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Another Way: Positive Response to Contemporary Violence
An epidemic of violence is spreading throughout the world. There is crime and gang warfare in the cities, and large scale deadly conflict in a hundred places across the globe - from Bosnia to Liberia to Afghanistan to Cambodia to Sudan. It is hard to know whether the breeding ground of this violence is in human nature or in history, for it is so often entirely pointless, as futile for the killer as for the killed.
An academic turned practical peacemaker and mediator, Adam Curle has encountered this violence in many parts of the world. He believes it derives mainly from alienation, the feeling of separation from a world made meaningless and unmanageable by the social and political consequences of two world wars and extraordinary technological development.
The surge of violence, without parallel for its sheer scale, its universality and its refusal to respond to conventional policing or diplomacy, has created insoluble domestic problems for police and social services, as well as for the UN and other international agencies.
But in embattled Croatia the author has worked with a group of people who have somehow immunised themselves against the prevalent fear, anger, prejudice and militarism. They live there - they are not 'outsiders' or 'advisers'. They care for the thousands of refugees, those traumatised by war, and the countless children whose only experience is of violence. By their example and practice they spread the values of compassion and non-violence, as they build the foundations of a peaceful society.
An academic turned practical peacemaker and mediator, Adam Curle has encountered this violence in many parts of the world. He believes it derives mainly from alienation, the feeling of separation from a world made meaningless and unmanageable by the social and political consequences of two world wars and extraordinary technological development.
The surge of violence, without parallel for its sheer scale, its universality and its refusal to respond to conventional policing or diplomacy, has created insoluble domestic problems for police and social services, as well as for the UN and other international agencies.
But in embattled Croatia the author has worked with a group of people who have somehow immunised themselves against the prevalent fear, anger, prejudice and militarism. They live there - they are not 'outsiders' or 'advisers'. They care for the thousands of refugees, those traumatised by war, and the countless children whose only experience is of violence. By their example and practice they spread the values of compassion and non-violence, as they build the foundations of a peaceful society.
149 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1996
7 people want to read
About the author
Adam Curle
33 books2 followersAdam Curle was a British academic and Quaker peace activist. Over a period of almost forty years, he undertook international mediation of conflicts in India/Pakistan, Nigeria/Biafra, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Bosnia and Croatia. In 2000, he was the recipient of the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award.
Curle was educated at Charterhouse School and Oxford University. He served in the British Army during the Second World War, and afterwards helped to rehabilitate ex-servicemen and prisoners of war. His academic work blended psychology and anthropology and in 1950 became the first lecturer in social psychology at Oxford University. He became a Quaker in 1959 while serving as a Professor of Education at the University of Ghana. He set up the Harvard Center for Studies in Education and Development in 1962 and in 1973 became the first professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, retiring in 1978. Towards the end of his life, he described himself as “a semi-lapsed Quaker and follower of the Dalai Lama.”
Curle defined peace, not simply as the absence of conflict but as “active association, planned co-operation, an intelligent effort to forestall or remove potential conflicts.” He also believed that "violence lies not so much in action as in a state of mind: it is ultimately the violence of the heart rather than of the body which damages us."
Curle was educated at Charterhouse School and Oxford University. He served in the British Army during the Second World War, and afterwards helped to rehabilitate ex-servicemen and prisoners of war. His academic work blended psychology and anthropology and in 1950 became the first lecturer in social psychology at Oxford University. He became a Quaker in 1959 while serving as a Professor of Education at the University of Ghana. He set up the Harvard Center for Studies in Education and Development in 1962 and in 1973 became the first professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, retiring in 1978. Towards the end of his life, he described himself as “a semi-lapsed Quaker and follower of the Dalai Lama.”
Curle defined peace, not simply as the absence of conflict but as “active association, planned co-operation, an intelligent effort to forestall or remove potential conflicts.” He also believed that "violence lies not so much in action as in a state of mind: it is ultimately the violence of the heart rather than of the body which damages us."
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