Republic of the Philippines

Mindanao State University

Brgy. Fatima, General Santos City

Name: EDEN GRACE D. SURIAGA

Course: MSDS-EE

1. Why the need for peace? What is the essence of peace?

Nowadays, every human being longed for peace. This is visible to community who always
takes into account the fact that all religions, religious scriptures, and ceremonies are committed
to the cause of peace and all these advocate an elimination of war (Shah, Abhay, 2018).
According to Galtung, J. (2013, p.7), peace is dialectical. Peace is neither a timeless
essence--- an unchanging ideal substance—nor a mere name without a reference, a form without
content. Peace should neither be reified by essentialist metaphysics nor rendered otiose by
postmodernist and skeptical deconstruction. Peace is both a means of personal and collective
ethical transformation and an aspiration to cleanse the planet of human-inflicted destruction. The
mans and goal are in continual, dialectical evolution, sometimes regressing during the periods of
acute violent conflict and sometimes progressing non-violently and less violently to actualize
political justice and social equity. Like history and life, peace is a terrestrial creating struggling for
survival in a constantly changing, and sometimes threatening environment.

2. How does the propagation of Peace Education bring peace in Mindanao?

Propagation of Peace Education can bring peace in Mindanao, because education can be
a transformational approach where both conflicting parties can understand each predicament and
they will have compatible goals, which could lead to a higher levels of resolution that can bring
peace, conviviality; where incompatible goals, conflict are handled peacefully. Also, with peace
education, people can understand that violence is the outcome of untransformed conflict, thus,
conflict transformation has itself to be peaceful in order not to make the situation worse by sowinf
new seeds for future violence.
Also, peace education can go beyond the parties’ goals through classical mediation, which
can bring parties together for negotiation and compromise, the transcend approach (Galtung,
2013, p.14), where starts with one party at a time, in deep dialogue, and in a joint creative search
for a new reality. After that comes the classical approach, bringing them together for negotiation,
with a facilitator. After negotiation, approach will be done in holistic way, where there is a dynamic
process relating conflict and peace. There will be a process of diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, and
interventions necessary and sufficient to prevent unacceptable consequences/effects. Thus,
Peace Education in Mindanao is vital to establish peace.

3. Your critical reflection of the different initiatives undertaken in the Philippines or in Mindanao to
bring peace, and security?
Initiatives for peace are taken seriously here in Mindanao. Only untransformed
conflict is a major problem. It becomes like a festering wound, whether visible to the untrained
eye, or located deeper down in the body, personality, structure and/or culture, like a genetically
pre-programmed tumor. Initiatives must understand the parties culture and nature and structure.
Nature is in us, and around us; while, culture is in us as internalized values and norms; structure
is around us as institutionalized, positive and negative sanctions. These three foci are once the
focused of great people in attaining goals; Marx’s answer that goals are structure-induced
interests, Freud’s answer that goals are other-transmitted values, and Darwin’s focus on self- and
species-preservation. The first and foremost need for survival, and then add the actors’ private
goals. Galtung, J (2013, p. 16) suggested ways to mitigate self-interests and to unite each parties’
goals in one path. These are:
 Individual actors are conditioned, not determined, by Nature and Culture inside us, and
Nature and Structure outside us, giving us humans a window of freedom for our spiritual
capacity to transcend;
 There are collective actors such as genders and generations, races and classes, countries
and nations, regions and civilizations;
 Actors have goals, among them are basic needs derived from Nature, values from Culture
and interests from Structure;
 Goals are positively coupled (harmonious, compatible), negatively coupled
(disharmoniously, incompatible), or decoupled, if pursuit of one is productive,
counterproductive or indifferent to pursuit of others;
 Harmonious-indifferent goals offer potentials for positive peace, disharmonious-
incompatible-contradictory goals define conflict;
 Where there is conflict there may be frustration because the pursuit of one goal is blocked
by the pursuit of the goal (s);
 Where there is frustration there may be polarization, organizing inner and outer world as
a dualist gestalt of ‘Self vs. Other’;
 Where there is polarization there may be dehumanization of Other;
  Where there is dehumanization, the frustration may translate into aggression, with hatred
growing in the inner world of attitudes and violence growing in the outer world of behavior,
all of them reinforcing each other in processes of escalation;
 Where there is hatred and violence there will be traumatization; of victims harmed by the
violence, and of the perpetrators harmed by their own hatred and by having traumatized
the victims; and;
 Where there is trauma, victims may dream of revenge and revanche, and perpetrators of
more glory, deposited in Culture and Structure as values and in History as vicious
feedback cycles.

These domino effects have been so vivid in the contest of the issues on peace and conflict
management here in Mindanao. These unresolved conflicts can be traced way back imperialism,
which flourish and developed and have gotten roots over a period of time. The imperial powers
were extremely violent in their overseas conquest, but they had no prior conflict with those
peoples. They did not even know them, they ‘discovered’ them, and most were friendly. The
conflict was not over invasion but over unlimited submission, politically as subjects, economically
as forced labor, culturally as converts. If they submitted, they could be admitted as slaves; if they
resisted, military power, violence/war, was used to force them or kill them. In addition, imperial
powers had conflicts with each other. This root cause was seen in different bird’s eye view, thus
conflict which resulted to violence happens here in Mindanao. Here in Mindanao, violence is a
smoke, and conflict is the fire. But some conflict may be festering, like smoke-less glow.