John Paul Lederach on stories and moral imagination

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John Paul Lederach is a practitioner and educator for peace. 

His book The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace positively glitters. 

He writes that to overcome violence (and that includes everything from war-like violence to the most benign and subtle domestic or social violence) four capacities are necessary.

He calls them collectively the 'moral imagination' and they are :

1.  the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies

2.  the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic polarity

3.  the fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act

4.  the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence.

Stories provide such a strong platform for all four capacities. Whether written or verbal, fact or ‘fiction’, big picture or micro-family-history, they're a tremendously effective way to develop each and every capacity.

If this is one of your areas of interest, you might also like to check out our Conversation Starters: talking to children about war and talking to children about race. 

You can buy The Moral Imagination via these direct links: Amazon - Book Depository