In the book, Peaceful Revolution the author presents solid facts and ideas for how humans are not naturally violent, and how war goes against the essence of our humanity. By exploring seven muscles of humanity, the author teaches us how exercising these muscles is critical for our humanity’s survival today. He also demonstrates that exercising these muscles not only makes peace possible in our world, but also enhances each of our lives.
Living in peace on this planet is our birthright and something we can each help to create. For some of us, the idea of reclaiming our life in such a way seems like a daunting task given the state of things in our world. Various methods of power and control are put in place where it often seems things are out of our hands when it comes to making change within our own lives, never mind the world. But numerous agents of change are speaking up louder than ever to wake us up and show us that change is possible and we deserve to lead lives based on peace, justice, equality, love and joy.
Peaceful Revolution: How We can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival, written by Paul K. Chappell is a resource that moves us into a new way of thinking – a way of thinking for our times when it comes to the topics of war versus peace.
Through his book, Paul empowers us to reclaim our lives by exercising our “muscles of humanity” that enable us to participate in, and lead a peaceful revolution within our hearts, homes and our world.
About the Author & Book
Peaceful Revolution: How We can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival is written by Paul K. Chappell and published March 2012. It is Paul’s third book in a series of books on understanding war and peace.
Paul served in the army for seven years, was deployed to Baghdad in 2006, and left active duty in November 2009 as a Captain. Alongside his newly released book, he is also the author of Will War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century and The End of War: How Waging Peace Can Save Humanity, Our Planet, and Our Future.
He lives in Santa Barbara, California, where he is serving as the Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and is working on his fourth book, The Art of Waging Peace: A Strategic Approach to Improving Our Lives and the World. He speaks throughout the United States to colleges, high schools, veterans groups, churches, and activist organizations.
To learn more about Paul and his work, visit PaulKChappell.com
Book Content
Peaceful Revolution: How We can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival is a moving and inspiring book to read. The purpose of the book is to provide evidence and reasoning necessary to support the claims that human beings are not naturally violent, war is not an inevitable part of life and war does not protect people or make them safer. The book outlines a path away from war that shows how we can solve our world’s most serious problems, and how far humanity can go to create a planet whose foundation is justice, equality and peace.
To make the above a real and successful part of life, the author explains that truth always prevails, and modern day war practices and attitudes are based on various degrees of lies and deception. He then introduces the seven muscles of humanity and explains the importance of each one, what it entails and how it must be used to bring about peace in our lives, and peace on our planet.
Here is a general breakdown of the main topics covered in each chapter:
Chapter 1: The Muscle of Hope
This chapter introduces the author’s personal journey from childhood through military. It gives a distinction between realistic hope and naive hope, and explains how imagination and participation are necessary for realistic hope. The author also talks about how realistic hope leads to realistic idealism, and what it means to be human.
Chapter 2: The Muscle of Empathy
This chapter focuses on the value of empathy and its role in creating a healthy community, and planet. Other topics discussed include the 3 types of dehumanization needed to justify and create war: psychological, moral and mechanical. As well, it covers the 3 types of dehumanization needed for exploitation: industrial, numerical, and beaurocratic.
Chapter 3: The Muscle of Appreciation
In this chapter, Paul examines the different facets of appreciation, including things like: the role of perspective, the art of savoring something, present moment living, and stewardship as the highest expression of appreciation.
Chapter 4: The Muscle of Conscience
This chapter covers the topic of lies versus half-truths and why the latter are far more dangerous, how to deal with a guilty conscience, how empathy must work properly for conscience to work properly and how justice and fury are expressions of conscience. Also covered are the 3 methods for people to willingly accept oppression, exploitation and enslavement: conditioned inequality, superhumanization and misinformation, and the 4 factors that cause people to commit societal violence: justification, alternatives, consequences and ability.
As long as my conscience was not at peace, I would never be at peace.
Paul K. Chappell, Peaceful Revolution
Chapter 5: The Muscle of Reason
This chapter examines the role of reason within emotion and how fear-based propaganda controls us. The act of questioning is then explored as a higher expression of reason, and building healthy civilizations as the highest expression of reason. The author also investigates our naturally non-violent behavior in light of our obsession with violence through media and other outlets today.
Chapter 6: The Muscle of Discipline
This chapter discusses how the muscle of discipline allows us to exercise choice, give our lives order, control our impulses, make good decisions and how it is essential for human survival. It talks about how discipline leads to self-control and then inner freedom, which is the highest expression of discipline.
