along with the manipulation of that void and the manipulation of tangles of trauma. But Peace Literacy starts with this. We have to understand the dilemma, and then we can build a set of practical skills that help us do this. Humans are very vulnerable and fragile, and there are ways we can navigate all of that together and move toward a brighter future. 

Community Discovery Time

Paul: …a great point from Wes Davison about the research. Did a lot of people who joined terrorist groups, the terror cells, come from middle class backgrounds? Yes. As Osama bin Laden shows, even wealthy, extremely wealthy backgrounds, right? The idea that it's just impoverished people who join these groups is inaccurate.

Community member:  I want to ask a question, especially about nonviolent communication. I know how important it is, but then in some environments, especially in volatile environments, it will be perceived as weakness. So in such situation, how can one successfully implement nonviolent communication? Also, have there been occasions when nonviolent communication failed you in this work?  If yes, which other strategy works for you? Thank you.

Paul: We talk about a number of skills for how to communicate, but a lot of our work is changing human perception so we see differently what the underlying problem is that we're communicating about. We could do a multi-day workshop around this topic, so I can't answer it in a concise way. So much of it is giving people a set of tools, and then they have to figure out which tool to use in that particular situation. I really appreciate that question. There's so many situations where nonviolence can work, but we don't think it can work. And so if my only tools in my toolbox are aggression, I think, oh, that's just what I need to use. That's all I have access to. That's maybe what I was taught from my society and from my caregivers. But there are other tools we can use that would increase that likelihood of having a productive, positive outcome for all parties, and we aren't taught what those skills are, and then we're not taught how to use them. 

There's learning what the skills are, but there's also the application of those skills. If you think of what a skill is, think about how many years people practice skills that pertain to basketball or football or playing an instrument or reading. Learning the skill is one thing, but then really developing the skill at a high level where we have a greater likelihood of applying it successfully. I can learn how to throw a basketball in 30 minutes, but there's people who spend 20 years learning how to throw a basketball, and they do it a lot better and that's just throwing a basketball. Imagine human communication, how complicated that is. And you can see the skill progression in terms of throwing a basketball or doing something in another sport, or playing a violin, and how much the difference can be between an hour of training and 20 years of training, and that's the same thing with how we communicate through nonviolence and how we communicate through these peaceful techniques.

Community member: What moved you away from a mass shooter mentality, and is peace literacy meant to be preventative?

Paul:  I think that with human beings, you can't take things away from people. I think you have to replace things with new things. I think that research around that is overwhelming. You can't just tell a person don't do drugs and don't drink alcohol. You have to replace it with something that's equally or more meaningful to them, right? You have to give them an alternative. You have to fulfill them in another way. I think trauma is one of those things. Trauma is a set of habits. It's a set of maladaptive practices that you have for relating to the world. It's a set of skills that are counterproductive for your well-being and the well-being of others, but it's what you have. You have to replace that with a more powerful set of skills, a more compelling set of skills. You can't just get people to get rid of their rage. You have to give them another way of being. And for me, developing Peace Literacy was what gave me that alternative set of skills, that alternative set of practices that I needed to move through the world, to deal with obstacles in life. There's no way to ever get rid of all the bumps in the road, struggles, right? We're going to run into struggles because we're mortal and we're human and we're fallible. And trauma becomes this default way of dealing with struggles, these tangles of trauma, you start to resort to mistrust or rage or ruthless worldview, and that's how you should navigate this problem with this person. If your trauma is really serious and very powerful, you have to have something that's even more comprehensive, even more powerful than trauma. And thinking of trauma like a language, right? It's a kind of language we speak. And language is not just how we talk, it's how we think. So if you think about trauma as a language and as a way of thinking. We think in our respective languages. Thinking in Peace Literacy, thinking in nonviolence, and learning a new kind of language that can replace the language of trauma, which, for many people, could be their mother tongue.

