This combination of inner and outer empowerment is thus the second major element in a peaceable humane sustainable culture. But empowerment also is not enough. Done in isolation it can lead to the disaster of a fortress or lifeboat mentality, and there is no way, in terms of outer empowerment, that in isolation we can ever be strong enough to meet all the challenges that life offers. Besides, isolation simply isn't much fun. So the necessary third element is communications.
Communications serves the cause of peace in two major ways.
General communications helps to overcome ignorance and build the bonds of community, while special communication skills are the heart of effective conflict resolution. In terms of general communications, what we need in not necessarily more information, but reliable and useful information. This is greatly helped by having a variety of sources of information - through travel and personal relationships with people around the globe, as well as through various media. Above all, we need sources of information other than the nation-state. One of the most hopeful, profound, yet subtle changes that has occurred in the past hundred years or so has been the enormous expansion in the reach of personal communications in comparison with institutional communications.