The Way to World Peace
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
The bold social science treatise The Way to World Peace considers at length the challenging work of instituting peace.
Blending historical data, moral reasoning, and theoretical inquiries, Kenneth Paul Callison’s passionate social science treatise The Way to World Peace suggests a potential path toward bettering society.
Examining violence as a learned condition that shaped human history and that represents continuing threats, the book sifts through topics including deterrence methods, militarization, and the structural forces that keep societies locked in cycles of fear. Insisting that peace is a choice that must be made with intention, it also turns to metaphysical ideas about human consciousness, unity, and failures to connect with others. Throughout, it works to identify the roots of human conflicts and outline deliberate steps toward effecting peace.
Each chapter is brief and thematic; all are arranged to support the book’s overarching argument. Early sections outline risk factors like nuclear proliferation and environmental decline. The book then moves toward reflections on consciousness, universal law, and human psychological patterns to support the notion that peace cannot be achieved via a single act but must involve a layered, conscious shift. Its case is made via repetition, escalation, and conceptual reinforcements.
The solutions the book suggests are variously practical and philosophical. Some of its proposals are bold, as with early therapeutic intervention for violent behavior and the creation of isolated environments for those who refuse to reform. Still, all of its arguments are direct and unflinching. Elsewhere, less tangible suggestions are made, as within the book’s discussions of vibration, polarity, and the fifth dimension, which reach for a spiritual framework reflective of a larger belief in unity. At their most specific, the suggestions prove actionable; when the book trends more metaphysical, however, some practicality is lost.
The prose is plain but forceful. It relies on declarative statements that press a consistent moral claim. Statistical references and historical facts appear at measured intervals. However, the clearest expression of the book’s position comes not in its own words, but through Walter Cronkite, whose quote closes an early chapter:
War itself is, of course, a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilized pursuit. It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace.
Still, the book progresses with consistent conviction through its broad inquiries into potential social improvements. While it is ambitious in seeking to diagnose a species-level crisis, its tools for change, which range from moral to structural, are often compelling. And while it sometimes treads too far into speculative territory, its identification of historical patterns is astute.
Considering at length the challenging work of instituting peace, the bold social science treatise The Way to World Peace examines human patterns of conflict with care.
Reviewed by
John M. Murray
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
