Inquiries About Peace in These Times
Beyond binaries, in the vast unknown
Hear this article on episode 21 of the Creation For Liberation Podcast, which also features educator, community organizer and yogi, HawaH Kasat.
I’ve been contemplating what peace really is lately…
how about you?
Growing up Jain, ahimsa- or nonviolence with all living beings from humans to spiders has been such a deep-rooted practice for me. While I don’t necessarily identify as Jain today, ahimsa is still a big part of my life from what I eat to how I clean my home.
Peace is also an important part of the mission of Mosaiceye, to steward peace love and freedom on earth through expressive healing arts and reflective community circle.
But this inquiry of peace, and nonviolence… actually feels more confusing than ever to me. What is a peace and nonviolence that’s in service to liberation for all, and not just another way to subdue and dominate people?
As I write this on Monday, February 26 shortly under a full moon, it's been 143 days since October 7, 2023. Human violence and brutality has taken 30,000 Palestinian lives, 1,400 Israeli lives, and uncountable lives of our earth community, olive trees, citrus trees, other native plants, animals, and essential pollinators- all of whom we as humans are highly dependent on.
How does a big dream of peace ground in a reality with systemic hierarchies, injustice, inequity and on-going genocide?
How does peace relate to not only our individual experiences on our yoga mats, meditation cushions or in the protective bounds of our privileges and echo chambers, but to our interdependent collective experience across our differences and across the planet?
I don’t have answers. Only more inquiries.
An academic perspective distinguishes two types of peace:
There’s more about “positive and negative peace” from HawaH in the episode, so give it a listen.
It helps my brain to distinguish “positive peace” from “negative peace”. I can understand how negative peace is created for some through heavy policing. As I experienced apartheid in South Africa as an Indian- in some strange middle of a social hierarchy position, there was a “negative peace” created through apartheid particularly for white folks and even for South Asians (or at least for my family and neighborhood at the time).
But of course, “negative peace” is not anywhere close to liberation. And the only place I’ve really experienced positive peace is in small groups of people I love and care for and who love and care for me, beyond this…I’m still searching for cultural or societal examples of “positive peace.”
And with any binary, there are limitations. Maybe “positive and negative peace” don’t each exist separately on their own, I don’t know. In actual living experience, it’s so much more complex than any academic concept or binary.
Even as someone who seeks to embody and practice nonviolence, I know in my mind and body that justice is kicking someone who is trying to rape me in the nuts so that I can get away. For anyone to expect that I not defend myself and act “nonviolently” is absurd. To expect anyone to be nonviolent in the midst of deeply violent systems like apartheid, occupation or harm can be a form of violence itself.
And, I believe that the “negative peace” created by fighting back and defending ourselves is not the end game nor a long-standing solution, so I hold that the person who tried to rape me deserves and needs help and support desperately. Those who have to enact violence to defend themselves against deeply violent systems deserve and need help and support too.
Viral Binaries
Social media is full of neat, viral binaries. I see quotes from ancestor teachers and activists speaking from the binaries of “the oppressor” vs “the oppressed”, Israel vs Palestine, complicity vs. resistance, us vs. them…as if it’s that simple.
When I am in panic and in a threat response in my nervous system, binary-thinking is an effective strategy to make quick decisions and swift movement. And panic has its righteous purpose to keep me and us alive and to quickly get us out of dangerous situations. We need it like we need the stress hormone, cortisol, to help our bodies maintain blood pressure, immune function and anti-inflammatory processes. Panic can move us to action against the inflammations of injustice and violence.
But the illusionary clarity that binary thinking offers on highly-nuanced situations gets really sticky because I can also feel righteous and “right” in it as I make others “wrong.”
When I feel threat, on my life or my ego, and I am in panic, I make hasty judgements of what is safe or dangerous. I see or hear certain words or I don’t see or hear certain words on people’s profiles, websites or in conversation and already I’ve made a conclusion as to whether a person is a good, safe or “on my side.”
When panic is persistent and chronic, and when inhumane, catastrophic situations go on despite our activism and resistance, relying on panic to carry us forward f*cks us over even more, and the panic fuels even more panic and suffering.
Regulating my nervous system enough to be in inquiry with these nuances and portals has felt like a full-time job recently with how ubiquitous binaries are and how our collective nervous system is in chaos.
I’ve noticed how distracted I and others have been by “am I doing enough?” The burden of the enough vs. not enough binary is suffocating. For me, it obscures really feeling the utter grief of what’s happening on the planet right now to all of us. I feel the pain of guilting or shaming messages coming from people in panic trying to control how another acts, thinks or expresses.
Moving from Present-Traumatic Stress
Trauma experts say that trauma is not just what happens but how it lands in our nervous systems. Trauma is not just what happens to us but how we process it.
