PREPARATION IS PEACE: ROLE OF THE 21ST CENTURY FATHER IN PROMOTING GLOBAL PEACE AMIDST EMERGING/RE-EMERGING INFECTIONS LIKE COVID-19

PREPARATION IS PEACE

ROLE OF THE 21st CENTURY FATHER IN PROMOTING GLOBAL PEACE AMIDST EMERGING/RE-EMERGING INFECTIONS LIKE COVID-19; A REVIEW

Peace: “Means dignity, well-being for all, not just absence of war” (UN, 2014). Though nothing can work successfully without PEACE, the UN has warned that: “The world is entering a new period of global instability” where violence are likely to further increase (Muggah, 2016). The PEACE of our Modern Democratic World, through my research, is threatened by five multifaced or interconnected problems: Politic (Curtis et al., 2020), Religion (Oostindie, 2018), Racism/Tribalism (Browning et al., 2017), Health/Diseases (Blackwood & Guerrant, 1999), and Gender; with MONEY as the RULER. It is an open and an undebatable secrete that, in all these areas, one gender that always play a crucial role is the “Man” (McDonald et al., 2012). 

Fig. 1.: The Father is a Symbol of Responsibility and Peace.

Though masculinity has always been falsely perceived as the cause of most violence on earth as seen in current research findings by (Gamlin & Hawkes, 2017; Borras-Guevara et al., 2019), there can never be global peace without the man. To leave man out in the promotion of global peace is like a warrior going to fight without a weapon! Irrespective of the negative perceptions that dominates masculinity (Helman & Ratele, 2018), men are playing important roles, not only in our various homes; but in politics, religion, and scientific research. It is the duty of the father, as the family head (Genesis, 2:18, 21-22, KJV; Dhami & Sheikh, 2000), to ensure that, no matter the situation in life (like the COVID-19 Pandemic), his family remains Happy and Peaceful (Fig 1).

Money as the Ruler:  Comments like money breeds evil make it looks as if having money is bad, but money is good (Tripp, 2018). How we make or use money; think, behave or treat others or even God because of money is what makes it look as if: “… Money Is the Root of All Evil” (Anderson, 1996; Beus, 2015). Money itself is not our problem: the way we behave or treat others because of money is the problem! Money has divided the world into two with serious “discrimination” amongst people (Durante, 2017); like seen in the COVID-19 pandemic (Singh & Subedi 2020). Corruption is a global problem (Witvliet, 2019; García, 2019) because everyone wants to make money by all means – good or bad, in order to the avoid the discrimination mostly meted against the poor (Kwarteng, 2018).

This has resulted in most people selling their consciences to politicians during voting (Pradhanawati et al., 2018; Heath & Tillin, 2018). The most unfortunate thing is that, because of money, our places of worships that are supposed to be the homes for everyone are also gradually turning into grounds for discrimination (Hope et al., 2017). Organized crimes (Reynolds & McKee, 2010) like Armed robbery (Basu et al., 2008), hire-for-murder/ritual murder (Tarlow & Lowman, 2018; Loeber & Ahonen, 2013; Cameron, 2014), money laundering (Oguntunde et al., 2018; Deleanu, 2017), kidnapping (Oguntunde et al., 2018), and so on are mostly committed by men because of money.

God’s Created Man as Family Head: According to both Holy Books, God has divinely ordained man as the head of the family (Genesis, 2:18, 21-22, KJV; Dhami & Sheikh, 2000) and man’s responsibility started right from creation. Though feminist activists must acknowledge this fact and stop empowering women over men as seen in (Corry et al., 2002; Huntley et al., 2019; Gautam & Jeong, 2019), both genders need mutual respect and dignity. This divine ordination, does not means that women are “inferior” to men, as perceived by some people! The UN and feminist activists over emphasis on women empowerment (de Coning, 2018) at the expense of men is already giving us serious problems of increased domestic violence and breakups!

Dirty Politics Creates Negative Perceptions about Masculinity: Politics is identified as one of the reasons why there is an increasing “Global instability” (Muggah, 2016), as wars have “tripled since 2010” (de Coning, 2018). Most politicians always count on the masculinity of most men to do dirty politics and cause political violence (Bjarnegård et al., 2019; Sousa, 2013; Majumdar, 2020), this creates negative perceptions about masculinity; making it looks like men are inherently violent. Most men as peaceful as most women! Masculinity is found not only to be associated with political violence but religious violence as well (Banerjee, 1999). Majority of politicians are men, if politics is falsely painted as a “dirty game” (Degirmenci, 2016), we must be blamed as the political heads of our families. Political difference does not create enmity! Enmity is created by our dirty political mentalities of using character assassination (Jay, 2019; Goreis & Voracek, 2019), politics of insults (Asamoah et al., 2013) and lies (Celse & Chang, 2019) against our opponents.