Community member: Thank you so much. Paul Chappell, such a brilliant sharing, and it's very insightful. I connected to your presentation when you talked about training to wage peace, as opposed to wage war. And today in the world, peace has been too scientifically defined, and the definition of peace has become so complicated, and the complication of the definition has raised so many questions. So I want to ask you, Paul, what do you think beyond universal definition of world peace, or maybe from a scientific point that have been so complicated, across borders, across cultures, across intellectual gaps, what do you think is the best way to define peace when you talk about training to wage peace, as opposed to war. Thank you so much, Paul,

Paul: I think a simple definition of peace that I use is a metaphor to describe it. So I think of peace as being like a garden, and this garden has all different kinds of plants in it. And people can argue about, oh, this plant or that plant, but it's a diversity of plants. And you could think of those plants as human rights and democracy or human dignity or justice, right, all these different plants here in this garden. I think you're making a really good point that people can maybe argue about this particular plant. Let's just agree that there's a diversity of different ingredients that are necessary to make peace – maybe freedom of speech, opportunity and health care, or human rights, democratic rights, all these different things. But the main point is that it's a diversity of plants in this garden, a diversity of rights and responsibilities that we have as humans, but that this garden is very fragile, and it requires a lot of care and stewardship. All of these things, no matter what they are – justice, human rights – these things can be destroyed and be lost. I think that this metaphorical definition of peace as a garden gets you to think more about the peace process. If you think about Peace Literacy, how do you nurture those plants? How do you help them grow? Let's say that there are no plants in the garden, or half the plants are missing. How do you plant those seeds and help those plants grow? What are the skills? What are the attitudes? What are the processes through which you can plant seeds to help the plants grow? Even if we have peace and all the plants are there, if you don't take care of that garden, it can all be lost. It can all go away. People think of victories for peace and justice like they're etched in stone. Oh, we have the Civil Rights Act, or in the US we have this law that was passed that has given us human rights. And one of Gandhi's realizations was we have to think about human rights and responsibilities because all these rights can be taken from you. So what skills do we need to be caretakers, to be stewards of that garden. And I think that shifts the mindset a bit, where we think more about what we do to plant seeds, help the seeds grow, nurture the plants that are growing. But then, if the plants are there and they look strong, how do we maintain them and protect them over time?

Janessa: Paul, I'm just so honored and grateful that you're here with us today. I remember years ago watching your YouTube talks that are online and thinking, just like Kate, oh my goodness. How was this guy not on the news every night? How is this not well known? The whole part that you had about explanations I'd never heard before. I remember as a counterinsurgency analyst in Iraq. So my area was Al Anbar. Everyone's wanting to know, you know, when we got to interview the insurgents to figure out when's the next attack? It was all about tactics. And I kept wanting to know, why, why are they committing these attacks against the US? What's driving their motivations? Because only if we understand the motivation can we actually address the insurgency and actually quell it. And so I just felt like I was so off base from what everyone else was wanting, the information that they were wanting to know, and I was all alone. And so for the first time, it made sense to me when you talked about the primacy of the need for explanations and the why, to know the why. It was just all so deep. And I wanted to thank you, not only for living your journey, which I know must not have been easy, but also to not numb yourself or to run away, but you went deeper into your journey to find this structure in the system in order to share with all of us. It was just such a selfless act. It seems like one of love that you went deeper into the trauma, deeper into your pain, to then be able to share it with the rest of us. So I just wanted to thank you for that. And then my question, is what is next for you? What is the growing edge for you? What’s your deep longing or a question that you're sitting with and where you're wanting to go?

