Perpetual peace
A documentary film.
Plan for peace as you'd plan for war. ~ Tony Benn
The situation in which the world has now arrived is one of fully globalised conflict: indeed, this is arguably the only context in which the term globalisation has any real meaning.
Whether war is openly declared between nations, initiated by a coalition of interests upon an axis of abstractions - such as 'terror' - or fought between international guerrilla cells and private, mercenary armies (as is largely the case in Iraq), we are all now implicated and involved in conflict to a substantial extent.
In 1795 Immanuel Kant wrote an essay entitled Perpetual Peace, detailing, in short order, the steps necessary to ensure a state of lasting peace obtained throughout the globe.
The result was the first programme of legislative peacemaking in Western philosophy since Plato.
This film, written and directed by Jonathan Holmes, moves on from where Kant left off, and operates by seeking the views of major thinkers and public intellectuals on the subject today, and by juxtaposing their comments with the voices of typically disenfranchised individuals living and working in regions in conflict around the world.
The testimonies form a sequence of eloquent alternatives to war, culminating in a series of authoritative proposals, effective practicably, for global peacemaking.
Those interviewed for the film include: Betty Bigombe, Noam Chomsky, Amartya Sen, Harold Pinter, Dekkah Ibrahim Abdi, Tony Benn, Noreena Hertz, George Monbiot, Karen Armstrong, John Berger, Mary Kaldor, Scilla Elworthy, Helene Cixous and Adam Curle.
The aim of the film is to occasion a shift away from the
fatigued and idle misconception of peace as absence, a deficient state
obtaining by default - in effect, a truce - and to instigate a move towards
a re-imagining of peace as an existential and effective force for change,
and as a purposive and responsible freedom.