A Theoretical and Action-Oriented Vindication of Peace

Abstract

With the idea of restoring the analytical relevance and the real viability of peace, as the process par excellence for the institution of a dignifying communal order, this contribution seeks to reflect on the dimensions identified as essential or foundational for its social viability. Some actions and values as dialogue, listening and care lead to obtain possibilities on peace and justice. There have prevailed the studies about the structurality of violence, and the idea of violence as a natural practice, so the this chapter proposes to give some frameworks for thinking on the structural dimensions of peace. It is a thoughtful search for alternatives that overcome the schemes of inequality and injustice that have been based as structures of violence, to vindicate the presence of peaceful structures in societies. Understanding and denaturation of violence is intended to carry out an endorsement of peace. The methodology used in the text is based on the study and qualitative analysis of the structures of violence in general both in the world and in Mexico. To eradicate them it through certain alternatives, finally, the reflective proposal arises to bet on the structurality of peace through imagination by emphasizing the importance of hope.

1. Introduction: reflections on peace: pending matters in the face of injustice and inequality

“What happens is that in a past marked by violence and trauma, the links to a peaceful life disappear from the surface. But a pair of loose threads always remain in the apparently torn fabric.” ([1], p. 1)

Discussing the reasons for peace reveals all of our pending matters: what humanity must do, and what remains unfinished and undone. That is where we must search for what is lacking and determine what we need as human beings in a country like Mexico, in a country like Mexico, where violence has taken over all social spaces. The presence of drug trafficking has been devastating for citizens, and institutions have been dominated by injustice and violence. In this context, our mission is to face the demand for necessary peace: a resounding peace for all, peace that is alive and edifying. Peace that simultaneously permits the poietic configuration of those who construct it, and that takes effect in a dialectical manner: we become peaceful by making peace, and we make peace by becoming peaceful. In this manner, we can provide an example through our communal actions, disclosing the virtues of peace and the concealed vices of violence.

By de-individualizing actions, we can ensure that peace—in human plurality—will lead to an edifying, humanizing attitude that in turn will shape and cultivate individuals and their communities. Based on these assumptions, we must aim for the vindication of peace from theoretical, action-based positions, renovating the viable analytical relevance of peace as a sine qua non for organizing institutions with a dignifying communal order. The fundamental dimensions of such peace promote its social viability, since it is in peaceful scenarios where basic needs are met, and where human flourishing is evident in light of established possibilities, resulting in situations of peace.

Inequalities block human possibilities and open the door to situations of structural violence, such as poverty and precarity experienced by a majority of the members of the Mexican society. This has been proven in studies carried out by government entities like CONEVAL (“National Council of Evaluation of Policies of Social Development”). General poverty and extreme poverty are present in 17.2 and 52%, respectively, of the total Mexican population [2]. Social inequalities annihilate the hopefulness of life and give rise to mental illness, delinquency, and academic failure (15.2% of the student population) [3]. These numbers have been significantly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The situations experienced in are an example of the intensification of various forms of violence against citizens. Such violence, whether structural such as the poverty just mentioned, cultural such as racial, gender, and class exclusion, or direct such as aggressions to physical integrity and the modalities of generalized delinquency-, all of them are evidence of a country in full crisis of violence. These effects corroborates the immense level of inequality that we live in Mexico, from the structural frameworks that translate into violence, and that are legitimized through classist and racist discourses as cultural violence. All of them justify the direct violence that is expressed in the actions of both the State itself and organized crime.

Thus, in a country like Mexico, structural violence has a particular role to play, given that, due to the abysmal gap between the poor and the wealthy, these differences translate into various forms of direct violence, such as those brought upon by organized crime groups. Due to the inefficient role the State plays, we could almost talk about a failed State, in the sense that there are many areas which are out of its reach. Structural violence, therefore (and together with cultural violence expressed in classism and racism), increases the unequal access to social opportunities and primary goods, which is key to understand why direct violence has such a strong presence in Mexican society.

The greater the inequality (and not exclusively poverty), the greater the intensity of problems and the probability of democratic failure, due to the destruction of the social conditions of a just society ([4], p. 7). Social polarization is a sign of deteriorated social cohesion as inequalities eliminate the possibilities for interaction and cancel societal benefits. In such a situation, social competition heightens, becoming a struggle among the members of society that destroys common bonds and annuls the possible search for common good. The effects are disintegrated social links and social precarity. In addition, a degraded institutional setting provokes political conflicts because of social desperation and the frustration of individual life projects. Deprivation in terms of personal fulfillment and the horizons of meaning in social settings severely limit the expansion of peaceful structures.

