Marianne Cerilli
by Marianne Cerilli
One of my favourite quotes is, “when the love of power, is replaced by the power of love, the world will know peace.” I even have it on a T-shirt that attributes it to Jimi Hendrix, but he got it from his guru, Sri Chinmoy.
Most every philosophy, spiritual and religious tradition has a similar message; we are not here to accumulate power and material things, but to live a life of purpose dedicated to the well-being of all, including the natural world, because we are all interdependent and connected.
But we’ve been moving in the opposite direction, supporting institutions, policies and leaders who use power to divide us, and rule with threats and violence. In his remarks at a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, (NATO) country chiefs of defence, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said “to prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It is time to shift to a wartime mindset.” He stressed increasing military spending.
Canada spent about $32.3 billion in 2023, or 1.6 per cent of our GDP on military. Now there’s talk of NATO moving the target of two per cent of GDP for national military spending to five per cent of GDP. But Canada’s entire federal budget is 21 per cent of GDP. Five per cent of GDP would be around $100 billion, meaning less funds for health, housing, climate action, infrastructure and many other priorities.
Plus, with war budgeting, we’ll surpass climate change tipping points faster, as emissions from military and war have surpassed emissions from many civilian economic activities.
The profits tell the story; weapons manufacturing for the 25 largest arms companies worldwide is up from $300.21 billion in 2015 to $445.25 in 2023. And oil and gas companies are benefiting with 1,000 per cent increase in profits, according to economist Jim Stanford, driving inflation.
As individuals we can’t stop this trend to war and violence — that takes strong social movements and government leadership — but as individuals, we can develop a peace mindset.
A peace mindset sees security not coming just from preparing to violently defend ourselves, instead security comes from sharing resources to meet everyone’s human needs, working on common interests, with structures for collaboration, diplomacy, and mutual agreements.
To some this may sound impossible right now, but with the stakes so high, it is more pressing than ever.
At a recent peaceful leadership conference, one of the main ideas is to drop the binaries of fight or surrender. There are always many more options than to retaliate and fight or capitulate and concede when leaders are skilled in peace making.
But those with no training in conflict resolution or facilitation subscribe to either-or thinking. It leads to seeing power as zero sum, or for me to have power, I must take it from someone. This power of vying for positions and resources leads to us versus them thinking, to autocratic assumptions like “my way or the highway,” and “you are either with us or against us,” all part of a war mindset.
From a peace mindset we know that when power is shared democratically, everyone has more ability and empowerment. With a peace mindset, we see beyond us and them, and we drop the “enmifying,” a term from negotiator Adam Kahane.
It means we stop creating enemies, seeing people as our enemies, and we avoid marginalizing those we disagree with. We refuse to “other,” and continue seeing the humanity in everyone, even those who oppose us, even dictators.
The cost of militarization is not just dollars and destruction but the lasting war trauma impacting everyone, for generations, including those who now watch online in real time. “Cracking the code of trauma” is about understanding how trauma creates dictators and being able to disarm them, not just fight, appease, or surrender to them. I call it “Speaking peace to power.”
The dismantling of U.S. democracy by the 47th president and his gang of billionaires must be stopped, so we must understand what led to it, the weaknesses of U.S. democracy.
Plus, being trauma informed means we see how perpetrators, abusers, and dictators are created by their experience and interpretation of that experience. All people can develop a “psychology of hate” where their personal sense of self and security relies on them feeling in control, and dominant. Eventually it becomes hardened, so that anything other than force and obedience is not respected. When this ideology and identity are fused in white supremacy and toxic masculinity, change is challenging. Revenge is a given.
Our peace mindset avoids retaliation and revenge, instead we see justice as restorative, not punitive and we reject retaliation because we know it leads to escalation, dehumanizing people and justifying violence.
From a peace mindset we ensure that power structures distribute power with not just checks and balances, but participatory structures to prevent autocracy, concentration of power, and abuse. Peaceful structures are cautious about the powers given to high position to punish and reject the death penalty because of this.
Paul Chappell, a Navy Seal turned peace activist, says peace is a skill set.
It includes our mindset, and new tools, then we can integrate peacemaking into democracy that happens every day, between elections.
Marianne Cerilli is an educator and former MLA focused on community development. This article was originally published by The Winnipeg Free Press and is reposted here with the permission of the author.
