PEACEMAKING AND ALL OF US ANIMALS
September 7, 2014
Two segments of last week’s September 5 broadcast of
the Ted Radio Hour on “Animals and Us,” at http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/
, confirm that two fundamental principles of making peace with fear- and
anger-driven violence apply not only to human relations, but to all of us
animals. In one segment on “We’re
training dogs all wrong,” veterinarian-turned-dog trainer Ian Dunbar tells us
that he found he could apply the same techniques he has with dogs to have
raised his own son by keeping his cool, never punishing, never arguing--a standard
of perfection I never achieved, but a truth that I accept: that punishment is
never practical nor morally justified.
In another segment on “Do animals have morals?,” anthropologist and
animal behaviorist Franz de Waal gives the lie to Konrad Lorenz’s theory that
violence is the overwhelming Darwinian instinct governing chimpanzees and
humans. Time and again, De Waal finds
chimpanzees sharing and altruistically caring for one another, and speaks of
the difference between competition and cooperation as a spectrum, just as I
conceive the problem of violence and peacemaking as a matter of balance between
being substantively goal-driven, and accommodation to interests and concerns of
others. Other words, other paths, same
conclusions. I heartily recommend this
Ted program to all of us who try to change each other. In the face of violence, difference,
disagreement, as I once wrote (see A
Criminologist’s Quest for Peace, 2001, at www.critcrim.org
), empathy works, obedience doesn’t.
love and peace, hal
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