We live at a time where the economic power is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, who control political, social, and economic systems to safeguard and expand their power. This process has exacerbated the chasm between rich and poor and led to the violent extraction of the planet’s natural resources; resulting in a social, ecological, and economic crisis that threatens life on earth. We live
in a system that benefits from a convenient unequal distribution
of the world’s resources and encourages violence, injustice, and “inhumanity
cynically defended in the name of profit” (Veneigem, 1994). Even though there is evidence that shows that humans are predisposed to be cooperative and sharing, the war economy survives by creating the experience of scarcity that forces the reliance on greed, selfishness, competition, and a sense that we are separate. And the critical question facing us today is whether we allow the war economy to further exploit and oppress the majority of people and our shared environment, or we build systems based on sharing, rather than competing for the world’s resources and labor. Every transaction we make in our daily lives ultimately contributes toward building a peace economy or a war economy, a world of compassion, justice and well being, or a world of indifference and violence. The peace economy model encourages us to reinvest in our local communities, in the people. It calls for creating cultural, social and economic models that cultivate a sense of respect and self-determination for all our communities. We cannot make these changes without the foundational building blocks of the very peace and justice we are seeking. The first step is realizing the impact that our daily behaviors, ideologies, actions have in local and global communities and change these in a way that reinvest in the people and the earth. Join us in divesting from the unjust, extractive war economy into building a just peace economy for all.