Paul: Thank you, Janessa, and thank you for founding Euphrates and all the great work you do, just really grateful that you're here and for everything you do. I just want to say quickly, you brought up such an important point, because right after September 11, right away, people don't feel safe, and they want an explanation. Why did this happen? And you hear, they hate us because we're free. That's why they attacked us, because we're free. They hate our way of life. And right away, that was what became a very prominent explanation in society. And then I just again am grateful for how you're wanting to see deeper, is that really the whole explanation? Is that the entire explanation – they hate us because we're free? If we don't have an accurate explanation, we can't solve the problem. That's why, again, explanations are so important, not only in terms of how they can be manipulated, but as you know, and as you're in Iraq thinking through this, how can you actually make anything better if you don't know what the explanation is? If my car breaks down, if there's no explanation, if we don't know why it happened, how can you fix it? And so inaccurate explanations are so dangerous, not only in terms of how they can manipulate us, but how they actually prevent us from solving problems. They prevent us from understanding root causes of problems, and they prevent us from solving problems. I’m really grateful that you shared that, and for your life journey as well, in your realizing all of that.

In terms of next steps, we're really focused on curriculum development, and we have a curricular intervention called Overcoming Extremism that we're rolling out in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, training the teachers in the cohort this fall. The main focus that I have is that we develop curriculum and teach peace the way that we teach reading and writing. We start with reading and writing and mathematics literacy in preschool, we start with numbers, and we start with learning the alphabet. And then as you grow older, it becomes more complex. And you don't teach Shakespeare or Grapes of Wrath to a five-year-old. You typically ramp up the difficulty over time. You don't teach calculus, typically, to a five-year-old. You start with basic mathematics, and you work your way up. And we have developed a process where we can think about, how do we scaffold and increase the rigor of these different human skills, and the non-physical needs are almost kind of like an alphabet. We don't teach all of those to little kids, but we start with explanations, we start with challenges, we start with belonging and nurturing and expression. And we have done this with preschool kids. We'll talk about challenge, and they'll talk about, Oh, I couldn't tie my shoe, and now I can tie my shoe. That was a challenge. And little kids will say, Yes, I have a need for explanations. I'm four and I want to know why is the sky blue? The need for nurturing, the need for expression, the need for belonging. Those are age-appropriate needs for a three or four or five-year-old. And then when you're talking with high school kids, you can talk about all kinds of complex things and tangles of trauma and digital technology. 

In the past, a high school would call me in and they would say, Oh, we're going to get all the kids in the auditorium, and you can do a 30 minute talk about peace. We'll get the 9th through 12th graders in the auditorium, and you can do a 30-minute peace talk and get the kids inspired, and we'll have another Peace Day, 30-minute peace talk next year. I would tell the teachers, you know, we don't teach any other subject that way. We don't get all the kids in the auditorium and do a 30-minute math talk. We're going to do 30 minutes of math this year, 30 minutes of how to speak French. We're going to do 30 minutes of English grammar, 9th through 12th grade, all the kids, 300 kids in the auditorium. And then next year, we'll do another 30 minutes of grammar, another 30 minutes of algebra, another 30 minutes of history or science or literature. No subject is taught that way. Then peace, which is so incredibly complex and relates to daily life and current events and all these different areas, we think we can just do 30 minutes here and there. So a lot of the work I'm doing is transforming the cultural mindset to take peace at least as seriously as people take basketball. We have to take peace at least as seriously as people take reading and writing and mathematics and engineering, because peace is even more complicated than all of this.

Community member from the chat: There's a question from a former alum from Palestine that also is similar to Lossie’s question - what if you always have been expressing your feelings and needs, but your needs haven't been met? And actually quite the opposite. And then Lossie asks a similar question - are there formal or special ways to express needs? What if your needs have been expressed but it's either been ignored or frowned at? What do you do?

Paul: That's a great question. I want to respond to that one. There's a few other questions I just want to run through very quickly. (from the chat) Why did we use the word tangle? The word tangle, I think, creates this visceral sense of what's really going on with a person when they're dealing with mistrust or rage or helplessness, and the idea that they're kind of tangled up, where we have to untangle this thing, I think it takes away a lot of moral judgment. We talk about the labyrinth of trauma. It's like you're in this labyrinth. You're in this maze, trying to find your way out, and you're just getting lost. And I mean, in a literal sense trauma is kind of these tangled neural networks that we have in our psyche, right? We have these patterns that have formed in our mind and our brain that are all these neural connections that have formed to create this maladaptive habit. And it also acknowledges the difficulty of dealing with this, that we have to untangle it. And it's not like you just step out of it. You have to untangle it, typically by building a new set of skills to replace the old set. 

