Each person can contribute in countless ways to creating a culture of peace and reducing violence. Below is a brief list of practical actions that individuals and groups can take toward curtailing the plague of violence and making a safer world. Many books and articles have been or could be written about each of these measures.
Gentle, natural childbirth.
Ending and outlawing genital mutilations of males and females.
Outlawing corporal punishment and beating of children worldwide.
Intervening with education, help, and, if necessary, restraint wherever children are being abused.
Compassionate, nurturing child raising to help children actualize their own potentials.
Unconditionally supporting parents, especially mothers, for the first three to five years of a child’s life.
Carrying infants in contact with the parent’s body, such as in soft snugli carriers, rather than distant and alone, such as in hard plastic buckets (removeable car seats).
Parent-child centers everywhere to teach how to raise children nonviolently.
Education based on children’s cognitive and emotional needs and developmental levels.
Encouragement for reading books to children rather than television watching.
Cultural support for heathy sexuality as an expression of love.
Ending media exploitation of pornography and violence.
Equality between males and females.
Involvement of fathers in child raising.
Closing the gap between rich and poor.
Elimination of racism.
Courageous willingness of citizens to confront and oppose the authoritarians in their own cultures.
Worldwide education about how to raise healthy, nonviolent children.
Publishing annual reports on child raising practices in all cultures and countries of the world as part of a global education campaign to end child abuse.
An effective international court of justice to try crimes against humanity.
Use of UN peacekeeping forces if needed to prevent or restrain violence.
Voluntary population limits based on education and contraception.
Demilitarization
Giving the former military budget to biophilic agencies.
Enhancing a culture of altruism and helping.
Treating violence as a public health issue.
Ending capital punishment.
Reforming the criminal justice system so it is based on restraint rather than punishment.
Vegetarianism and veganism.
More humane treatment of animals.
Abolishing industrial animal husbandry on factory farms.
Ending inhumane practices of vivesection, hunting, and trapping.
Reverence for all life practiced and taught.
Good nutrition: reduced sugar, meat, animal products, and chemicals.
Practicing empathic, nonviolent communication in everyday life and teaching it in all school curricula.
Global justice through development based on democratic self-determination of peoples.