The identity of a peace-monger

Yesterday was a big day at my campus. The good professor and Nobel laureate Dr. Sen was here to give his opinions on how identities contribute to violence and how we can turn them around to enrich our lives. It was very reassuring to hear age-old wisdom and Cambridge-style civilised humor. It's the stuff we can only watch on PBS these days. He seemed to truly believe (as in his recent book Identity and Violence: The illusion of destiny) that understanding how to live with multiple identities rather than a singular bull-headed recognition of ourselves as belonging to any one faction (religious, cultural or otherwise) and learning how to make a context-based choice of what identity gains superiority over others was the way to cleverly avoid violence.

Seems tangible enough but a tad idealistic. As they say "There are no atheists in fox-holes", I very much doubt there are any intellectuals either. (Mostly these are the same people). The call for the day seems to be to actively incorporate the learning, somehow somewhere, that it is not enough just to make a choice but to make that choice that will lead to least conflict within and amongst ourselves.

Perhaps what we need is peace schools...