It is fundamental to explain the passage from the dream of Kant’s perpetual peace to the latent nightmares that cause such painful awakenings. The responses do not reveal candor; quite the opposite, they search to define peace as a demand and as a moral ideal that is truly feasible, as Kant points out in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. There the German philosopher affirms that we should react to peace as if it were real ([5], pp. 190–191), since moral reason contains the ideals of reason. As a result, in Perpetual Peace he states that peace can be established even in a place of demons ([6], p. 166) and defends peace not as an empty idea but as a task that is slowly completed ([6], p. 187). These are the ideas that motivate prognosis and a search for therapy, according to ([7], pp. 19–21), and allow us to seek solutions within existing structural injustice. A theoretical defense of peace, oriented at all times to action, is the objective of this text. We must recognize the structurality of peace to overcome the prevailing preconceptions in our societies of the preeminent structurality of violence.

Only by recognizing the structurality of violence—located primarily in institutions—we can overcome the violence of broken societies, like that of Mexico. The structures that we have experienced in Mexico have involved violence and injustice and have become established in social frameworks. For this reason, we find it complicated to visualize other forms of existence. We know, however, that transforming violence and injustice into peace implies processes of social rebuilding and a return to the elements of human communality. These processes permit rethinking the situations that people must construct, restituting and converting violent structures into structures of peace. Such structures must predominate and become manifest so that the social construction can visualize other courses of action that are shared, collective, and dignifying. The structural conditions and provisions of society must be deconstructed in global and local scenarios affected by savage capitalism ([8], p. 4). Their characteristics reveal inequality, which Grieg et al. describe as “the gap between unprecedented opulence and remarkable deprivation [that] confirms a sharpening of inequality” ([8], pp. 3–4). Many forms of violence are not addressed, remaining “so far off the political agenda” ([8], p. 1) that they are not to be found in a common location.

Structural violence generates vulnerability ([9], p. 5) as well as insecurity, as Roberts sustains in line with Caroline Thomas, and results “directly from existing power structures that determine who enjoys the entitlement to security and who does not” ([8], p. 1). Violent situations, like many other situations of human insecurity, by failing to satisfy fundamental needs make us question the ways “that could be changed” ([8], p. 1). Unfair, biased distribution generates death and profound inequalities that marginalize many, while others live in absurd opulence. “It involves asymmetries of power that are routinely fixed against weaker groupings by powerful states that prioritize electoral self-preservation and inefficient and often corrupt arms industries” ([8], p. 4). Much has been written about capitalism that constitutes “structural genocide” ([9], p. 4). We know that States cannot withdraw from certain global processes, including fierce capitalism. However, States and governments are key in processes that transform inequality into well-being. “Then the central issue concerns how this should be done” ([8], p. 15). Capitalistic systems are genocidal, because violence is inherent to the logic of capital and is a permanent characteristic of the system. Such violence takes on a structural shape and is aimed at the poor, especially those in the global South ([9], p. 4).

The focus of this text is to recognize the structural violence that Johan Galtung defined in 1969. This Norwegian thinker saw structural violence as an academic tool, rather than exclusively an East–West or North–South conflict ([10], p. 148). The attempt to transcend and transform such violence is based on an understanding of structural violence that can be of a political, economic, repressive, and exploitive nature, supported by structural penetration, segmentation, fragmentation, and marginalization ([7], p. 59): ideas developed by many of the scholars of peace considered in this paper. Galtung affirmed that social injustice and inequality, both in power and in wealth, lie at the core of structural violence when they result from social structures that disproportionately benefit one group of people while preventing others from meeting their fundamental needs. Therefore, social structures that cause human suffering and death constitute structural violence ([9], p. 4).

As a result, structural violence falls on those individuals who are the most disadvantaged, whether in terms of income, basic living conditions, food, health services, or protection from criminal aggression: realities that can lead to excessive vulnerability ([11], p. 59ff). No less important is the structural violence against women, as when Galtung identified patriarchy as a form of violence in [12] ([7], p. 69ff), an incipient, incomplete concept at that time ([10], p. 153).

We thus have the urgent task of denaturalizing and transforming such violence through a revolutionary combination of theory and practice ([9], p. 153).

The methodology used in this paper is based on the study and qualitative analysis of the structures of violence in general both in the world and in Mexico, from specialized bibliography on the subject. It is then a documentary research from which data and information are obtained. From these data achieved, the discussion was organized from a hermeneutic approach and many claims are based on data obtained from government offices. The arguments put forward are supported by all information and data obtained from the sources cited. In this way, research is based on several published researches from different political, sociological and philosophical perspectives.

