This is the fifith in a series of episodes on How To Live in 2025, focusing on the thoughts, feelings, and actions we need to thrive, develop,  create, and resist.In other words, tools that don’t merely deaden us in the frantic pursuit of survival, but that assist us in nourishing ourselves, each other, and the world, all together.

The theme isPEACEKEEP
and my guest isCHEYNEY RYAN.

Cheyney works withThe Oxford Consortium for Human Rights. He's a a researcher; professor; founder of the Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict at Oxford; and author, most recently, of the excellent book,Pacifism as War Abolitionism and also ofThe Chickenhawk Syndrome: War, Sacrifice, and Personal Responsibility, as well as many articles on peace activism, pacifism, Marxism, and nonviolent action (you can find links to plenty of the here).

PEACEKEEP was a word I had to invent for the show because we have such an undeveloped language of peace. While the lexicon of war is extensive, the act of creating true peace in the world doesn’t exist in an active word. 

That is in part because thewar system - as Cheyney calls the autonomous, seemingly inexorable network of war activities, sites, motivations, and contracts - has instead on the articulation of its own anatomy. It's entranced us into detailing its every contour so that we become more and more convinced of its reality and density.