Wim Wenders and Mary Zournazi - INVENTING PEACE

I've just been reading the collaborative book, INVENTING PEACE, a dialogue between photographer and film maker Wim Wenders and Australian writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi. The book is a compelling and insightful read. Inventing Peace revolves around the question of how we look at the world, but do not see it when there is so much war, injustice, suffering and violence.

What are the ethical and moral consequences of looking, but not seeing, and most of all: what has become to the notion of PEACE in all this? In the form of a written dialogue, Wim Wenders and Mary Zournazi consider this question as one of the fundamental questions of our times and consider the need to reinvent a visual and moral language for peace. Inspired by various cinematic, philosophical, literary and artistic examples Wenders and Zournazi reflect on the need for a change of perception in everyday life as well as in the creation of images. In its unique style and method, Inventing Peace demonstrates an approach to peace through sacred, ethical and spiritual means, helping to make peace visible and tangible in new and unforeseen ways.

 Among other things Wim Wenders has this to say, a comment that is profound, sensible and obvious. American politics should never have declared "WAR" on terrorism. That upgraded terrorists to soldiers... and brought our own morals down to theirs: into the pits. There WAS an alternative... for a small loophole in time, in late September and early October 2001, as America was mourning, and as it had ALL the world's sympathy, there was potential of hope and a future for peace. The remote possibility of another way of thinking. The vague realisation that the "Right of the Stronger" could be replaced by the "Right of the Wiser". But then the opposite happened and Bush imposed the "Right of the Foolish", combining American Strength with the desire for Revenge, and coupled with an unhealthy greed for influence, resources and profit. In that loophole in time, an alternative existed and that would have been the "War on Injustice". Not to fight the symptoms of terrorism, but rather their roots: Poverty and Inequality... that would have decapitated Terrorism, instead of pushing millions towards it.

You can read more on the site INVENTING PEACE - HERE.