Hope for peace embedded in the ordinary : peacewomen’s teaching without teaching
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Women in action
Publication Date
8-2006
Volume
2006
Issue
2
First Page
43
Last Page
49
Abstract
Mahatma Gandhi says, "an eye for an eye," and we all go blind. Hatred, greed, calculation and jealousy work like a plague, infecting more and more people with the curse of violent passions that reduce them to blindness and stupidity.
Jose Saramago, 1998 Nobel Literary Prize Laureate, tells in his novel Blindness of how blindness induces further and greater blindness: an unknown virus spreads in the city, the affected suddenly suffer blindness, "seeing" only a thick whiteness. People in contact with the affected quickly contract the virus, and doctor, thief, policeman, family ... one after another get sent into the isolation camp. There, the "equality" and "empathy" brought by the onslaught of the disease can only be transient. Robberies, bullies, lies and cruelties rule and oppress this space with greater force. After a while, no one watches over or cares for the camp anymore, because everyone in the city has gone blind. Knowing that no one is watching, almost everyone loses discipline; robberies, bullies, lies and cruelties intolerable to the eye before now rule the hearts. Only, one single person does not go blind--the good wife of the doctor--and she sees how the violence of blind obsessions breeds more blind obsessions and violence, accumulating into a torrent flushing all sentiments of kindness, forgiveness and generosity down the drain.
Print ISSN
19842012
E-ISSN
20792476
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2006 Isis International.
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Lau, K. C. (2006). Hope for peace embedded in the ordinary: Peacewomen’s teaching without teaching. Women in action, 2006(2), 43-49. Retrieved from http://www.isiswomen.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=435