Waging War For Humanity: The Battle For Peace

Brent International School Baguio City (1st Place Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature 2002)

Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one

Imagine by John Lennon of the Beatles, is a song whose simple words and melody are inexplicably haunting. I try to imagine a "brotherhood of man," but this simple task has proved to be more difficult than I thought.

I try to forget the images of a man and a woman holding hands, while leaping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the terrified faces of shocked New Yorkers covered in white dust, running for their lives. I try to forget the Time magazine feature about a four-year-old Afghan boy who froze to death in the cold night air as he and his family of refugees tried to escape the bombs meant for Bin Laden. I try to forget the photographs of men with fatal holes in their bodies, weeping women and orphaned children. Closer to home, I try to forget the faces of grimy undernourished street children, who knock on my car’s windows as we stop for traffic lights in Metro Manila. I try to forget that my country has been listed as a terrorist zone — unsafe for tourists. I try to forget the widespread decimation of forests and destruction of marine resources. I try to convince myself that all is well, but I do not succeed.

"Peace" is such an abstract concept that would take more than a few words to explain. The dictionary would define peace as "a state of mental or physical quiet or tranquility" or "the absence or cessation of war." In today’s complex world, it seems to be a Utopian dream. Many of us pretend to have become cynics, by saying that "true peace" is unattainable. Perhaps, it is simply that we don’t know how or where to start.

As a 16-year old, it would be presumptuous of me to claim that I can make a major difference in the way the world is "run." I do not have the influence to change political and religious ideologies. I do not have the financial clout to protect the well-being of entire communities and environments. However, I know that youth has its advantages.

My biggest advantage as a young citizen of the world is that I have my whole life ahead of me to realize my dreams. I am more fortunate, perhaps. I don’t have to labor for food or basic necessities. I have a family who protects me and makes sure I get the best education, the best amenities, and all the attention I need. Unlike others who by sheer necessity have to toil day by day to survive, I can focus on "intangibles" such as peace.

Everybody always tells me that I am "lucky." I used to take this for granted because it was something I grew up with. However, when my older brother went to college in Manila, I got a shock that changed my perspective on life.

We went to a McDonald’s store near his school one day, and several street urchins went up to me, nudged my arm, and asked me for my drink. My initial reaction was that of disgust. I didn’t like their dirty hands touching me. However, as I looked at their faces, I saw the hunger and it embarrassed me. I didn’t know how to react because it was the first time I saw that look. It is not that I was oblivious to the reality of poverty, but to actually see poverty up close was something else. Their eyes were so "empty."

I do not want to be callous or supercilious, but that experience made me realize that poverty has many dimensions too. It has a smell. The street children emitted a rancid-sweaty odor. It has a disturbing sound. As the seven-year-olds cursed, I felt violated and a bit scared. I couldn’t imagine that words like that could come out of a child’s mouth. The sight of poverty depressed me, and in retrospect, if I felt that way as an observer, I couldn’t imagine what a person mired in poverty must feel.

So why am I talking/writing about poverty when I should be writing about peace? The incident concretized in my mind, the fact that peace is not the absence of war. Poverty is a war in itself and war can take many forms, and is not literally "war" at all times. War wages on in environmental issues, social conditions, and in the typical definition, that of human conflict.

So, how should I contribute to the attainment of peace? The incident involving the street children led me to the direction I should take. The key words are empathy, compassion, empowerment and action.

In today’s world, we are all living at such a fast pace that we only see the disparities and discord between one another. We forget the fact that underneath all the "differences," we are all human beings and are, in some way, interconnected. Also, in such a hurried scenario, we forget that we are also part of the environment itself, and we need to re-establish our connection with it. Once our bond with the rest has become cohesive, we can then learn to take care of one another, and support each other’s actions.

What I can do as an individual is to "re-humanize" myself, erasing all the hate and not making too much of the differences that separate me from the rest of the human race. In doing so, I am able to appreciate other people as similarly human individuals, regardless of disparities in race, religion, gender and social standing.

Some years back, a worker in our farm was found drowned in a fishpond, which only had water that was a foot deep. He was epileptic, and it could have been an accident. However, since he had enemies in the barrio, it was suspected that somebody purposely kept his head underwater. If he had no enemies, there would have been no suspicion for murder. This would illustrate that if we made no enemies, there would be no tensions and suspicions. This is not to say, however, that we cannot disagree. It merely proposes that we can explore better ways to express our dissent.

It is quite disturbing how humans have turned into commodities in today’s modern world. With the modern obsession for material wealth, the human has degenerated into a mere tool, which others use to attain their own selfish ends.

It seems that not much has changed since the Holocaust. "We were really no longer human beings in the accepted sense. Not even animals, but putrefying corpses moving on two legs," writes Terence des Pres’ in "Excremental Assault," about the horrors of that time. I must say that this article is one of the most disturbing first-person accounts I have ever read.

It describes how prisoners in German concentration camps were dehumanized. Men, women, and children were forced to defecate in their clothes as they were only allotted two trips to the latrine, already fetid with human excrement that was knee-deep. Many suffered from severe cases of diarrhea and dysentery. People who made unauthorized trips to the latrine at night were shot, and many inevitably soiled themselves in their prison rooms. The prison rooms, too, became latrines and prisoners found themselves walking, eating, and sleeping in excrement. In a desperate bid to preserve their humanity, some washed themselves with the tea that was served to them to drink daily by prison guards. It was these people who lived to tell their stories. Prisoners were made to urinate and defecate into other prisoners’ mouths, stripping them of their humanity, so that they could be executed with much more ease. Prisoners in the camps were degraded in such a horrible way so that mass murder did not seem to be unpleasant to the murderers.

In Des Pres’ piece, something jumped out at me. It said: "In a lecture at the New York School, Hannah Arendt remarked that it is easier to kill a dog than a man, easier yet to kill a rat or frog, and no problem at all to kill insects—‘It is in the glance, in the eyes.’"

This is significant. If we are able to see people as human beings, then we would treat them better, respect their dignity and consider them our equals. Then maybe, that lofty goal of "world peace" can be attained. Thus, the need to re-humanize ourselves.

The song, Rehumanize Yourself by The Police summarizes it all. By "rehumanizing ourselves," one will no longer have to "kick a boy to death ’cause he don’t belong," or "like to have a gun just to keep him warm." A clearer purpose will be in sight. A truly meaningful life is after all one, which is not merely lived for oneself. Suffering is not typical; violence is an anomaly; dehumanization is not a natural phenomenon. The challenge to humanity is perhaps how to keep constantly in touch with our human side.

The irony of "peace" is that it requires "war." That is, war against ignorance, complacency, de-humanization, and cold heartedness. As a 16-year-old, I am not too cynical to admit that, as John Lennon sings: "You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one."