Thursday, November 27th 2008

By timothy ng

     Peace, something people boast about in the news, books, songs, lectures and social movements, but really how can we attain such a thing when we deceive ourselves? Deception can fuel a small fire that burns up pieces of society and this fire can cross boarders to engulf the world. Deception creates inefficient conflict transformation (peaceful solutions to conflict) by confusing members of society on how to solve problems and can cause even bigger problems – apparent in the environment, our health and our justice system.

     Often, people hear about global warming and its harmful implications and how we need to reduce our carbon emissions to prevent this but we can’t even see where to properly aim to combat this problem. Most news of ways to stop global warming are to reduce automobile usage, which is good but seriously the consumption of meat has a far greater effect. Farm animal production, due to high demands for meat, has caused increased farm animal manure and flatulence and several acres of trees to be eliminated destroying various ecosystems releasing greater amounts of carbon dioxide than our automobiles. Why is this not receiving proper media coverage? Overly consumption of meat can not only aid global warming it causes obesity and other toxins in our body. This is somewhat similar to structural violence. Structural violence deals with a social structure denying some people their basic needs to benefit certain people in the society. Our basic need is better media coverage of the matter and how to deal with it or this can act as a poison destroying our health and the environment. If segmentation (a partial view of reality) occurs, we deceive ourselves by flooding the media with solutions that aren’t effective enough and then we’ll never see the bigger picture. Similarly this can be seen with how AIDS was handled in some areas.

     In the past the Chinese government and media deceived its people into thinking AIDS was not a big issue in their country. The government reassured its citizens that AIDS is only a problem in societies where there are homosexuals and since China supposedly didn’t have many then there won’t be any outbreaks. This deceit can cause irrational thinking leading to improper precautions during sexual intercourse for all citizens. China has one of the largest populations in the world with a high population density, if there is a hidden AIDS problem then this can potentially escalate into other countries. China is trying to appear better to the world and within itself by hiding its’ problems but that is causing damage to its’ citizens.  

     Deception does not only cause environmental and health problems it can effect our whole justice system. Various court cases in Canada have been criticized for not being allowed proper press coverage or any recording devices.  Several complaints have been made to Canada Court Watch claiming that judges have changed information on transcripts and lawyers have been forced to keep quiet because it is not in there economic interest to come forward about the issue.  If our justice system can not even be trusted and manipulates our laws that supposedly sustain civil society then how do we ever expect to achieve peace?

     At various levels deception can have various adverse effects on a society.  If we continue to analyze our problems and then deny or hide the real problems from the public we never really solve problems – we either create new problems or handle the existing problem ineffectively.  True or uncensored media coverage of conflicts need to be more clearly exposed in societies to aid in effective conflict transformation. This can be addressed in education, television, and the internet. Most importantly it is the duty of the citizens within a society to take part in being curious about conflicts and research and view them from several perspectives in order to come to an effective peaceful resolution.