The current paper is divided into four sections, which hope to contribute to an understanding and denaturalization of violence, in a return to peace and its establishment in the structure of society. The focus of the first section will be the construction of peace through the modification of institutional actions, centering on the categories of hospitality, solidarity, compassion, and care, which generate hopes for the modification of reality. In the second section, consideration is given to the possible alternatives for establishing peace in structures, along with the need for dialog in overcoming the injustice of violence; the institutions that will carry out such actions are the foundation. The third section proposes alternatives for placing peace in social structures, based on values and actions that are shown to be lacking, as in the empirical example of migration. The paper’s fourth and final section suggests the possibility of promoting the structurality of peace through imagination, emphasizing the importance of hope related to the values of hospitality, solidarity, and care in constructing peace, without neglecting the importance of institutional action. These goals can be attained through projects to increase awareness of the proposed categories and through processes of creative imagination to affect possible change. Specific forms will not be addressed and developed in this paper. They remain as open possibilities, strands of peace for weaving social fabrics, replicating through future actions to transform the world. Yet in spite of the prevailing dogmas in our society, possibilities exist for constructing a healthier peace with greater justice, by de-normalizing structures of violence and normalizing structures of peace.

2. Understanding and denaturalizing violence in the endorsement of peace

Situations of war, violence, and conflict have prevailed throughout human existence, and most of these conflicts have been poorly resolved or not transformed ([13], p. 10), thus becoming violent situations ([7], p. 160) that are considered normal. This situation will be the focus of this section, as we search for possibilities to de-normalize structures of violence in order to establish those of peace. We shall focus on transformative resources in institutions that provide justice, and economic and political frameworks that threaten personal dignity and must be modified. To attain solutions, a peaceful society must be established.

We must believe that at the interpersonal level, transforming persons by definition also involves changing “the parties,” and hence having a major effect on the conflict. Even with conflicts at the inter-group, intercommunity, and international level, however, conflict transformation is held to involve a variety of major changes in the individuals involved ([14], p. 10).

As long as individual actions are not modified, structural and naturalized violence will be difficult to change.

The concept of peace has been discussed in specific studies on peace for more than 50 years. Many specialists have addressed the topics of conflict and structural violence from perspectives of peace and have researched empirical patterns, as seen in the initial 49 volumes of Journal of Peace Research ([10], p. 145). This journal reveals situations that threaten societies and must be deconstructed and reconstructed with peaceful paradigms. Thinkers have reflected profoundly on peace: Kant, as well as more contemporary theorists, who all contribute to our understanding of the concept of peace.

In specific terms, the absence of dialog, agreement, and honest listening has canceled the options for overcoming conflicts. As a result, conflicts remain unresolved, whether because they are denied or congealed. Certain mechanisms are installed and constituted as structural and cultural violence. We must rethink the ways of delineating other possibilities for human existence, denaturalizing violent situations that have become encrusted in the heart of society. The importance of understanding that peace is possible and human—and that it must be constructed as basic social scaffolding—obligates us to maintain the primacy of ethical discourse that must prevail in our thinking. This emanates from the affirmation of structures that imply peaceful living with others out of respect for dignity.

The history of violence in general and of structural and cultural violence in particular has been studied in a systematic, recurrent manner in the limited views of the existing structures of peace. The structurality of violence has left us untouched and impervious to injustice and the prevalence of the inhumane in indignity. Naturalizing violent actions or looking the other way—also a form of violence—are expressions of pervasive injustice in societies like Mexico’s. The prevalence of such injustice generates devastating effects among all of a society’s members, principally among the weakest, as indicated above. One of the aftereffects of injustice takes the form of poverty, which is violence added to the injustices of exclusion, classicism, racism, and sexism. All have reached a degree of naturalization that is structural and seldom protested. This normalizing scenario of violence has eroded humanity at the deepest level, has undermined and weakened the comprehension or peace, and has established in generalized form, in the social imaginary, the impossible existence of structures of peace. The proposed alternatives are plausible on a daily basis, as well as at local, national, and international levels.

Although experiences of precarious existence prevail in all locations, they do so with greater strength in places like Mexico, where structural violence is now explicit. As a result, we must base our position on situations of injustice, in line with Luis Villoro, within a framework of Mexican communities in general and ethnic groups in particular (2007, p. 142). Such approaches support some of the reflections on peace that we make in this text, yet do not ignore the influence of peace studies for at least five decades. Studies have alluded to the normalization of violence in our systems, meaning that systems must be transformed, as well as their institutions, in order to construct peaceful situations that agree with the structures and actions of society. “Starting with dissensus, differences, and situations of radical evil—in other words, injustice—and which imply the systematic, recurrent denial of what is common” ([15], p. 212) is the first step of the negative path of no peace. Starting with real injustice allows us to project the remedy ([16], p. 16).

When the exclusion of social and political benefits becomes everyday, injustice and violence prevail and reality must be faced in another manner. “When justice is reached, peace is attained, and when both are obtained, humanity is built” ([15], p. 213). This statement underlies the importance of making those changes—both epistemological and social—that enable structures of peace. Paradigmatic criticism and reflective challenges directed to institutions are necessary in violent settings in a Westphalian state in the international economic system. The lack of criticism ([17], pp. i-ii) leads to the normalization of violence in our systems. As a result, we must devise more revolutionary and less repetitive actions than those of the past, in an attempt to challenge and produce new international orders that “are more adept at responding to issues of environmental degradation and social justice” ([17], pp. i-ii).

