The Dalai Lama Laughs, What about You?

One of our most well respected “peacemakers” is the Dalai Lama. I believe that part of his charm comes from his ability to laugh with ease and quite loudly! For me, this is significant since he deals with a hectically paced schedule, the burden that comes with responsibility of campaigning for human rights and the freedom of the people of Tibet, not to mention the painful memories that must be associated with his own past experiences. It makes you wonder, if our world leaders could make each other laugh (rather than those one-sided laughs, or the knee slapping joshin’ about that we have become accustomed to since 2000) if we would have at least a mildly more peaceful world?

Artruism: The Art of Altruism

As we come closer to entering the full on political season, the media has already bombarded us with wannabe presidents readjusting their historical decisions to go to war in Iraq and creating addendums to previous statements captured in the media, all the while “youtube” creates a cyberspace “gothcha” reality show of the ‘08 presidential campaign. Does anyone else feel as though we should probably be voting for our next president with a cell phone rather than going to a poll?

Nevertheless, as the presidential contenders carefully parse their words now in an effort to position themselves in concert with current public opinion about the war with all of their carefully constructed media sound bytes, I am reminded just how refreshing it is to be engaged with the artistic community rather than the political one. For example, Tina Schelhorn maintains the very strong opinion about the war that she articulated back in 2003 and she has never apologized for it or repositioned it in anyway, but rather created a larger forum through photography to help others express their opinions too. One of the most compelling anti-war photo exhibitions that I have viewed is Ms Schelhorn’s “images against war” .

The exhibition was inspired by Ms. Schelhorn’s participation in anti-war protests in Germany before the invasion of Iraq. After attending several such protests, she concluded that the anti-war message was not effectively being heard and perhaps it would be best conveyed visually. As an artist and an owner of the Gallery Lichtblick in Cologne, she committed to creating visual protests against war and consequently submitted a call to artists to join her. More than 600 photographers from around the world submitted their own visual statements against war to be displayed in “images against war”. Ms. Schelhorn was overwhelmed by the strong response and particularly that the photographs included images from World War I to the most recent conflict in Lebanon. This exhibition that Ms. Schelhorn created has become one of the most democratic of demonstrations that I have ever experienced. The exhibition is about the collective strong opinion of artists who feel it is their responsibility to reflect upon the state of our global society through their camera lenses. The most refreshing part of the exhibition is the way in which Ms. Schelhorn chose to display the images. She deliberately separated the photo credits from the images and simply listed them together on large text panels and in doing so, she also separated the ego from the exhibition which was particularly significant since the contributors are well known international photojournalists, fine art photographers and commercial photographers. Perhaps this is the most altruistic photo exhibition one could hope to view.

Lagniappe

“Lagniappe” is a category all it’s own for this blog. The word means “a little something extra” in a good and unexpected way. I’ve heard lagniappe described by others as a random act of kindness of sorts, like when you buy a dozen donuts and after arriving home your realize the baker gave you 13, on purpose. It is an efficient word used to convey the giving of an unexpected, small gift, oftentimes by someone you barely know.

Please feel free to use this space in just such a way. Knowledge is a gift we share with each other, so I look forward to reading what you post here whether it is a short review of a stellar performance or a film that incorporates issues of social justice in the theme or any other little nugget of information that may be of interest to other readers of this blog! Share something that is good to know!

Wecome to PaxMuse

Thank you for visiting PaxMuse blog. This newly created site will explore issues of peace and social justice from diverse perspectives (i.e. media, art, history, science, law, current events, etc). The overarching goal of this site is to provide information and space for positive discourse about peace-related issues. The aim is to allow for a discussion that is open, inquisitive and solution-focused, rather than overly cynical or critical.

So, will it be possible to learn how to become a better global citizen through a blog? What kind of cumulative effect will the dialogue from a blog about peace have on individuals, the blogging community, or even the world?  Join the blog and let’s find out.  And just so you know, I have enlisted the help of a team of diverse professionals to post here periodically to facilitate the understanding of peace from a myriad of viewpoints.  I look forward to hosting a lively blog site!