Chapter 7: The Muscle of Curiosity
This chapter explores the role of philosophy in our life and how curiosity is our natural state of being, fueling our questions and our solutions. It covers the two aspects of curiosity: adventure and awe—its highest expression.
Humanity is hungry for nutritious ideas that create unity and peace instead of junk food ideologies that promote apathy, division, and conflict.
Paul K. Chappell, Peaceful Revolution
Personal Commentary
When I first learned about this book and quickly scanned the synopsis, I honestly did not think it would be a book I would ever consider reading, as words like “war” and “military” are rather foreign to me these days. Knowing how the power of thought, intention and creation works, instead of giving any energy to things that deal with any kind of violence, I invest my energy and focus instead into things that are heart-centered. Said another way, I prefer to focus on the solutions, rather than the problems. However after reading the synopsis again, thoroughly and consciously this time, I realized that although this book talked about war from the perspective of a military captain, it was very much about peace and focusing on the solution. In fact, it began to intrigue me a lot as to what a military captain had to say about the possibility of world peace, and upon reading the book I was very impressed indeed.
The author did an excellent job in showing evidence to support the fact that human beings are neither naturally violent, or craving violence, nor is war a natural part of life. War, especially war in the 20th and 21st centuries, is nothing more than a cleverly deceptive concept fed to the people of various nations to ignite unreasonable fear into them and have them support something which goes against the essence of humanity. So many facts are presented, and so many ideas are very well explained so that no one reading this book can continue to ignore how and why things are as they are in our societies. We have indeed come to a critical time on our planet where on the one hand things are worse than ever, while on the other hand we have the potential to drastically turn things around being in the midst of a major consciousness awakening.
In the twenty-first century, humanity must end war, protect our environment, and create societies filled with fairness and opportunity if we are going to survive as a global community.
Paul K. Chappell, Peaceful Revolution
What I enjoyed the most about this book is that this is a book for our times. It is extremely timely given the state of things in our world, cultures and societies. We have come to a crossroads where it is pretty evident and clear that if we continue down the path we are on—as in continuing in war and new ways of destroying each other as well as the environment and all of its species, it will only lead to the destruction of the human race.
Paul’s information is highly practical and calls us to action. But not just any action. While many people think that in order to change governments or the world we need to do external things, such as create protests, Paul’s message is clear in that the solution is inside of us. To change the world, we need to change ourselves. To reclaim our future, we need to reclaim our lives. And to do this successfully, we need to exercise our muscles of humanity, which many of us have allowed to atrophy through ignorance, inaction and lack of awareness. The author examined each of the muscles of our humanity to show their various degrees of application, how we can get them back, how to make them strong and how to use them most effectively.
Overall the book is written in a very pleasant to read and easy to follow format. It is a mix of Paul’s personal life stories and experiences, along with excerpts and references from a variety of famous people whose work was highly influential in the peace movements. These include various teachers, philosophers, authors and activists. Throughout every chapter, I found Paul’s writing to be very empowering, motivating and practical, as well as moving and heart-warming.
Ultimately, although there is lots of reference to the military in direct or indirect ways, I did not find this to be unpleasant. It is what it is, and learning about the military from Paul’s perspective expanded my consciousness of this organization even more. Not to mention, it made me appreciate peace, truth, honesty and integrity that much more.
The peaceful revolution will create a paradigm shift that changes how we see war, peace, our responsibility to the planet, our kinship with each other, and what it means to be human.
Paul K. Chappell, Peaceful Revolution
Conclusion
In conclusion, Peaceful Revolution is a fantastic and timely read to bring awareness to each of our lives about how realistic peace is for us internally and for our world externally. It helps to wake us up by dispelling myths and bursting illusions which many of us hold as foundational beliefs for our thoughts, words and actions when it comes to the purpose of war.
As we awaken today, and step into lives that are lived from the heart space, we come to realize not only that we are one on this planet, but that we are here on this Earth to unite in peace, not destroy each other through war. It is time to step out of fear based living, and adopt love based living. It is time to wake up and understand that our biggest enemy is not some weapon, person, or country, but our own minds and what we allow them to think, speak and do.
Peaceful Revolution is now available in major bookstores and online stores. You can get more information on the book, read reviews or purchase your own copy from Amazon.com (link below).