Several months ago, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread in East Asia, sports fans speculated about what would happen to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, scheduled for July 24 through August 9. The subsequent news that it was going to be postponed came as no surprise but the announcement… Continue reading…
Tomorrow, February 14, people in the United States and many other countries will celebrate Valentine’s Day, not as an official holiday but as a folk celebration of romantic love. If you can ignore the commercial aspects of the occasion, this unofficial holiday celebrates the love among couples that can foster… Continue reading…
A prominent educator from Massachusetts spent some time on Ifaluk Island 40 years ago so now he has decided to return there to live out the rest of his life. John Chittick was born and raised in the small city of Fitchburg, completed an Ed.D. from Harvard, and went on… Continue reading…
A prominent educator from Massachusetts spent some time on Ifaluk Island 40 years ago so now he has decided to return there to live out the rest of his life. John Chittick was born and raised in the small city of Fitchburg, completed an Ed.D. from Harvard, and went on… Continue reading…
The goal of this website, Peaceful Societies, is to promote peacefulness through the study of societies that are already nonviolent. They provide examples from which we might learn to be more peaceful by dealing more effectively and nonviolently with conflict. This website also strives to reflect the goals of its… Continue reading…
In “Peace and Nonviolence: Anthropological Aspects,” Leslie Sponsel presents a concise and convincing argument for the persistence of nonviolent behavior throughout prehistory and history by providing numerous empirical examples from an anthropological perspective. Because of the inherent multidisciplinary approach anthropology provides, it creates the ideal framework from which to view… Continue reading…
The Global Peace Index for 2015, which evaluates several measures indicating the peacefulness of 162 countries, was released by the Institute for Economics and Peace on June 17. The 117 page report is available as a PDF on the website of the Institute. While the GPI surveys the peacefulness of… Continue reading…
Several scholars deny the existence of peaceful societies, arguing that they are simply a myth, but Douglas Fry characterizes their attitudes as a “unicorn factor,” after the mythological animals. Deniers maintain that peaceful societies, like unicorns, are figments of the imagination, but Fry disputes that. Last week, as part of… Continue reading…
I was delighted when Jody and her husband Mark sat down at our table at the Christmas Bird Count dinner on Saturday evening, December 20th. Before we had even started eating, Jody asked what I was doing during my retirement years, so I told her about peaceful societies and this… Continue reading…
June 28th marked both the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, an event which triggered World War One, and the 85th birthday of Glenn Paige, who began a movement promoting nonkilling. The media focused a lot of attention on the Great War last Sunday, but more attention… Continue reading…
