Service by people as volunteers in each others’ countries – a kind of mutual peace corps – would be a vehicle for both crosscutting relations and the learning of benevolence. If people in one country do not have technical skills to impart to another, they can make other contributions. They can teach about their own culture: their art, their values, their perspective on reality.
Cooperation should progress from small projects to highly significant ones, such as the development of new energy sources, AIDS research, and the exploration of space. All such projects represent potentially significant superordinate goals. An overarching superordinate goal would be an international economic and political order in which all countries have significant stake. Third world countries need aid in development from industrial countries, to create connection and diminish the chance of international conflict. Superordinate goals have already been thrust upon nations: dealing with the nuclear threat and environmental destruction.
The processes and practices that I have described can build trust and the valuing of connection, produce a redefinition of national interest in minimalist terms, and lead members of the international community to regard it as an obligation to be active bystanders. Comparable practices can focus on creating caring and connection among subgroups of societies.
Some progress toward international institutions has been made in recent years, although not along the lines discussed above. A large and increasing number of binational and multinational treaties have been concluded. Multinational corporations, although they tend to be exploitive in their present form (of the resources and populations of countries where they operate), have the potential to function as collaborative enterprises that embody superordinate goals and establish crosscutting relations among citizens of different countries.
Positive socialization: parenting, the family, and schools
All along I have discussed the importance of how we raise children. Certain experiences children have in their interaction with others shape their dispositions for antagonism or for caring and connection. They contribute to their prosocial orientation, empathy, positive self-esteem, and a sense of security, which are the sources of both benevolence and the capacity to act in one’s own behalf. The positive socialization practices that contribute to the development of these characteristics include affection; responsiveness to the child’s needs; and reasoning with the child, explaining rules both for the home and for the outside world and the impact of the child’s actions or inaction on others.15 Parents also need to focus responsibility on the child for others’ welfare: their siblings, pets, and, when appropriate, people outside the family. Parents must exercise reasonable control and make sure that the child adheres to moral and social standards they regard as essential. They need to use “natural socialization,” guiding the child to participate in worthwhile activities, including helping. Substantial learning and change result from participation rather than from direct tuition or reward and punishment.16 Finally, parents themselves must show concern for others.
Children so raised will be both caring and “enabled,” capable of using the opportunities society offers for education and achievement. If parents allow the child increasing autonomy, if families are reasonably democratic, and if they allow the expression (and thus the experience) of the full range of human emotions, children are also likely to gain the self-awareness, emotional independence, and security required for independent judgment and critical loyalty.
At least minimally supportive social conditions are also required, that is, reasonably secure and ordered life circumstances. The benevolence and care that are necessary for positive socialization may be impossible for parents who cannot fulfill their basic needs for food, shelter, stability, and psychological support. Minimal social justice is therefore necessary.
Families are systems, with varying rules. Some families do not allow the expression of sadness or pain, feelings that are inevitable. Others do not even allow joy to be expressed. The practice of diagnosing family systems would help families see themselves and the systems they have created. Being made aware of research showing that children respond well to positive parenting from birth on could change assumptions that contribute to physical punishment and other destructive practices.17 Education about children and child-rearing techniques, possibly starting before birth, can provide parents with feelings of expertise and control and increase their affection and benevolence toward their children.18 Social scientists and interested citizens can provide an important service by systematically disseminating such information, which now reaches the public in a haphazard manner.
The schools can also make an important contribution. Beyond teaching skills and substantive knowledge, schools inevitably shape children’s personalities. Teachers, like parents, should employ positive discipline practices. The schools should not be authoritarian systems, but democratic ones in which children learn the capacity for responsible decision making. It is important to introduce cooperative learning procedures in which children work together, teach each other, and coordinate their activities. Such programs improve academic performance and self-esteem in minority children and increase prosocial behavior toward peers and the capacity to cooperate in all children.19 The schools can guide children to participate in prosocial behavior outside the school and provide them with opportunities to assume responsibility and be helpful to others within the school. By guiding children to concern themselves with the world around them and contribute to the social good, the schools (and parents) can help children become socially responsible citizens.
By their rules, schools help determine whether children interact with each other aggressively or cooperatively, and thereby the behavioral skills and tendencies they develop. This is highly important, because the child’s socialization becomes self-socialization: the child’s behavior shapes others’ behavior toward the child, and the child’s responses to others create the cycle of interaction that further shapes the child’s personality, motives, and world view.20
Schools can teach about diversity and commonality. George Orwell, in Homage to Catalonia, described his profound change in attitude toward the enemy when during the Spanish Civil War he saw from his trench an enemy soldier pull down his pants and relieve himself. Schools (and universities) can teach their students about differences in customs, ways of life, and values