Gnoth points out that the task of constructing peace “is a critical discipline which seeks to challenge the status quo, recognizing that while conflict can transform and bring positive social chance, violence need not be considered inevitable to this endeavor” (2019, p. 2). In addition, the analyses and proposals for constructing peace must be addressed critically, with an awareness of limits and scope, in order to analyze the barriers to critical knowledge in the prevailing frameworks of neoliberal academic thought ([17], p. 4). “It is a call to arms for academics to push the boundaries of their critique and to let the political scientists and international relation theorists worry about what is possible, and instead concern themselves with what is desirable” ([17], p. 4). Such ideas support the proposals made in this paper.

The deconstruction of violent structures is important because they are institutionalized. Violence is mentally internalized and expressed in conducts, norms, and expressions in language, as well as in many constructs of a system that has validated such situations. Language discloses the violent concepts that hide in the normalized imaginary, thus justifying the status quo. In short, institutions justify hidden violence and ensure its acceptance. In such a situation, direct violence is legitimated and converted into a repetitive ritual. Structures must be based on associative, equitably symbiotic relationships and acts of cooperation, solidarity, and friendship that express the recognition of others. Strategies and procedures that have been used to attain peace represent a theoretical position and a doctrine identified with historic experiences, such as the independence process in India, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the separation of the former Republic of Czechoslovakia, and the end of Apartheid. Associations also exist with historical figures, including Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela: theoretical/political, social, and economic models of emancipation who attempted to reduce human suffering. Their typologies range from boycotts and noncooperation to civil disobedience, with the broadest forms of resistance: proposals aimed at the humanization of policy ([18], pp. 783–795).

It is evident that processes of constructing peace are built from dialog and listening, with foundations in consideration and otherness, where the opinions of others are always taken into account. The credibility of what the other says implies ethical benevolence that allows the recognized presence of others. Dialog and listening are the principles of communicative solidarity and the basis of mutual recognition ([18], p. 783), which appreciate shared dignity and involvement in the stories of others and plural wealth. Believing in a sole history implies exclusion, oppression, contempt, and plunder, with all of the violence that they contain.

Since new situations are rooted in processes, their settings and actions will become positioned in the social imaginary and its basic structures. Attempts will be made to promote a culture of transparency, in a culture of legality within a system of laws and the rule of law that will guarantee fair actions for all members of society. Promoting a culture that seeks peace is obligatory if we want to transform violence. Otherwise, violence will gain strength, along with its elements of corruption, poverty, and marginalization.

Collective and cultural imaginaries serve as supports for justifying the bellicose behaviors of structural violence. They are manifested in direct violence and legitimated in cultural violence. Proposals based on cultural hegemony invalidate the excluded and define them as dominated, delegitimized, and silenced, thus undermining their dignity. Yet dignity is the foundation for constructing peaceful situations. Entrenching, strengthening, and protecting dignity will permit the introduction of peace in all situations, since collective imaginaries operate as new supports for peaceful actions. Such actions must be sustained by the structural concepts that imply peace, including agreements, equity, justice, difference, the possibility of dignifying individuals, and the possibility of speaking courageously, even in situations of risk ([19], p. 12). Courageous discourse points at situations of abuse and injury from injustice. “Only those who are under the control of others can embark on parrhesia” ([19], p. 12). For this reason, it is important to construct plural spaces and assemblies that support discourse through collective resistance, common agreement, and solidarity, in an attempt to disrupt situations of violence and injustice in peaceful scenarios. Resistance and denouncement are fundamental in modifying the structural violence of behaviors, norms, institutions, and language. The objective is to reform political agendas ([8], p. 1) and create change.

Our desire for peace requires attaching new meaning to reality in order to recover and delve into trust and hope; not having to act through force, but through good reasons that are both real and imagined in comprehending the spaces of ethical, political action.

3. Alternatives for establishing peace in social structures and proposals for support

Throughout history, humanity has proven that to attain peace, conflicts must be overcome and transcended since the cancelation of conflict is impossible. Transcendence can satisfy and benefit all involved parties. The current of this section of this text describes the importance of creating peace with the values of solidarity, hospitality, care, and compassion that accompany justice. An underlying resource is imagination, along with the shared, common values that permit societal cohesion, as the struggle to minimize inequalities attaches new meaning to human conduct. The implication is analytical work on the meaning of peace in order to emphasize its pertinence by constructing horizons of meaning in the framework of socially significant peace and common implications.

Comprehending human conduct and action allows us to address implications based on joint responsibility, as we recognize others even amidst inequalities. Understanding otherness as valuable promotes overcoming inequality of all types. Piety and compassion imply “knowing how to treat that which is different, that which is the radical other […], the desire to find ways to treat and understand each other” ([20], p. 113, 114). It is the way to promote situations of harmony and facilitate peaceful relations based on praxis that cultivates mutual relations with others, in an inclusive and shared manner.