I’m hearing how the binary of “doing is enough” is often tied to going to enough protests, staying engaged enough on social media, and letting your stance be known.
I’ve also been hearing how folks, diasporic Palestinian activists included- who are doing the best they can to show up and take action, are replaying in their minds the violent scenes they’re seeing on instagram or tiktok as they’re moving about their homes or neighborhoods.
They are experiencing symptoms of actual PTSD- though it’s a present-traumatic stress. Getting so dysregulated by keeping an eye on and consuming a level of content doesn’t help everyone.
I’ve even heard people say, “you should be grateful, at least you’re not going through active war, think about the people in Gaza”, but that grossly invalidates the diversity of our nervous systems and varied levels of sensitivity to violence. It is not morally superior to be desensitized to scenes of violence enough to stay engaged despite it.
Pushes to “center” what’s happening by staying engaged on social media as THE way to not be complicit to war and genocide glorifies being dysregulated in our nervous systems as the primary way to care or make change.
People feel guilty for disengaging from social media, for not going to protests, or not “choosing a side”. I too have felt oppressed by the guilt, shame and confusion that comes from these pushes. I notice how stuck and helpless I feel in conversations about such complex, deep uncertain dynamics when people are speaking (or I am trying to speak) as if we’ve walked this path before. As if what’s happening now is easy to distill or formulate clear or even “right” answers for whole states of people.
There is no one right way. To believe and assert on others that there is one “right” way to think, be, or act right now, feels to me like a perpetuation of domination and separation. I don’t use those words lightly- domination and separation are at the root of colonialism. And when I see the continuations of cancel culture, people tearing each other down on social media or in relationships because of differences in opinion or ideology even as we all seek some kind of peace and liberation, I can’t help but wonder how I and we are feeding domination and separation even as we attempt to dismantle it…
A Different Stewardship
The burnout of on-going panic or present-traumatic stress is not evolutionarily meant to leave space for much else beyond binaries. I know that when I am in the survival mode of panic, I literally cannot access a sense of time or capacity for the heart medicine, for rest, for physical and energetic digestion, and for the deep listening, love and compassion that I and we are incredibly capable of, that’s needed from us most in these times.
How can I expect to steward- from my dysregulated nervous system- a New Earth that’s wholly different from the one built by dysregulated nervous systems?
How can I- and we- be influences of change in the world without perpetuating colonial cultures of separation and domination?
How can I expect to disrupt the cycles of trauma and fear when I’m acting from my trauma and fear?
These are some of the questions that have been alive for me right now.
I am no expert on middle east peace and conflict. It might seem clear to me that peace and liberation is to ceasefire and stop bombing and attacking people in schools and hospitals in Palestine, for all hostages to be freed, to end apartheid so that we all can coexist on the land that belongs to us all and that we belong to…
Yet even as right as that seems to me, it’s not necessarily right to many- and it doesn’t mean that they’re simply wrong. Most truly, I don’t have the lived experiences of being on the land of Palestine nor Israel, I don’t live in a body that was birthed from parents or grandparents who survived the holocaust, I don’t live in a body that was born in a brutal on-going and violently-defended occupation. I do have trauma and privilege in my lineage and my body from having been born in apartheid South Africa, though if anything, that actually only complicates this further for me.
The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.
As I engage in conversations and relationships, as I even hear back some of my conversations that I record for this podcast for example, I am constantly noticing more and more of my own biases, wounds and fears.
I long for all oppressed beings to be free, to access peace, safety, dignity and love. I also know that an “oppressor” too is “oppressed”, and that those “oppressed” can become “oppressors”…and that both and all can become healers too.
When cycles and cycles of violence and trauma are at play, what other side am I supposed to choose besides love, compassion and humility in the face of such complexity? It’s far bigger than my conceptualization, it’s far beyond my ego that wants so desperately to have answers and a clearly defined stance. I don’t know.
And I publish this as a newsletter post and podcast episode to normalize not knowing, and to promote space for us to admit when we don’t know.
Perhaps that’s what unites us in a deeply true way, that we don’t know…
When we can acknowledge how much we don’t actually know, even as we learn and contemplate and take action… what curiosity, connection, hope, love, heart medicine and healing is possible?
Art for cross-border collaboration:
All profits from this print, “Peaceful Pomegranates”, go to benefit the work and mission of Tomorrow’s Women, a 20-year old organization training young women from Palestine, Israel, and the United States to be compassionate leaders in resolving conflicts and taking action for equality, peace, and justice for all. I’ve chosen to fundraise for their cause because they are an organization that embodies cross-border collaboration, building bridges beyond binaries, and continually creating a courageous space where many can belong.
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