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Football Supporters For Peace

Stuart Butler

21st September 2002

How many wars has the world seen since homo sapiens first fought?
Far more than you will read of in any diplomatic Wisden, I’ll be bound,
For any definition of war must go beyond just state sponsored violence,
To include all collective acts of conflict that pre-date the nation state,
Conflicts that stretch right back to that 2001 Space Odyssey moment,
When humanity first saw the duality of potential in inert stone,
The rational utility of a labour saving tool,
And the violent inhumanity of a barbaric weapon;
Such a dichotomy is also paralleled by a duality in our thinking
And assumptions about the provenance of violence too:
The Nature versus Nurture debate,
The divide between those who believe that humankind is intrinsically evil,
Demanding, thereby, a Hobbesian Pax Americana Leviathan,
And those Rousseauists who assert that humanity is naturally cooperative,
Believing, thereby, that violence is socially and systemically produced,
As affirmed by the many variants of liberal, socialist and Marxist thinking,
Thinking that sees conflict as a response to a perceived inequality,
An inequality that denies potential by using hidden, discrete violence,
As in the daily death of 24,000 people through starvation.
But whatever our unproveable beliefs about the causes of conflict,
It’s obvious that peace cannot be produced through an immutable status quo,
An unmoving and unbending status quo,
It’s obvious that the world needs mechanisms for dynamic peaceful change,
For peaceful transitions and compromises that foster harmony and diversity,
Harmony and diversity across all the nation states of this spinning globe;
And this dynamic demands commitment from more than just politicians,
It requires powerful, responsible, active citizens too,
Citizens who educate governments into embracing peaceful change,
Non-violent peaceful change,
Non-violent peaceful change,
From citizens who think globally and act locally,
As we do today, at grounds throughout the world,
On Saturday September 21st,
The United Nations International Day of Peace,
A day of global ceasefire and non-violence –
But we honest citizens would like to see this happen every day,
We would like to see this happen every day,
In a free and peaceful equal world,
A free and peaceful equal world

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/news/2002/09/21/football-supporters-for-peace/