In terms of expressing our needs, if we're not being heard. That's a really good question. I think that there's a lot of things to think about there, because if you look at the civil rights movement or the independence movement in India, the argument was, Look, we're not being heard, right? We have grievances. And so we're going to have to use different strategies and techniques to make our voice heard. So organized nonviolence has a whole set of strategies and tactics and techniques. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists would innovate, they would come up with a new tactic because things weren't working, and they would use all their creative power to come up with a new strategy or a new way, right?

One of the big problems is people don't have the tools for how to listen or how to hear other people. They just don't have the ability. They are not bad. They just weren't taught how to do it. Listening is a very complicated skill, and people aren't taught how to do that, and they might have been taught the opposite growing up. There's the point at which, if you're not being heard, how do we organize ourselves to make our voice louder? And that's another thing that nonviolence does. What if there's 100 people? What if we all join together? What if there's a million of us? What if there's 5 or 10 or 30 million of us, and we use some different expression techniques, now we can maybe be heard. So I think both ends of the problem have to be addressed. We have to teach people how to better hear, but then we can give people tools so that they can be heard if they're not being heard. That might require being organized and expressing yourself as a large group of people. 

Community member: Thank you Paul again. I'm excited that you are in this moment right now and then I am in the right place at the right moment. I was greatly inspired by your presentation, by everything you shared. And then I was walking through my childhood experience and everything. I can relate to everything you're sharing, like the expression we need explanation. So I'm so grateful for taking me through that again, inspiring me and giving me a broader view on my work. 

My question is about peace. I want to know what have been your challenges? I've noticed that some people don't just want me to react over what they did wrong, or to bring it out to them. As a peacebuilder they don't want me to speak. They just want me to just let everything go like that. Keeping quiet or covering things up is not peace. When you're covering things up, the peace is not complete. So I want to know what challenges have you faced in the application of nonviolent communication, because I believe that nonviolent communication is the core key to building peace with ourselves and with others. When we take away the nonviolent communication, then the peace is not complete. So please share with me what has been your challenges with the application of nonviolent communication in your personal relationships, in your work, in everything. Thank you.

Paul:  I think that one of the biggest challenges is getting your own psyche in the right place, and realizing that rage and aggression create these kinds of optical illusions. It makes you think something's a good idea when it's not a good idea, and it distorts how you see the other person. Before I start to communicate, I have to be in the right perception of myself and the other person. In Greek mythology, Ares is the God of War and he also represents rage, war, and he's a deceiver. And Zeus, in the Iliad, says to Ares, he calls him the lying two-faced God, and he's more hated than any of the other gods. There's a kind of deception with rage where you think, Oh, this is a really good idea to say this thing or do this thing, and then afterward, when you're not angry, you can feel regret and think, I shouldn't have done that. What was I thinking? Learning to recognize when that feeling is there, and learning to become skeptical of it.

Aggression, rage, anger, is a very physical feeling, but when you feel that, be skeptical of what you're going to say and be able to put yourself in a different mindset, because so much of where nonviolent communication can go wrong is our own mindset. And often people are saying the words they think they're supposed to be saying. They're following the script, but they are mentally angry. They're coming across as passive aggressive, their demeanor, their tone of voice, their body language, is not communicating peace. They're saying all the right words. But so much as you know of human communication is body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, nonverbal cues. The nonverbal cues, the perception, are so important. And that's probably 70, 80% of what's going on when you communicate with people. One of the big challenges is one thing we teach – thinking of aggression as heat. And thinking of the fire as the pain and the distress beneath the aggression. So the fire beneath the heat is the pain, the distress beneath the aggression. And think about all the different kinds of fires, the different kinds of pain and distress, that can cause human aggression – fear, humiliation, people feeling disrespected, betrayal, confusion, helplessness, alienation, insecurity. If you can look at somebody and realize, this person is afraid, this person is feeling disrespected, this person's feeling humiliated. This person is confused, they're feeling ignored. Not only can you get to the root cause of what's causing the heat of their aggression, but it's easier to have empathy for them if you can see them on that level. 

