The Wisdom Imperative: Peace Through Education for a Sustainable World

nsustainable consumption is a problem of conscience and a societal challenge thwarting a sustainable world. Morally conscious consumption is grounded in wisdom. The paper thus ties wisdom to consumption as a way to help sustain the world. After proﬁling wisdom as a construct, the discussion turns to conceptualizing both peace (seven types) and peace education (i.e., education about peace, for peace, and peace through education). Special attention is given to peace through education (including problem-posing education) and to wisdom and practical wisdom as avenues to a sustainable world. By experiencing a form of education that helps them learn from their accumulated consumption experiences, people can gain wisdom that can be applied to their marketplace decisions for the good of humanity. Revamping the education system so it leads to wisdom, practical wisdom, and multifaceted peace is a daunting prospect, but it cannot compare to the loss of a sustainable world.


Introduction
This special issue concerns a sustainable world, which is difficult to attain because of societal and environmental challenges. The Guest Editor [1] suggested using educational interventions to create paths of peace because peace helps people work together to create a sustainable world. Four lines of thinking were proposed as avenues from which to contribute to this special issue: (a) unstructured global problems, (b) problems of conscience, (c) contemporary issues and (d) interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary (TD) educational programs [1].
Unsustainable consumption is a problem of conscience (i.e., a moral sense of right and wrong). In this case, conscience pertains to a person's knowledge of themselves acting as a consumer and a human at the same time [2][3]. Unconscious consumption that is not mindful of eventual fallout is a societal challenge thwarting a sustainable world. Unmindfulness is negligence, obliviousness, and blindness to the consequences [4]. As a caveat, people can be conscious of their actions and still make unconscientious choices [5]. A common example is buying a cup of freshly brewed coffee at a coffee franchise while being fully aware of the human, nonhuman species, and environmental compromise (even decimation and death) involved in producing and distributing the coffee beans [3].
Not surprisingly, McGregor [3,5] argued that modern-day consumption is not peaceful, hence not sustainable. It leads to human exploitation, social injustice, cultural compromise, and environmental decline all of which compromise a sustainable world. Inspired by Hernandez-Aguilar's [1] call for papers, this article is predicated on the assumption that a sustainable world is more likely if people are socialized to respect conscious, mindful consumption. This can be achieved by tendering a particular educational intervention [1] specifically a unique type of peace education [6]. The result would be educated people who are wise to the fact that their personal choices (especially in the marketplace) play a pivotal role in creating a sustainable world. Anyone who is morally conscious is grounded in wisdom [7]. The author thus ties wisdom to consumption and peace education as a way to help sustain the world.
After profiling wisdom as a construct, the discussion turns to conceptualizing both peace (three types) and peace education (three types). Special attention is given to peace through education and to wisdom and practical wisdom as avenues to a sustainable world.

