In 1997, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) based in Paris, proposed to the UN General Assembly at July 30 of each year should be proclaimed United Nations International Day of Friendship.
As the UN website explains, the proclamation defined the Culture of Peace as a set of values, attitudes and behaviours that reject violence and endeavour to prevent conflicts by addressing their root causes with a view to solving problems.
In its resolution of 1998, proclaiming the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001–2010) (A/RES/53/25), the General Assembly recognized that enormous harm and suffering are caused to children through different forms of violence. It emphasized that the promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence should be instilled in children through education. If children learn to live together in peace and harmony that will contribute to the strengthening of international peace and cooperation.
Eight areas of action were set for nations, organizations and individuals to undertake in order for a culture of peace to prevail:
- foster a culture of peace through education;
- promote sustainable economic and social development;
- promote respect for all human rights;
- ensure equality between women and men;
- foster democratic participation;
- advance understanding, tolerance and solidarity;
- support participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge;
- promote international peace and security.
…To mark the International Day of Friendship the UN encourages governments, international organizations and civil society groups to hold events, activities and initiatives that contribute to the efforts of the international community towards promoting a dialogue among civilizations, solidarity, mutual understanding and reconciliation.
The Thammasat University Library owns several books on the theme of friendship in terms of history, political science, philosophy, sociology, literature, popular music, film studies, and many other fields.
These include Analysis of the main theme ‘American dream” and ‘friendship’ in ‘of mice and men’ by Boosayarat Buaduang, a research paper submitted as part of the master’s degree requirement at the TU Language Institute in 2005.
Other examples include Aristotle and the philosophy of friendship by Lorraine Smith Pangle; A Chinese book of friendship by T. C. Lai; Cohesion and dissolution: friendship in the globalized punk and hardcore scene of Buenos Aires by Ingo Rohrer; Friendship: developing a sociological perspective by Graham Allan; Friendship edited by Shena Mackay; Friendship and peer relations edited by Michael Lewis and Leonard A. Rosenblum; Friendship and social relations in children edited by Hugh C. Foot, Antony J. Chapman, and Jean R. Smith; Friendship and the political: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schmitt by Graham M. Smith; Friendship in politics: theorizing amity in and between states edited by Preston King and Graham M. Smith; Life lessons Harry Potter taught me: discover the magic of friendship, family, courage and love in your life by Jill Kolongowski; A little book of friendship by Ruskin Bond; Love and friendship in Plato and Aristotle by A. W. Price; Love, friendship, and the self: intimacy, identification, and the social nature of persons by Bennett W. Helm; Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: the kinship of women by Hilary Lapsley; Masculinity in the interracial buddy film by Melvin Donalson; The overflowing of friendship: love between men and the creation of the American republic by Richard Godbeer; Patrons, clients, and friends : interpersonal relations and the structure of trust in society by S.N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger; The politics of friendship by Jacques Derrida, translated by George Collins; A secret sisterhood: the hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney; Socrates on friendship and community: reflections on Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis by Mary P. Nichols; and Women’s friendship in literature by Janet Todd;
Friendship is usually defined as cooperative and supportive behavior between two or more people. It is seen as a supportive relationship involving mutual knowledge and esteem. Some distinguished thinkers and writers, most of them represented by books in the TU Library collection, have expressed themselves in the following ways about friendship:
- What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies. ~ Aristotle
- Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it. ~ Cicero
- We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us. ~ Cicero
- Friendship is a sheltering tree. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- The only way to have a friend is to be one. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage. ~ Samuel Johnson
- The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price,
no sum can balance his worth. ~ Sirach
- Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends. ~ William Butler Yeats
- Friends are born, not made.
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Ch. VII.
- We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), “19 September 1777”.
- I have loved my friends as I do virtue, my soul, my God.
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part II, Section V.
- I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people’s lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big.
William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals (1911).
- The absolute condition for friendship is unity in a life-view. If a person has that, he will not be tempted to base his friendship on obscure feelings or on indefinable sympathies. As a consequence, he will not experience these ridiculous shifts, so that one day he has a friend and the next day he does not. He will not fail to appreciate the significance of the indefinable sympathies, because, strictly speaking, a person is certainly not a friend of everyone with whom he shares a life-view but neither does he stop with only the mysteriousness of the sympathies. A true friendship always requires consciousness and is therefore freed from being infatuation. The life-view in which one is united must be a positive view.
Søren Kierkegaard Either/Or Part II, Hong p. 319 (1843).
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)