And then here's another challenge. There are different depths of knowing and understanding. So this is one of the big challenges that I find people have. Let's say I'm afraid of spiders. I know intellectually that this non-poisonous spider cannot hurt me. I know that this non-poisonous spider is tiny. I know it can't hurt me, and I can write you a 5-page research paper explaining why it can't hurt me. But when it's on my hand, I am sweating, I'm nervous, I'm shaking, I'm thinking, Get this off my hand, right? I can know intellectually that I'm on a balcony and I'm not going to fall. Let's assume I'm afraid of heights, and I can write a 10-page research paper explaining why I'm not going to fall off this balcony, but when I'm on the balcony, I'm sweating and I'm trembling and my knees are shaking. I know it in one way, but on a deeper unconscious level, I don't know it. 

So one of the big challenges that I find in this work is that people can know intellectually. You can tell them, when people are aggressive, they're dealing with pain, distress. Aggression is an expression of distress. And they can say, Oh, I get that. I know it. And I can write a paper and explain it to you, because I understand the concept. But when they're in the heat of the moment, they don't know it. They get really aggressive back toward the person. So there's this kind of deeper depth of knowing that takes time to internalize, to become an unconscious knowing, where it almost feels like it's in your bones and in your blood. You feel you know it in this deep, unconscious, visceral way, when the person is aggressive, you truly see their vulnerability. You might not know why they're being aggressive. You might not know what their pain is. Might be fear, might be trauma, but you can so clearly see that they're in pain. They become this pained person, and it's like the spider on your hand, and you’re calm. You know what this is. You know it in a way that's beneath the intellect. So making that transition from the conscious intellectual knowing to the deeper unconscious knowing is a huge challenge for people, where they can be in the heat of the moment and they truly see this person as pained and vulnerable. And the biggest part of nonviolent communication is going to be the nonverbal communication. And if you can know people in that deeper way, then the way your body language comes across, the way your facial expressions come across. Nonviolent communication, again, is mostly nonverbal. 

Another challenge is that we all have bad days. Skills fluctuate. Occasionally the best basketball player has a bad game. So sometimes we're going to not do this as well as we could. And this is context dependent. I mean, you could be very high level when talking with coworkers, and then you're talking with your family, your parents, and they're able to trigger you in ways that other people can't trigger you, and you're just getting really upset. Another big challenge here is, how do we develop that self-compassion, so that when we don't do this well, when our skills are not where we want them to be, we can develop that self-compassion for ourselves, and developing that self-compassion for ourselves is going to make it easier for us to have compassion for others when they're struggling. If we have these skills and occasionally have a bad day, we can, you know, come back to the person later or apologize. 

The three challenges I covered:

  1. How do we develop our nonverbal communication, which is so much based on our mindset and knowing. Before I talk to this person, I might need to take two minutes just to kind of cool off, or before I talk to this person, let me just sleep on it, because I might go to sleep and wake up and not be as angry. Different techniques can work for different people. 

  2. And then how do we internalize that, where knowing becomes deeper, where we know it in our bones. It's not just intellectual understanding, because that by itself is not going to get you very far. When that spider is on your hand and you're afraid of spiders, if your only knowing is on an intellectual level, you're still going to be terrified. 

  3. And then how do we develop that self-compassion? Because skills fluctuate as humans, we're fallible. We are fallible creatures who make mistakes. We do our best, but we make mistakes sometimes, and we try to learn and do better, but that's just part of who we are as humans. And the more that we can accept that part of the human condition about ourselves, we can also accept that about other people.

I find that those three challenges are, if we get through those three, then it's a whole different kind of conversation that can happen.

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