The configuration and analysis of peace as a socially significant category imply certain values—values that express a consistently integrated conformation of individuals in the framework of social communality. Such values include solidarity, hospitality, care, and compassion: notions that have become hidden, silent, and often wasted through excessive use, trivialization, and manipulation ([21], p. 22). The ethical assumption of solidary ties is protected in order to attain peace and reconstruct damaged social associations among individuals; the result is the reinforced structurality of peace in our societies.

The presence of violence hinders human interrelations [22], threatens personal dignity, and generates a situation of strong disagreement; according to utilitarian logic, such disagreement leads to serious conflicts. Equilibrium is separated from profits, hierarchies, and markets that are unhelpful in constructing community and peace. The cohesive community value of moral elements is dismantled, yet such elements open the door to a compassionate, hospitable society and represent the values that guarantee communal agreement. In the absence of hospitality and compassion, defined as a virtue ([23], p. 17), violent situations will continue to exist. Compassion, a “feeling of pain at an apparent evil” as defined by Aristotle (Retórica, II, 8, 1385b), means that a person who pities another is saddened. The other’s disgrace, however, promotes an appreciation of what we have avoided, as the person who witnesses the suffering of others “enjoys both the pity he has for their ills and the happiness that exempts him from those ills” ([24], Emilio IV, p. 296). Active benevolence implies an awareness of what can be remedied or at least alleviated—the other’s pain—as well as the simple idea that doing good must result in something good. It appeals to the human value of compassion because it assumes the underlying ethos of being human. Thus, Aristotle states that someone who is compassionate believes in the existence of honorable people, because “otherwise, that person will consider all worthy of suffering injury” ([25, 26], II, 8, 1385b). In principle, we can all be the object of compassion because compassion is supported by the equal relationship between the compassionate person and the receiver of that compassion ([25, 26], III, 12, 1413a).

The sole way to assume responsibility for how others feel and how we would feel in a similar situation is through imagination. Only imagination will allow us to conceive of the experiences of others, by putting us in their place. Knowing the other’s pain means experimenting it in one’s own flesh. In that sense, compassion obligates us to come outside of ourselves and become the other: to appropriate imaginatively the other’s suffering and identify with the other not only through knowledge, but also through feeling and intuiting the other’s responsibility to vulnerability. It is about feeling the same as the other—"as if”—and experiencing in a similar manner the painful event, through imagination and the ideas of dignity and human finiteness. Thus, we can speak of the powerful ethical content of compassion as the basis or source of all virtues ([23], p. 282). Compassion is not simply good will without practical consequences. With compassion, bridges are built, discord is resolved, difference is relativized, and common elements are created to attain harmonious situations among the members of a society. Inserted into the sentiment of a person who seeks to repair, soften, or compensate for human pain is justice—justice that hopes to guarantee the dignity that is the basis of compassion: “the pain that evil people cause other people, the reaction that emanates from the spectacle of poverty, inequality, or the lack of freedom” ([23], p. 312). According to Aristotle, such ideas can promote a movement toward justice. In this sense, compassion is an initial, intuitive form of justice since evil is not convenient for our dignity and all pain is unfair. Compassion appeals to injustice and solidarity by extending “our” circle as widely as possible. Attached to that solidarity is the compassion that leads to greater justice, to the detriment of poverty or situations of diverse social and cultural violence. That other justice, which is greater because of the love it gives others, is compassion.

Compassion and hospitality are based on another central resource, which is solidarity. Solidarity is a virtue, woven in the community, that is fundamental for human relations and the resolution of violent situations. Solidarity must be factually supported by social assurance. If assurance does not appear or is weakened—as in societies affected by neoliberal proposals—solidarity fades and the implicit principles of justice underlying governmental benefactors are erased. All solidarity is pulverized. We can state that solidarity reveals the full meaning of justice and promotes justice ([27], p. 97); in other words, solidarity incites the obtainment of justice. Benevolence is the name for solidarity; it refers to fundamental mutual support for attaining a balanced society; it remedies shortages to overcome violence and achieve cordial, peaceful situations. And such solidarity is linked in turn to hospitality, since it attaches importance to the life of others upon imagining existence in the other’s shoes.

Hospitality is related to an invitation and a promise [28] and is linked to occasions of support and shelter in a framework of humanity. Such situations motivate the common willingness to help others for mutual benefit, to construct situations of healthy, peaceful interaction in public and community spaces.

In general, actions related to solidarity, hospitality, and care have been left systematically at the margin of public and political spheres and are limited fundamentally to the private sphere. The split demonstrates the age-old, constant rupture between justice and good living [29], while separating private and public settings. As a result, care is associated with others, with their recognition, and with the enlargement of spheres of concern and mutual action in constructing cultures to make peace.

