Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Is there such a thing as a culture of war, or a culture of peace? If war and peace are matters of culture, how does a community of individuals develop a culture of war, or a culture of peace? Is war a matter of violent clash between human communities, both guided by a culture of war? Or are there circumstances under which a human community guided by a culture of peace turns to violence as a way of resolving conflict with another community?

The sad reality of the world in 2022 is that we are compelled to raise these questions about war and peace. In what sense are war and peace matters of culture? To answer this question, we begin with the standard definition of what culture is: “a set of ideas and values shared by the members of a social group in their effort to adapt to and survive in their environment—natural, social, and spiritual.” With this definition, a culture of war, or a culture of peace, can be defined in terms of the characteristic mode of interaction and communication employed by a human community towards the natural, the social, and the spiritual environment.

We can say that a human community is guided by a culture of war in its relationship with the natural environment if it sees nature as an adversary that needs to be conquered and exploited in order to promote human welfare. It is guided by a culture of war in its relationship with the social environment if it regards competition as the mode of interaction with other communities, and employs assertion, if not outright propaganda, as the mode of communication with them. It is guided by a culture of war in its relationship with the spiritual environment if the individual develops and is guided by the self that is full of conflict between mind and body, between ego and id, between instinct and intellect, between passion and reason.

In contrast, a human community is guided by a culture of peace in its relationship with the natural environment if it sees nature as the space of interaction between life and matter, with harmony in that space being regarded as crucial in promoting human welfare. It is guided by a culture of peace in its relationship with the social environment if it regards reciprocity as the mode of interaction with other communities, and employs dialogue as the mode of communication with them. It is guided by a culture of peace in its relationship with the spiritual environment if the individual sees the self as an aggregate of all the instincts, motivations, and propensities that need to be harmonized and integrated.

Given that there are a wide variety of human communities, why is it that certain communities develop a culture of war, while others a culture of peace? Perhaps there is a biological factor behind human aggression as has been pointed out by some ethologists. At the current phase of human evolution, however, a cultural factor probably plays a more important role, surrounded as we are by all kinds of fruits of civilization that have little to do with our basic biological needs.

What factors, then, are responsible for developing a culture of war? As far as our relationship with the natural environment is concerned, climate, widely interpreted to include weather, geography, and other characteristics of the living environment, plays an important role in influencing the culture a specific human community develops. The history of civilizations gives us many examples in which northern communities, having acquired a culture of war living in a harsh and unrelenting environment, invade and conquer their more mild-mannered southern neighbors. Similar examples of aggressive behavior have also been noted among human communities living in barren environments of deserts and steppes.

A culture of war develops in a human community where the individual tends to view individuals from other communities as aliens, foreigners, and outsiders. Differences in race and religion add to this sense of differentiation, resulting in suspicion and mistrust of others and, unfortunately, in aggression and violence when conflicts of interest develop for territorial, economic, and other reasons. From the point of view of the individual’s mental setup, a culture of war develops in a human community where the individual is action-oriented as opposed to reflection-oriented, ego-centered as opposed to group-oriented, preoccupied with ego-development as opposed to self-integration.

To the extent that war and peace are matters of culture, it becomes important to cultivate and promote intercultural communication between human communities. The first step towards intercultural communication would be for individuals in both cultures to realize that war and peace as cultures have resulted from and reflect the differences in the way different human communities interact with the natural, the social, and the spiritual environment.

Where cultural differences are involved, we need to make every effort to develop the verbal as well as the non-verbal mode of communication with members of other communities. A human community guided by a culture of war tends to develop the kind of language that is employed not only in actual warfare but also in the conduct of daily affairs. In fact, life itself becomes a battle as metaphors developed in the battlefield are employed to describe the challenges of life in business, politics, and even in education.

If transforming a culture of war is what is needed to cultivate and promote intercultural communication, we must begin with the task of reforming the language of war that predominates in a human community guided by a culture of war. Since there is thought behind speech, reforming language would then lead to a change in the individual’s mental setup. And a change in the individual’s mental setup, hopefully, would lead to a change in people’s value system, from a masculine value system inherent in a culture of war to a feminine value system that emphasizes such values as accommodation, compassion, and integration.

The fact of the matter is that no human community is guided entirely by a culture of war, or a culture of peace for that matter. Every human community is guided by a mixture of these two cultures and oscillates between them as the condition under which it operates changes. The relationship between the two cultures in a human community is like the yin-yang duality diagram in which the region of yin (a culture of peace) contains some elements of yang (a culture of war), and vice versa. As such, the matter of intercultural communication comes down to the question of how each individual regards himself/herself with respect to the natural, the social, and the spiritual environment. Indeed, a culture of peace would not develop in the world unless and until all of us find peace with ourselves in the global environment in which our existence as a species takes place.