Wisdom
"Morality pertains to the rightness or wrongness of behaviour gauged against some agreed-to standard of conduct. Immoral means the behaviour is wrong, reprehensible (so objectionable as to elicit strong disapproval, even contempt) and bad, bad because the immoral action is below a standard of acceptable quality and causes harm or injury" [2] (p. 16). "Conscience is always defined in terms of decency and grace, dignity and honor and as conformity to recognized standards" [2] (p. 170). When someone eschews good conscience, people often respond with "How, in good conscience, could you act that way?" If someone is morally conscious, they are grounded in goodwill, love, and wisdom. Moral unconsciousness has its roots in greed, anger, hatred, and delusion [3,7]. What matters to the argument herein is that people can shift from immoral to moral consciousness when they learn to use wisdom and mindful diligence [7]. Wisdom is the quality of being wise, which refers to sagaciousness, discernment, having good judgement, and being learned and knowledgeable due to lessons learned from experiences [7][8]. Wisdom is associated with such traits as unbiased judgements, self-knowledge, ethics, common sense, and deep understanding and insights. Conversely, being unwise means acting foolishly, and devoid of good judgement or good sense. Unwiseness manifests in heedlessness, a lack of intelligence, an inability to learn from experience, and unadvisable behaviour [4,[9][10].
Nicolescu [11][12] believed that the absence of wisdom in contemporary society is the crux of modern-day problems and an unsustainable world. He called for the conciliation of technoscience and wisdom (i.e., calm a dispute using mediation). Technoscience (technological advances and the scientific method and ethos) refers to the interaction between the theoretical and the practical within contemporary scientific research and development (R&D) [13]. Technoscience is problematic for Nicolescu [12] because it privileges objectivity, the universality of science, and realism (absolutism) [13]. The "overwhelming advance of technoscience (p. 11) [is] without brakes, without values, without any end other than utilitarianism [e.g., benefit the majority]" [12] (p. 101).
Nicolescu [12] said that an immense treasure of wisdom and knowledge has accumulated over time, but that technoscience has overshadowed its worthiness and significance. Technoscience has created an unbreachable divide between science and wisdom. He called this "the abyss" [12] (p. 11), a very deep, bottomless chasm. The tension arising from this chasm (i.e., profound differences between technoscience and wisdom) must be conciliated (mediated) if people want to successfully address the polycrises facing humanity [12], crises exacerbated by unpeaceful, unmindful, and morally unconscionable consumption [3,14].
Drawing on Kirshnamurti [15], Fisk [6] expounded on wisdom. People cannot find wisdom in books. It cannot be memorized or accumulated in one spot. Wisdom comes from the abnegation of the self. That is, it comes from the temporary denial and renouncement of one's rights, interests, or conveniences so that one can learn by keeping an open mind. Opening one's mind does not mean everything in there falls out. Instead, an open mind is an opportunity to look inside and become aware of one's own feelings and thoughts. With an open mind, people can observe themselves, become aware of what is influencing them and how, and gain wisdom by learning from these experiences (see also Ambrosi-Randić & Plavšić) [9].
Whyborn [16] claimed that "through self-awareness -the wisdom acquired over a lifetime of self-tuning -[people can] progressively take ownership of their behavior" (para. 31). Self-learning from openminded experiences leads to wisdom [16]. As a caveat, "it is not any kind of experience in itself that leads to wisdom, but rather a decision to use that experience in a reflective ... way" [9] (p. 12). Fisk illustrated this idea thus. Rosa Park's "'uneducated' activist husband had the wisdom, gleaned from his experience in the NAACP, to encourage Rosa's peace and civil rights education" [6] (p. 187).
Yang [17] proposed that wisdom tends to develop and emerge in two real-life contexts. The developmental context entails dealing with large life decisions and managing one's life. The situational context involves addressing everyday situations by problem solving or resolving emergent crises. People learn from these experiences and become wiser. People with wisdom then become "aware of others' needs because of the difficulties they [themselves] had encountered earlier in life" [17] (p. 510). It is important that people develop wisdom because they can use it to improve other people's quality of life and help them attain life satisfaction and happiness. It does so by introducing values and morality into important judgements (i.e., discernment leading to prudent conclusions or courses of action) [9,18].

Conceptualizing Peace and Peace Education
"Gaining life experience is crucial for becoming wise(r). In this context, education ... represents a potential contributor in wisdom development" [9] (p. 15). Four in ten (43%) people agreed that education is important to gaining wisdom [9]. Hernandez-Aguilar [1] called for educational interventions that would create pathways of peace, so people can work together to create a sustainable world. What better way to start than with peace education itself because "peace education aims to create in the human consciousness a ... commitment to the ways of peace" [19] (p. 10).

Conceptualizing Peace
Peace is so much more than the absence of war, violence, and conflict [19], meaning peace education can (should) be very broad and comprehensive in its approach. Groff [20][21] conceptualized seven types of peace (see Table 1) (see also Smoker and Groff) [22]. They range from peace inside a person to peace between cultures and entire civilizations. Groff [21] organized them into the (a) prevention of war and violence; (b) elimination of structural violence; and (c) maintenance of holistic, complex systems. Academic practitioners who chose to develop an educational intervention that leads to pathways of peace to co-create a sustainable world [1] must be aware of the broad scope of the peace concept [19].

Conceptualizing Peace Education
Peace education is predicated on the assumption (or observation) that people are creating or exacerbating conflict and violence through actions informed by their values, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge (or lack thereof) [19]. As a caveat, conflict arises when incompatible interests and goals lead to disagreement or argument. People will always experience conflict usually daily. But they can choose to respond in one of two ways: violence or nonviolence [23]. Violence involves behaviour intended to hurt, damage, harm, or kill someone or something. Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm (or causing the least amount of harm) to anyone or anything under any conditions [3,5,24].
Peace education seeks to build awareness and understanding, develop mutual concern, and challenge personal and social actions thus making it invaluable for a sustainable world. Peace education will help people "create conditions and systems that actualize nonviolence, justice, environmental care and other peace values" [25] (Slide 25) (see also Vega et al.) [26]. Peace education also serves to transform the human condition by challenging and changing social structures and the thought patterns that created the present conditions. The overall intent is to eliminate social injustice, reject violence, and abolish war [25,27].
Peace education is a practical imperative and an ethical imperative [25][26]. Pragmatically, peace education contributes to "build[ing] a critical mass of people who will demand for and address the needed personal and structural changes that will transform the many problems that relate to peace into nonviolent, humane and ecological alternatives and solutions" [25] (Slide 30). It also challenges people's belief that wars cannot be avoided and does so by helping people discern alternatives to violent reactions to conflict [25].
As an ethical imperative, peace education strives to mitigate the negative impact of violent reactions to conflict on life and well-being. This form of education teaches ethical principles including but not limited to nonviolence, justice, love, solidarity, human dignity, and a respect for nature and all life. Strengthening the common good and inculcating the unity and value of life is the mandate of "major world faith traditions, humanitarian ethics and ... indigenous spirituality" [25] (Slide 32). Peace education embraces and perpetuates this ethical imperative [26].
Respecting the practical and ethical imperatives of peace education, Fisk [6] challenged peace educators to reflect on what constitutes peace education and related pedagogy. By choosing three different prepositions (i.e., a grammatical word expressing a relation between two other words), he differentiated among (a) education about peace, (b) education for peace and (c) peace through education. All are important, but each one yields a different result. The preposition about means to be the topic of, the point of, or the main concern. The preposition for means in favour of, toward something, to be the purpose of. Through connotes the means of doing something. It also refers to a passage from one place to another, and it can refer to continuing on in time [4].
Peace through education is preferred because of its holistic and all-encompassing nature [6]. In her call for papers, Hernandez-Aguilar [1] had envisioned "educational interventions ... leading in general to paths of peace" (para. 1). Fisk's [6] work about three approaches to peace education is in a book titled Patterns of Conflict, Paths to Peace [28]. This book concerned "the discovery and careful investigation of various pathways [to peace] that promise to take the traveller over or around or through conflict to a less violent, less troubling, future" [28] (p. 9). That is, to a more sustainable world [1].