The perspective of compassion, care, and hospitality expresses a society concerned about otherness, well-being, and community justice. It encourages us to put ourselves in the place of others and to learn to see the world from others’ viewpoints. For this reason, hospitality means opening to otherness based on the recognition of the dignity and identity of others. Hospitality is not received anonymously because unknown people do not have a birthplace, a history, an inheritance, or any reference whatsoever; identity and subjectivity are thus required [30], as others’ requirements and needs are addressed.

The tasks of care are important because they permit satisfying basic needs for the survival and well-being of a society’s members. They reveal the attainment of social justice ([31], p. 87). In addition to sustaining life, the tasks of care contribute to developing values and capacities in the individuals who perform them ([32], p. 19). Therefore, the procedure of care is practices that are ethical in nature but limited to spaces that are almost exclusively private and not highly esteemed. The struggles and processes of feminism have revealed the importance of activities of care that are so relevant for people; they are of an ethical nature because of their central dimensions in human life but must be generalized rather than limited to the province of women or laborers [33]. In this sense, it is important to relocate care to a new social infrastructure, in the face of vulnerability, finiteness, and dependence, while searching to attain social justice and participation in good living ([34], p. 191). A good life in an integrated life of well-being and a peaceful spirit, as various authors have indicated. First, we can quote Aristotle, the most paradigmatic in the topic, who points out that a good life is a valuable life that attains eudaimonia: the supreme goal of happiness that is an honest life of just, honest actions ([26]: 1097a/1098b). For Socrates, a good life is a coherent life, while Kant states that a worthy life is a life in which action aligns with moral duty ([5], p. 197). Marx expresses his theory in his first manuscript of 1844, referring to a good life as unalienated in society, not attached to private property and therefore free from alienation ([35], p. 594). Closer to us is Paul Goodman, who observed in Growing Up Absurd the perversion of US education, since a perverted society left a world that was insufficiently human, with corrupted institutions, undermined personal development ([36], p. xv), and no sense of the community of a humanized, good life. All of these thinkers coincide in defining a good life of shared, just actions.

A search for common elements implies being solidary, compassionate, and caregiving. Hospitality is a way to confront violent conflicts, since hospitality seeks open-mindedness and helps others as a form of ethical behavior. The prevalence of violence and the cancelation of hospitality are embodied in migration in today’s world, and Mexico is no exception [37]. This issue is an empirical example of the absence of possibilities: scenarios of poverty-stricken migrants who are the victims of structural violence. Therefore, it is fundamental to assume a perspective in which hospitality is possible for all, and peace is attainable. In migration, violence ignores concerns for others, implying a cancelation of responsibility for others [38]. Accepting that responsibility means taking charge of and caring for immigrants, giving sufficient relevance to them and to their history of suffering; hospitality toward them is also oriented to the future ([39], p. 146). The pain and suffering that others undergo in frameworks of injustice cannot be disregarded, and in that sense, hospitality must look at both the past and future.

It is important to hope for change, and to look at the past as well as the future, since “no future and no progress are possible if built on the foundations of a past plagued by death and useless suffering” ([39], p. 146). In the case of migrants—who flee from their countries because they are fleeing from poverty and death—the right of foreigners not to be treated with hostility and rejection upon entering the other’s territory, as stated by Kant [6] does not function with closed nation-states, as we now can prove. The right of hospitality as defended by Kant establishes that relations between foreigners and citizens can occur only in the form of peaceful relations or legal, public relations. The second part of this definition is not easily followed, since foreigners who migrate to other countries are now in an illegal situation. The proposals of absolute hospitality, based on law and not conditioned by the specifications of norms, are more illuminating ([30], p. 31). Such hospitality does not question the legal identity of individuals who cross borders, given that borders are artificial. To cross those borders, policies would have to be elaborated to attain an open-door hospitality that does not take individual origins into account. Today, this topic is of extreme importance in understanding the enormous problems of migratory flows and border areas that incite so much violence. Revealing these problems obligates countries to establish binational migratory policies that function at the federal, rather than the local level. It eliminates abuse by police who have the authority to detain anyone in the street who appears to be a migrant and to demand that person’s documents or to sanction companies that hire undocumented immigrants, backed by anti-immigrant laws. All of these actions contradict the unconditional law of hospitality referred to by Derrida, since detentions and deportations are carried out in the name of national security. This occurs in Mexico with Central Americans, as it occurs in the United States with Mexicans and migrants who filter through Mexico. Rights are violated, and the dignity of undocumented individuals is violated.

States assume the right to control, supervise, prohibit, or carry out exchanges that actors consider private but that the state can intercept; in this manner, all elements of hospitality are altered ([30], p. 53–55). Communities that receive migrants must consider hospitality as an experience, as well as a moral and social obligation. Hospitality must be a cultural form traversed by an ethos, because “ethics is hospitality; ethics is thoroughly coextensive with the experience of hospitality” ([30], p. 24–25).