Religious Tolerance and Violence: Most religions globally are headed by men, and men are the ones mostly involved in most religious violence caused by religious fundamentalist/extremist groups (Wibisono et al., 2019). Messages of peace from our Holy Books are mostly given by these religious leaders, who are mostly men. This is a positive side of masculinity that all men need to adopt to help promote global peace. We cannot be the same people preaching peace and causing violence! Just as every member of your family needs peace, and as the family head you ensure that there is peace, so does everyone need peace.

Religious tolerance must start from our various homes or families! But unfortunately, fathers are the ones mostly disowning their children because they have joined different religion (Ziafat, 2019). Even in the same religion, people are divided based on wealth, race/tribe, politics (Wibisono et al., 2019) and so on; which are against the teachings of the major Holy Books. As Christ is not divided (George, 2006) and is not borne for only Christians: so is Mohammed not divided nor is borne for only Muslims. We can be uniquely united with our differences in faiths; if we practice the greatest commandment, Love (Matthew, 22: 34-40, KJV).

Gandhi said on Religious Conversion: “All the great religions are fundamentally equal. We must have innate respect for other religions as we have for our own” (Singh & Singh, 2004). “A person wanting to convert should try to be a good follower of his own faith rather than seek goodness in change of faith” (Singh, 2004). Gandhi believes that: “All religions were more or less true, but had errors because they came to us through imperfect human instrumentality” (Singh, 2004). One religion must not be made to be seen as being superior to other religions (Singh, 2004). Religious intolerance has resulted in “Islamophobia” (Bedi, 2018; Poynting & Briskman, 2018) and other religious extremist groups such as Jihadists (Valentini et al., 2020; Bӧckler et al., 2018), Boko Haram (Amao, 2020; Basedau et al., 2014), ISIS (Chuang et al., 2019; Valentini et al., 2020), al-Qaeda (Chuang et al., 2019) and so on which are all increasing threats to world’s Peace.

Health or Diseases: Men have mostly been supporting women in the area of “Science, Medicine, and Global Health” (Ratele et al., 2019). Research findings have proven that these, especially science, are very important in promoting peace (Kelly, 2019; Shea, 2018). It is also revealed that the absence of the father, negatively affect the health of children (McLanahan et al., 2014) especially in the case of broken home (Mok et al., 2018; Amato et al., 2016). Unfortunately, most men do not pay attention to their own health, as they normally see violation of health behaviors as a prove of masculinity; unlike their female counterparts (Emslie & Hunt, 2008; Courtenay, 2000). This prove of masculinity could be seen from the way most men were seen without face masks at the NPP Primaries on 20^th June, 2020), violating social distancing at most polling stations.

This perceived masculinity of most men is reflected by the increased COVID-19 cases and deaths in males than in females in China and other parts of the world (Jin. et al., 2020; Wenham et al., 2020). Men are dying, 2.4 times the deaths of women, from COVID-19 (Jin. et al., 2020; Lancet, 2020) and masculinity of men is identified as a contributory factor. As men are mostly the financial providers or “Breadwinners” providing for the health needs of the families (Parker & Stepler, 2017; Jeon et al., 2019; Eagly & Wood, 2012), especially during this pandemic, failure to ignore some masculinity behaviors may be obstacle to the prevention measures against COVID-19.  

Gender Equality and Domestic Violence: Though men are mostly accused for inflicting violence on women (Dako-Gyeke et al., 2019), our 21^st century men are championing gender equality (Shannon et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2019) to help promote global peace. Men are most likely to engage in behaviors or peaceful dialogue aimed at cementing “intragroup cooperation” (Benenson & Wrangham, 2016) after conflict than women. Though there is misconception of masculinity as mostly associated with aggression (Helman & Ratele, 2018), research findings revealed that in violence: “The likelihood for an experience of appetitive aggression increases, irrespective of one’s gender” (Meyer-Parlapanis et al., 2015).

Even when men are mostly not ready to report incidences of violence against them by women (Douglas & Hines, 2012), it is revealed that men and women inflict the same level of “physical and psychological aggression” (Swan et al., 2008). The same trend is seen in our elderly people in a project that uses 4179 men and 6005 women with respective abuses as 8.8% and 10.6% (Jeon, 2019). It is painfully exposed that for elderly men and women with the same level of education, the men suffer more abuse than the women (Jeon et al., 2019). Just as men are reluctant to report cases of violence against them, they rarely ask for help like women; yet the few who seeked help for violence against them by their partners were ignored (Cook, 2009; Hines et al., 2007; Douglas & Hines, 2012).