Education about Peace
When people are exposed to education about peace, they receive information, facts, and ideas about things that affect peace (e.g., social justice, conflict, human rights, equity, gender equality, tolerance, human security, environmental integrity, diversity). Learning "about something is essentially a data-gathering process" [6] (p. 174). People are not asked to challenge the social order or the status quo; instead, they are expected to uncritically accept it. This approach can also be anti-dialogical, meaning there is minimal exchange among learners with the teacher viewed as the authority figure. Sometimes education about peace introduces problem-solving skills. As a caveat, a thorough knowledge of aspects affecting peace should not be disparaged [6], but education about peace falls short of what is needed to build a sustainable world. Knowing about something and feeling compelled to do something is not the same thing.

Education for Peace
Fisk [6] then presented an interesting argument. He suggested that if education about peace (leading to more knowledge about what affects it) does not lead to "new openness or an understanding attitude on our part . . . there is something more at work -something that has to do with values, moral standards or the development of our sensitivities and character" [6] (p. 180). To counter any passivity and lack of motivation to change things that can happen with education about peace, he proposed education for peace (i.e., in favour of peace), which helps people recognize that their "usual way of seeing and doing things perpetuates injustice [and a lack of peace]" [6] (p. 181).
Education for peace equips people to deal with ideologies, paradigms, worldviews, values, attitudes, skills, principles, and moral standards. They gain a sensitivity to others, an awareness of their own cultural conditioning, and they learn new perceptions that move them to take a different path than they did in the past [6]. Educating for something means education serves a particular reason. It orients people to achieve a specific purpose, in this case, to achieve peace. The danger with this approach is that it is based on "a hunger for certainty [and security] and a fear of ambiguity" [6] (p. 183). Education for peace can thus fall prey to being an ideological conversion instrument that divides people. Educators can slide down the slippery slop of proselytization (i.e., converting to another's opinion or belief) especially if the pedagogy is not dialogic [6].

Peace through Education
Educate is Latin educare, 'to lead out' [8]. Fisk maintained that "education of a certain kind in and of itself is considered to be a vehicle for learning peace" [6] (p. 185). Education about or for peace would not be needed if all education inculcated certain learnings, principles, and imperatives to which people would be consistently and broadly exposed thus leading them to peace [6] (see Table 2). Through a certain kind of education, people can be lead to peace. "When the process of learning in other subject areas mirrors the substance of peace education, then we don't need to engage in peace education as a separate endeavour" [6] (p. 185).

Problem-Posing Education
Peace through education (see Table 2) would depend on a particular pedagogical collection: inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, collaborative learning, an issues-based approach, authentic learning, democratic education, moral development education, teaching controversial and sensitive issues; and thematic and integrative curricula [6,19,27].
In addition to the aforementioned peace pedagogy, Fisk [6] strongly advocated for problem-posing education as the main avenue for ensuring peace through education. Hernandez-Aguilar [1] was concerned about the challenges of building a sustainable world. From a problem-posing perspective, "the 'problem' [is] the world and its economic and political structures, many of them exploitive" [6] (p. 177). Problem-posing education lets people view the world as unfinished and problematic, but more important, people learn they can change the world by changing existing power arrangements. The world actually becomes "a medium or go-between in the learning experience" [6] (p. 176). "The world intercedes in our learning context and provides the opportunity to dialogue as equals about common life-situations" [6] (p. 177).
An awareness of one's own oppressed or flawed consciousness and one's social and ideological conditioning is the starting point of problem-posing education [6]. Problem posing thus requires people to be radically open to differences and diversity and to "what the world reveals about itself" [6] (p. 180). With acceptance of these revelations, "the world touches them differently because fresh assumptions or expectations allow them to perceive new realities" [6] (p. 179). When the place where people stand and look at the world shifts, knowledge is engendered, meaning it is an offspring of the new perspective provided through problem posing [6]. This new knowledge can be transposed into wisdom [6,9].
Education is important to gaining wisdom [9]. Fisk [6] asserted that peace through education helps people gain wisdom by providing increased awareness of both social and ideological conditioning (blinders) and cherished certainties that block the ability to deal with uncertainty. The knowledge people gain through education and their learning experience can grow and develop into wisdom [6,9]. People can use their wisdom to help build a sustainable world.

