Peace! Pax! Paz! Frieden! Paix !!!
Peace is many things: the meaning of the word peace changes with context. Peace may refer specifically to an agreement concluded to end a war, or to a lack of external warfare, or to a period when a country's armies are not fighting enemies. It can also refer more generally to quietude, such as that common at night or in remote areas, allowing for sleep or meditation. Peace can be an emotion or internal state. And finally, peace can be any combination of these defintions.
A person's conception of "peace" is often the product of culture and upbringing. People of different cultures sometimes disagree about the meaning of the word, and so do people within any given culture. Peace is not a symbol, peace is a mind .
Why Violence ??
There is a wide spectrum of views about whether, and when, violence and war are necessary. Followers of Jainism, for example, go to great lengths to avoid harming even animals, and pacifists, such as Christian anarchists, see any sort of violence as self-perpetuating(Peacemakers)....Peacemakers are people who have overcome entrenched violence and conflict through their leadership and vision to achieve peace.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually to notable persons, generally peacemakers and visionaries who have overcome notorious cycles in violence, conflict or oppression through their moral leadership, but also controversially former warmongers and former terrorists who it was believed had helped bring the world closer to ending such situations through exceptional concessions in the attempt to achieve peace.
Here is a partial list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates whose award is still considered by some a matter of particular controversy:
* Theodore Roosevelt (1906 laureate)
* Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964 laureate)
* Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (joint 1973 laureates)
* Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat (1978 laureate)
* Mother Teresa (1979 laureate)
* Nelson Mandela and Former President Frederik Willem de Klerk (joint 1993 laureates)
* Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin (1994 laureates)
* John Hume and David Trimble (joint 1998 laureates)
* Wangari Maathai (2004 laureate)
"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Comments