Welcome to the first of eight posts that, together, provide an overview of my new book, Peacebuilding Starts at Home which will be published in early November.
I obviously want you to buy the book.
That said, I am even more interested in getting you to accept its call to action and join us in our efforts to turn our troubled country around—whether you read the book or not.
Each of the posts ends with a way for you to do just that.
My Invitation—Start Where You Are
The book begins with these lines.
Peacebuilding Starts at Home is an invitation masquerading as a book.
I will not be inviting you to come over to my house for a gourmet dinner or to be a plus one on a trip to some exotic and exciting vacation spot.
Instead, I will be asking you to join me and the people you will meet in these pages in turning this country around.
By deciding what we want our country to be like.
By redefining peace as peacebuilding which will turn it into a powerful tool that we all can use to begin changing life here at home.
By helping you find your own personal on-ramp for a journey that I want us to take together and that we need to take together.
The rest of the book lays out what I am inviting you to do, why I think that the journey is one we have to take together, and how we at least have a chance of succeeding.
I wrote the book and helped launch the Peacebuilding Starts at Home community knowing full well that most readers will have their doubts—or worse—given the state of the world as the first quarter of the twenty-first century draws to an end.
I wasn’t convinced I was right myself until I did the research that led to write a book I never expected to write and start building a community and movement that I never expected to be a part of.
Doing that research led me to literally hundreds of organizations that have already begun to move the clichéd needle, more than forty of which made it into the book.
To be sure, many of them are hiding in plain sight, as my newfound frien–and star of the second half of the book–David Sloan Wilson likes to say. Nonetheless, the inroads that his www.prosocial.world and the other organizations that you will meet either in the book or in the seven posts to come have convinced me that average citizens like ourselves can make a difference.
And a big one.
And sooner rather than later.
But I also learned that there is no single way of getting there that all of us could or should follow.
Instead, I find myself drawn to a line that I first saw in the work of the Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön, which I used as the title for the first chapter and this post.
We all have to start where you are.
And, because I don’t know you, I have no idea of “where you are” or, therefore, what you could or should do.
So, as with the book, I want to start by setting some parameters and engaging in what amounts to a getting-to-know-you exercise.
Some Common Denominators
Whether as a book or as a community, peacebuilding starts at home literally starts with three common denominators that just about everyone I met shares.
Together, they reflect the fact that the peacebuilding community has come a long way since I started out protesting the launch of nuclear submarines in my home town of New London CT while I was in high school and then “majored in opposing the war in Vietnam” in college and grad school. As you will see, all of the people whose work I respect the most have shifted their focus to include:
- Addressing or most of the interconnected “wicked problems” we face
- Emphasizing what they are for rather than what they are against
- Realizing that peace cannot be achieved over night and that it literally has to be build, step by step
Luckily for me, I found three videos that allow anyone to begin exploring how they can personally make a difference in all three of those arena. And, being a recovering academic and textbook writer, I couldn’t resist the temptation to add a homework exercises to each one which you can use when you RSVP to my invitation at the end of this post.
Redefining Peacebuilding: Toward an Ordinary Paradise
The first was made by a group of Australian reformers who went on a listening tour in order to learn what everyday people wanted their country to be like.
Despite the narrator’s accent and a few scenes that could only have been shot in Australia, most Americans would love to live in their ordinary paradise. It would be a peaceful society because we (or the Australians) have found a way to make major progress on all or most of the problems we/they face.
To my mind, that is what peacebuilding is.
Sure, my colleagues and I have to reduce polarization and, if necessary, stop the fighting.
But we also have to do a whole lot more.
So, here is your first homework assignment.
I assume that you don’t have either the resources or skills to make your own American reMADE video. But you can take ten minutes or so and jot down what you think your own ordinary paradise would look like. Who are we now? Who could or should we be, given the fact that we’ve been through a lot lately? Once you’ve done that, dream big.
And get ready for the next video and your next assignment.
What I Can Do: Nailing It
The Australians who made that video are activists. They would not have been happy if people who saw that video smiled, nodded their heads, or even shed a few tears. Instead, they made it use it to help convince their fellow Australians to dig in and build that ordinary paradise.
