APSN director Alice König was recently invited to contribute a blog to Scotland’s Futures Forum, the Scottish Parliament’s futures think-tank. Futures thinking is an important aspect of the APSN’s work, as we seek to bring ancient and modern peace studies into dialogue and to bridge the gap between scholarship and society. You can read the blog here and below.
It discusses the world-building nature of storytelling. At present, war stories vastly outnumber peace stories in the media we consume. This has consequences for our ‘peace literacy’, which in turn impacts our ability to build and maintain peace. The blog argues that greater investment in peace education is essential for Scotland’s future; and it urges politicians to foreground peace more regularly in their political discourse and policy-making. We cannot build a world we have not visualised. The more peace stories we tell, the better equipped we will all be to work towards more peaceful futures.