Interestingly, men who report cases of violence against them are ridiculed (Douglas & Hines, 2011; Dickerson-Amaya & Coston, 2019) or victimized (Douglas & Hines, 2011; Brooks et al., 2017). These discriminations confirmed by the way Fathers’ Day is unpopular, have resulted in most women becoming increasing violent (Malik & Nadda, 2019; Young, 2018) with more breakups (Perelli-Harris et al., 2017)! Broken home (Mok et al., 2018; Gravningen et al., 2017; Kansky & Allen, 2018; Leopold, 2018) has increased (Nawa, 2019) in our modern democracy than in the olden days; due to increasing domestic violence (Nawa, 2019).

The framing of intimate partner violence (IPV) as a problem of only females (Arndt, 1982; Walker & Browne, 1985) also exposes this cancer of gender discrimination. So, unlike in the olden days where women were generally submissive to any man who is not even their husband, nowadays some females even kill their husbands (Huecker & Smock, 2020). In western nations, “women are openly allowed to be aggressive towards men” (Hassan & Alshara, 2015), as they openly slap them, like seen in movies or televisions ‘TVs’ (Lindy, 2019; Meyers, 2012; Corry et al., 2002).

This encourages domestic violence but not women empowerment! Goal 16 of the United Nation Sustainable Development goals (UN SDGs) is aimed at “Promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies” (Muggah, 2016; de Coning, 2018). This is not possible if “Gender-based violence” is perceived as violence committed against women (True, 2010; Forbes-Mewett & McCulloch, 2016); that should be “Feminine-based or woman-based violence”! This is a serious pandemic, creating problems in marriages that lead to broken homes.

In conclusion, crying over the bad that has happened to you makes the bad badly. If you stop but think carefully you will realize that the bad is not always bad: there can be something GOOD hidden in the bad! There is no denying the fact that COVID-19 is bad, but it has revealed so many secretes and confirm certain open secretes about life that we always try to ignore. Gender-based violence or health behaviors is one of these.

Recommendations

1.      Man, as a family head is a symbol of Peace. To get your respect as a family head, you must first act in ways that naturally command that respect; by being responsible, promoting family peace, loving and respecting your partner, children or others as yourself.

2.      All believers must flee dirty politics because it is deadly! Any Christian or Muslim who is involved in dirty politics is committing a mortal sin, and must STOP.

3.      We must always put our nation first before any other interest, in any decision making.

4.      Men must avoid all forms of negative masculinities that fight against global peace and health.

5.      Money is good, but we must be careful of how we treat others because of it. Most of the problems in marriages is because most people marry money/wealth, not the human being.

6.      Let us avoid too much emphasis on money at the expense of good moral behaviors.  

7.      Gender equality must not be empowerment of one gender over the other!

8.      No gender should be made to look superior/inferior than the other. But as we promote gender equality, the ordination of man as the family head must always be respected.

9.      All genders must be treated with equal respect or dignity and with equal opportunities.

10.  There must be a balance of gender in dealing with issues of domestic or intimate partner violence without any discrimination as meted against men.

11.  Ignoring men on issues of domestic violence is tantamount to promoting it rather, because domestic or intimate partner violence does not respect any gender. It must be stopped.

12.  If we are really serious in promoting religious tolerance, it must start from our families.

13.  Men must learn to love their wives, tolerate and respect them. Anyone who does love his/her partner, does not love himself or herself.

14. The vulnerability of women is a very strong weapon that they must protect. This vulnerability is the reason why though there were no laws to protect them, they were generally protected by their environment. Gender equality does not mean that no more submission or reciprocate respect to your partner.

Some References

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Arndt, N. Y. (1982). Domestic violence: an investigation of psychological aspects of the battered woman; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association. Psychol, Clin, Retrieved on 21.06.2020 at 4:19PM from https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?journal=Domestic+violence+an+investigation+of+the+psychological+aspects+of+the+battered+woman&author=NY+Arndt&publication_year=1982& .

Asamoah, K., Yeboah-Assiamah, E., & Osei-Kojo, A. (2013). Demons of Traditional Democracies: Politics of Insults and Acrimony in Ghana. Univ Gha Digital Collections, Retrieved from ugspace.ug.edu.gh/handle/123456789/656789/6567 on 04.07.2020 at 7:15PM.

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Bedi, A. (2018). Islamophobia: A Jungian Analytical Perspective. In: Moffic, H., Peteet, J., Hankir, A., & Awaad, R. (eds). Wisconsin, Chicago, & Arlington, USA: Springer, Cham. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-00512-2_13.

Benenson, J. Y. & Wrangham, R., W. (2016). Cross-Cultural Sex Differences in Post-Conflict Affiliation Following Sports Matches. Curr Biol, 26(16): 2208-2212. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.024.

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A Fathers' Day Celebration Message Written on 17th June, 2020
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