I wrote Peacebuilding Starts at Home with that same goal in mind—just with Americans rather than Australians as my intended audience. Going from goals to action and from Australia to the United States were both made easier by a second video made by the American author and television host, Kelly Corrigan.
I had no idea who she was when I saw this segment on the PBS NewsHour in April 2020. The COVID pandemic had already taken a hefty toll. George Floyd was still alive which meant that the United States hadn’t fully entered the crisis we currently face.
Then and now, the video blew me away because Kelly is a master of nailing it in her daily life, including having beaten cancer in her thirties. She is also a master of interviewing others who have helped us all begin to nail it in her podcast and PBS series, Tell Me More.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJCs89wQXrA
So can you.
Hence the second homework assignment.
You can’t make your own version of this video either.
But you can do the mental exercise that Corrigan put herself through at the Safeway that morning. Don’t do it about the pandemic unless it still touches your life. Rather, pick something else that keeps you up at night. It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; it can be something that has your community or your family stuck in a rut. Then, think about what it would take to nail it. That could be something(s) that you do on your own. And/or with others. And/or something done wholly by others. As with the first exercise, take no more than ten minutes and jot down what comes to mind when you think about nailing it.
And Ripple Out From There
You undoubtedly thought about something while watching Corrigan’s video.
As smart and articulate as she may be, she couldn’t “nail” the pandemic on her own, let alone by the time she reached the check out counter at the Safeway.
Nailing any social goal takes time and patience.
In the Peacebuilding Starts at Home case, we will have to find a way to help millions of Americans buy into the idea of an ordinary paradise through a campaign or movement or community that can turn those dreams into reality in ways which I lay out in the rest of the book.
But as someone who has been activist for sixty years and a teacher/writer for fifty, I know that few Americans think that building such a movement is possible.
That’s where my third and final video comes into play.
In the days after Jon Stewart returned to the Daily Show, a half dozen of my friends sent me a link to his opening monologue from his first night back on the set.
The first eighteen minutes or so are vintage Stewart. Funny. Biting. But not something most viewers would find memorable.
But my friends wanted me to focus on the last two minutes.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NpBPm0b9deQ
Like me, you may not know exactly what Stewart had in mind when he talked about “a lunch-pail f***king job.”
But you can do three things:
- Sketch out how we might actually get that job done and nail it
- Figure out that it would take to keep you engaged in the lunch-pail f***king job for the long haul
- Lay out plans for what it would take to get your friends and neighbors and coworkers to do the same thing
Bob Putnam’s Invocation
All three of these dimensions and the book as a whole came together for me one night in late 2023. (even though Stewart was still in retirement). I attended the Washington DC premier of, Join or Die, a documentary about the life and work of Robert Putnam, whom Gretchen and I have known since we took a course from him in grad school while we were all still at the University of Michigan. At the end of Q and A session after the screening, Bob turned to the audience and set, “the future of our country is in your hands.”
Of course, he’s right. But, as I talked to the people sitting near me, it was clear that while they nodded their heads in agreement, they hadn’t yet figured out how to take Bob up on his offer.
It’s Time To RSVP
It was at that point that I realized that I was writing this book to help people like the Georgetown students and others who were in the room that night find their own on ramps onto what I’ve come to call the Peacebuilding Starts at Home loop.
That, in turn, led me to the videos, to the homework assignments, and to the invitation to you and my other readers to join us.
In other words, it’s time to send in your RSVP.
Use this link to send me an email. Include a version of your homework assignments. Tell me something about yourself. And anything else that makes sense to you.
Someone from the Peacebuilding Starts at Home team at the Alliance for Peacebuilding (probably me) will get back to you and help you get started on your own por, if you are already active, help you amplify the impact of what you do.
Indeed, over the course of weeks and months to come, we will be working with the organizations profiled in Peacebuilding Starts at Home to start building peace here at home.
And with you.
Because without you, we can’t succeed.
But if you and people like you get involved, we stand a chance.
That’s why I wrote this book and why you should read it.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Alliance for Peacebuilding or its members.