Hospitality goes hand in hand with restitution, openness to compromise, communication, and recognition: categories that demand reciprocation, listening to others, and being open to others and their needs in an attempt to neutralize inequalities. Such actions promote a logic of reciprocity, which strengthens personal ties and structures societal processes in a more communal manner, with greater cooperation and agreement. Social recognition seeks reciprocation, which serves as a linking element but can cause violent situations if unheeded.

Peace is a dynamic entity that is based on considering individuals from a positive perspective, with possibilities for obtaining agreement and cooperation. The reduction of all types of violence is necessary yet insufficient, since it requires peaceful actions for the creative transformation of conflict. Positive and negative peace ([7], p. 31) in joint form imply noninterference with basic needs on one hand, and on the other hand, the presence of freedom. It is necessary to point out that in this text, peace is not considered as abstract, ethereal, and perfect, but as grounded and therefore imperfect (Francisco [40, 41]): peace in the plural. Therefore, the action that implies making peace is always a process, an explanation of the role that we are required to play. It is the only way to denaturalize and prevent a perpetuation of the violence that has become established as common currency in our societies—violence that disrupts intersubjective solidarity, compassion, hospitality, and as a result, justice.

Peace is expressed as equity instead of inequality, dialog instead of domination, integration instead of segmentation, solidarity instead of selfish individualism, and participation instead of exclusion. Peace implies the realization of justice that accompanies equality and dignity as social principles. Placing peace in social and mental structures implies defending that “if we want peace, we must make peace,” si vis pacem para pacem. In other words, the idea of emulating peace replaces the old adage that has justified war and violence by insisting that a desire for peace requires preparation for war: si vis pacem para bellum. If peace is the goal, it must be conceived as an end that is present in the means, in the processes of human action that are used to attain it. And if attaining peace is not absolute because it is in process, forms of peace appear along the way to confirm that the objective has not yet been reached although progressive steps are underway.

The structural traits of peace are part of the process and are conditions of worthy interaction for social groups. Their high desirability and moral force imply their usefulness as a moral ideal, a demand that is made in a collective manner with and by others in a framework of common sense ([42], p. 153), with community-based actions ([43], p. 47). The result is joint moral responsibility in our societies. Protection of equality and justice is generated, since viewing peace as a moral ideal consolidates public spaces that satisfy fundamental needs, which must be met in a fair manner.

4. Structurality of peace through imagination and nonconformity with experience: the impulse of hope

Thinking about peace as possible and rooted in social structures is significantly hopeful, because it opens broad horizons of meaning for personal development, autonomy, self-respect, and progress in the frameworks of justice. The current section focuses on those topics, with an emphasis on imagination to facilitate hope. That which is worthy and desirable is to be accepted, and that which is not, should be rejected. If we want to influence decisions that promote fair and equal societies, based on peaceful proposals versus structural and cultural violence, we must defend a conception of structural peace. Such peace cannot accept justification or tolerance of decisions impregnated with violence in our private and public spaces. If we continue to experience violence as the sole horizon in our society, we shall be unable to affirm the fullness of our human condition. Viewing and imagining the future does not imply ignoring our reality; on the contrary, we must face reality, look it in the eye, and strive constantly to expand the scope of possibility for world peace. The underlying motivation for peace is linked to the imaginative possibilities for constructing reality and projecting viable alternatives. Reason can vacillate due to a lack of imagination and cause the cancelation of any project ([44], p. 29), yet we must be “as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves” ([6], p. 170) to be able to distinguish the universal ethic of peace. Rashness causes ruptures and violations; it generates violent conflicts impossible to resolve. Imagination helps us to see the hidden possibilities of social situations and enables us to modify structures of violence and support peaceful categories. Many of these possibilities serve to modify situations of violence, especially in the presence of mediators: the reason why educational processes are so important in peace and mediation, as demonstrated by Johan Galtung [45]. Modifying structures of violence will allow us to transform the naturalized conceptions of our vital reality that block change in our perceptions and actions. Resisting change provokes an immobilizing paralysis of imaginative possibility and prevents the creation of diverse, kind, and inclusive scenarios. We must decipher the possibilities of constructing a peaceful world in order to build a society that is healthier, fairer, and less unequal, in order to normalize the structure of peace.

Hope is linked to imagination, since imagination is a resource that seeks to arrange worldly things as people hope for improvement. Being imaginative implies a fertile imagination that finds solutions. Creative imagination pushes us to distance ourselves from an unjust and violent world and proposes possibilities for better realities. Refusing to accept situations of human degradation—due to inequality, violence, exclusion, and indignity, as well as other human aggressions—offers us possibilities for other situations. Injury and evil can be relieved through imagination, which clears the way for improvement. In the face of damage, the “no” that some thinkers have considered to be the motor and basis of freedom uses indignation as a limit and as an act of rebellion.

