Â鶹Éç

Good Morning,

Every year a group of lexographers decides which new words to add to the dictionary. They have to consider a couple of things: is the word in widespread use? Does it have staying power or is it a passing fad? Recent words include hangry, newsjacking and Kompromat (you can look them up). If words reflect the preoccupations and values of a culture I wonder what these words say about ours.

This year a group of people involved in peacebuilding have proposed that the word peacebuilding be given a dictionary definition. It seems reasonable, they argue, that the activities of the many people around the world who are committed to the prevention of conflict and the promotion of a lasting peace be included in the lexicon alongside warmongers, firebrands and rabble-rousers. As far back as 1992 the UN defined peacebuilding, alongside peacekeeping and peacemaking (both already in the dictionary), as a distinct and essential means to helping war-torn societies transition from violence to peace.

Peacebuilding is – by nature – an unheralded and hidden activity. And in an age of look-at-me showoffery (not a word yet), it isn’t as exciting as warmongering or as sexy as cyberhacking. It connotes something difficult. Something that requires stamina and patience. It is also fragile. It is far easier to knock down than build up – to monger or trade in violence than in peace. A city raised over millennia can be razed in a day. If it takes years to nurture a life, it takes seconds to end one.

Most of us can recall the atrocities of our age and name the perpetrators and their terrible deeds, but we might struggle to name what the prophet Isaiah called repairers of the breach or fixers of broken walls. I can name some famous peacebuilders but my list of destructive aggressors and the weapons they used far outguns them.

One famous peacebuilder – Martin Luther King – once said that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.’ And some thinkers such as Stephen Pinker endorse that hopeful trajectory with statistics that suggest a less violent mankind is evolving. I want to believe they’re right but we’re going to need a lot of peacebuilders to keep us on track.

We live in a time of great verbal as well as physical violence. And verbal aggression is often a precursor to physical. Words matter. They are symbols and have the power to change things for good or ill. Someone once said ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ And I believe this. But the inheritors of peace are also blessed. We may not all feel it but we are blessed in this country because we have inherited a peace built upon the efforts of others who tried to weave together the torn fabric of society and create something new.

It would be good to live in a country that acknowledged the word for that.

Show less