Practical Wisdom
The knowledge gained through problem-posing education "can sometimes make all the difference in the world" [6] (p. 180) (pun intended). Learning from this knowledge acquisition process can lead to wisdom [6,9], which must be developed if people want to create a sustainable world [16]. The latter are compromised by unconscious, unmindful consumption [3,5] (see Table 1). That said, Whybrow [16] was convinced that "collectively we can acquire the wisdom to sustain a vibrant and balanced society" (para. 12). Supporting this supposition, consumer scholars [18] recently applied Aristotle's notion of practical wisdom to transformative, liberatory consumer behaviour that is fully focused on personal and collective well-being and, by association, a sustainable world. They were convinced that Aristotle's idea was appropriate for considering matters related to the good of humanity including consumption. They titled their work Can Consumers be Wise? and answered yes from two perspectives. Yes, consumers can be wise and shrewd in their marketplace behaviour thereby avoiding being taken in and manipulated by marketing hype. And yes, consumers can be wise from an Aristotelian perspective by cultivating and using practical wisdom [18].
To recap, wisdom is "the capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice of means and ends" [29] (p. 2325). Practical wisdom stems from Greek phronesis, 'prudent, self-controlled' [8,18]. The notion of phronesis takes us "beyond knowledge to wisdom" [18] (p. 8). Practical wisdom is a type of intelligence or wisdom concerned with the virtue of practical thought [18] (i.e., think hard and deep before you act).
In more detail, practical wisdom ("the master virtue") [18] (p. 665) helps people figure out the best balance between other virtues in a given context. Virtues include courage, honesty, empathy, compassion, generosity, justice, caution, decisiveness, kindness, frugality, and responsibility [18]. Should the consumer favour responsibility or frugality? Should they favour compassion or decisiveness (quickly settle an issue) when buying something? What does this particular purchase situation demand of them to ensure well-being and quality of life for all [18]?
Practical wisdom is thus defined "as developing plans and solutions that are well reasoned and capable of action in regard to matters that are good or bad for humanity" (i.e., human and earthly welfare) [18] (p. 9); that is, a sustainable world [1]. In this light, being a wise consumer is more than shrewdness, more than cost-benefit analyses or knowing one's preferences to avoid manipulation. It is instead "about perceptive, context-specific judgements with a mission to maintain or enhance [personal and collective] well-being" [18] (p. 664). These consumer judgements should be grounded in the virtue of practical thought and wisdom [18]. The resultant well-being and quality of life are profoundly connected to a sustainable world [1].

Conclusion
Hernandez-Aguilar envisioned "paths of peace" [1] (para. 1). Aristotle, through phronesis, envisioned "hope and direction through practical wisdom" [18] (p. 664). These two ideas go hand in hand and could be the backbone of peace through education [6] for a sustainable world [1]. Creating this educational intervention [1] is an imperative as McGregor [3,5] so powerfully illustrated in her observations about the ubiquitousness of unpeaceful, unsustainable consumption and production (see Table 1). Unconscionable actions in the consumer context (i.e., problems of conscious) [1] severely compromise, nearly nullify, attaining a sustainable world. McGregor posited that "today's consumption reality is complex, chaotic and oppressive [but she remained convinced that citizens can benefit from] a new way to frame consumption" [3] (p. 148).
"To have practical wisdom is to know what to aim for, to know the purpose of being ... a conscientious consumer" [18] (p. 666]. If people can learn from critically examining their accumulated consumption experiences (see Table 1), they can gain this wisdom, which has become a global imperative. As Hernandez-Aguilar earnestly stated, if we do not attain "global sustainability [there will be reverberating] repercussions on the quality of life and survival of [humanity itself]" [1] (para. 1). One step in that direction is peace through education leading to the development of wisdom and transformative, liberatory consumer behaviour. Revamping the world's education system so it leads to wisdom, practical wisdom, and multifaceted peace is a daunting prospect, but it cannot compare to the loss of a sustainable world.
Funding: This research received no external funding. Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.