- Stories about the workings of war and peace for use in peace education. The stories first appeared in German at Beltz & Gelberg in 2000. They appeared in print also in Korean, Arabic and Persian. On the Internet they can be found in more than 20 languages. The German version was shortlisted for the Gustav Heinemann Peace Award in 2001. ‘It is not enough to tell children that war is terrible and peace is much nicer’, Martin Auer says.‘We all must try to understand how the interactions of large groups of people can lead to results nobody wanted. To avoid future wars, six billion and soon it will be seven and eight billion people will have to agree on new economies and social structures. Only when they know something about one another and act with each other in mind, can people avoid increasing the harm to all by seeking only their own advantage.
No longer can the goal be to constantly raise productivity to produce ever more goods with ever less work; the exchange of things should not be the main content of interpersonal affairs. The fact that things can be produced with less and less labor should not lead to ever more things being produced. Instead it should lead to people being able to use the freed-up time to exchange social services with each other.
- There once was a man who was a dreamer. He believed, for instance, that there must be a way to see things ten thousand miles away. Or he figured there must be a way to eat soup with a fork. He thought there must be a way for people to stand on their own heads, and he was sure there must be a way for people to live without fear. The people told him, “None of those things can be done; you're a dreamer!” And they said, “You've got to open your eyes and accept reality!” And they said, “There are laws of nature, and you can't just change them!” But the man said, “I don't know . there must be a way to breathe under water. And there must be a way to give everybody something to eat. There must be a way for everybody to learn what he or she wants to know. There must be a way to look inside your own belly.”
And the people said, “Pull yourself together, mister; those things will never happen. You can't simply say you want something and then just expect it to happen. The world is the way it is, and that's all there is to it!” When television was invented and x-ray machines, the man was able to see ten thousand miles away and he could see inside his own belly. But no one said to him, “Okay, I guess you weren't so wrong, after all.” And they said nothing after someone invented diving suits that allowed people to breathe easily under water. But the man said to himself: that's what I thought. Maybe one day it will even be possible to get along without wars.
- Far, far away behind the stars, everything is very different from here. And even farther out there, everything is even more different from there, where everything is very different from here. But if you flew far away, very far away into the distance, to the place where everything is completely different from everywhere else, maybe there it would be almost exactly like here.
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