Imagination is reforming and revolutionary since it liberates us from the real, due to indignity and degradation, and takes us to what is possible and will dignify human life. Through imagination, we can put ourselves in others’ shoes since it is freedom itself, the potential of starting from the “here and now,” that is expressed as resistance. And it is active resistance that implies the moral courage described by Socrates, so necessary to replace violent reality with another reality that is better and possible.

The same question about how to overcome cycles of violence is asked by John P. Lederach [46]. Cycles of violence underlie our human community, leading to the destruction of presumptions and entrenched structures of violence in societies. A response is required to take charge of these situations and establish peace as a structural element. Creative, real possibilities emanate from the imagination, which suggests the ability to imagine other, more humanizing alternatives that are based on memory and experience. The preservation of memories and the generation of possibilities locate the “strands of living peace” [1]. Referring to these strands leads us to think about the weaving of common elements that can mend social fabrics torn by violence. These attitudes represent new support and shelter for those who have suffered and continue to suffer from violence while seeking peace, which Galtung described as the attitudes that determine proposals for establishing situations and structures of peace [47, 48]. These structures are the yarns used to knit a reconstructive pattern that is conformed and expressed through storytelling. They are insubordinate actions considered necessary by those who perform them [49]. They are strands of living peace, because they serve as bridges for establishing the structures of peace in a silent process that restitutes and repairs the social fabric. They are the element that changes all structure and support, located in living peace. The bridges of life or fabrics of peace constitute the interstices of action and become visible through the desire to replicate them ([15], p. 262). Remembering has a dynamic of memory when it is based on justice, and in this way, memory is transformed into a future project. Transforming and reconciling memories ([50], p. 119) enable a reversion of impunity, with the past we hold and the future our imagination projects. In a certain way, it is about going beyond what exists ([51], p. 209), through action that reactivates and results in a better world, creating possibilities to help others. Hope is a valid alternative and a key factor that contains desires for the future, unknown yet suspected. It is an ethical imperative that is inserted into an ethos of hope. Such presumptions lead to considerations that structural transformation is possible for establishing peace at the center, in place of prevailing structures of violence. Transformation is carried out through collegiate actions aimed at structures of peace, and the desire for peace is realized through active resistance that generates fundamental changes in social frameworks—frameworks that seek through peace to guarantee justice, freedom, and harmony. Even in the darkest scenarios, as those of prisoners or migrants, a glimmer of hope remains. Elise Boulding expressed this idea in a workshop: “How could prisoners imagine a more caring world, let alone see themselves as agents to bring those changes about?” ([52], p. 3).

Hope is one way of disrupting cycles of violence. It is the possibility of devising multiple forms of future actions in a transformation from the possible to the real ([53], p. 13). We must therefore create infinite possibilities that embody potential, although difficulties will remain as “emerging possibilities are in conflict with the dominant paradigm” ([53], p. 26). Awareness will intervene in the selection of possibilities. We can consider infinite possibilities in constructing peace, even knowing, as stated by Garry Leech, that the prevailing economic dogma does not facilitate that construction Garry Leech.

Nonetheless, I believe that keeping hope alive is vital since desperation is a form of silencing, of rejecting the world, and of fleeing from it. Dehumanization that results from the “unjust order” cannot be the reason for losing hope; on the contrary, it must motivate greater hope ([54], p. 111).

5. Conclusions

Throughout this paper, an investigation of the existing realities for the implementation of peace was made, and it was intended to rescue the analytical relevance of theoretical studies on this subject as well as the ability to access in reality to situations of peace. This theoretical-practical process implies the establishment of a dignified community order, and for this purpose the text reflected on fundamental issues for its realization in society. Some relevant theoretical proposals were analyzed that help to modify and cancel the various forms of violence as long as the densaturalization of the structures of violence is achieved. This will make it possible to build a healthier, more just and less unequal society and to normalize the structures of peace. This will be the way to obtain the peaceful coexistence with collective mechanisms that transform the schemes of inequality and injustice. We can say then that the identification of the structural features of peace—as a process and as a condition of dignified coexistence of a social group—erect the goal par excellence to be pursued through action by means of processes that modify social and political structures from the grassroots. This can be achieved through humanizing imagination and awareness that opens up possibilities and possible futures in terms of peace building. By modifying the actions of institutions with the defense and realization of theoretical and practical resources such as hospitality, solidarity, compassion, and care, hope is instilled in the spirit of modifying reality. Hence, the relevance of dialog and listening supported by institutions to overcome injustice and violence through the options mentioned above, so that with them the presence of peaceful situations in social structures is promoted. It will be these values and actions that will prevail throughout the Mexican and global socio-political space; they are fundamental to eradicate the naturalization of violence in order to establish the naturalization of peace. Evidently, this will be a long, complex, and very difficult process in which all actors in society will have to participate. With all this, the epochal darkness that we have had to live through will be able to gradually ease in a constructive and harmonious way for human fulfillment, in possible and potential frameworks of peace.