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Is Peace Achievable?
Is peace, lasting peace, a possibility? Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke wrote that "Eternal peace is a dream ..." Several lines later he added that though war can inflict "grievous wounds on all involved," no one can "avoid the misfortune" or "evade the necessity." (Moltke On the Art of War, 22). It has been relatively easy for post-modern man to dismiss the musings of an old Prussian militarist, but is such dismissal productive?
Since the beginning of history, or at least since man began to write history down, he has recounted the travails of war. In seemingly all cultures, across all times, war has stood out as a central facet of man's time on earth. Whether it be the Egyptians and the Hittites at Kadesh, or the Chinese during their Warring States Period, all of humanity seems driven to conflict, almost genetically programmed to war. Some cultures, of course, have esteemed war more or less highly. Assyria, for example, gloried in its military might, while China has traditionally looked on martial activity as a decidedly lesser form of human expression. Still, no matter the attitude, peoples around the globe have found it continually necessary to break the peace and come to blows with their fellow man.
One possible explanation is the precarious nature of peace. Peace is really inactivity. For it to be successful all parties must refrain from activity and display a certain amount of contentment with their place in the world. War, however, is much simpler. It can be fomented by a single player without reference to the desires or preferences of the others. Once a sole actor decides upon the path of war, all others are bound to this course as well. To refuse the call to war once attacked means at the very least defeat, and at the very worst extermination. Peace, it would seem, is a house of cards delicately balanced, while war is the stiff and inexorable breeze destined to undo every fragile peace.
But man, especially modern man, has sought to escape this habitual feature of international politics. After the First World War wrought its havoc upon the European continent, representatives from the leading nations convened in Paris to discuss ways to prevent another titanic slaughter. The end of their efforts and negotiations was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which provided for the "renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy." Despite the fact that sixty-two nations eventually signed the agreement, the hope of an end to war proved illusory. Subsequent generations could only reflect with bitter irony on the fact that World War I had been The War to End All Wars.
In 1937 and 1939, Japan and Germany, respectively emboldened by perceptions of weakness around them, attacked their neighbors and set off the largest war in the history of mankind. Emerging from their dreams of a peaceful world, the allied powers set their faces against Ares' hot breath and subdued the axis at a cost of millions of lives.
An interesting concept to be reborn during World War II was that of unconditional surrender. Perhaps worn out by the failed hopes for peace of mutual accord in the past, the U.S. gave itself the task of bringing its foes to heel in no uncertain terms. The U.S. would not fight to a position of advantage and then offer terms, as was the practice among 'civilized' nations. Instead the starker total war forced a kind of reversion to earlier notions of strategic thinking. The U.S., and by default her allies, would not just win the battle, but utterly shatter their enemy's will to fight no matter the cost. Many have since seen this strategic development as the proper reaction to war that had sunk into depths of almost unfathomable barbarism. Essentially, when the axis powers surrendered it would be without provisos, without riders. Through this, the allies hoped to gain for themselves and their progeny a lasting peace.
And now we return to our original question, if in a somewhat roundabout fashion. Implicit in the idea of unconditional surrender is the notion that peace can be secured, at least for a time, if one of the principal antagonists is so thoroughly broken that he will not again take up arms. A cursory examination of World War II and its aftermath might persuade us to agree. Prior to 1945 Germany had attacked her neighbors with alarming regularity (e.g. 1866, 1870, 1914 etc.). Her defeat in World War I, though serious, was far from complete and did not prevent the rise of the Nazis and the bloodbath of World War II. Yet the total and utter defeat she experienced in WWII has left Germany, to this day, extremely reluctant to use force of any kind. In an ironic twist of fate, we now find Americans sometimes deriding Germany for her pacifism and lack of backbone.
The same scenario holds true for Japan. A flash of nuclear catastrophe reversed Japan's almost inveterate penchant for militarism and left in its place a country that has not engaged in foreign adventurism for quite some time.
Man learned divergent lessons from the second World War. On the one hand was the heady optimism of those who believed humanity had finally learned its lesson. This notion, while initially weak, would gain momentum later on. A rather more sober lesson was the one once stated by Vegetius, but more recently repeated by Metallica - to secure peace is to prepare for war. The U.S. in particular postured itself to fight the growing threat of international communism through a policy of strength.
Until 1989 the world watched nervously as the two great superpowers - the U.S. and the Soviet Union - eyed each other across the oceans. A balance of fear held each in check as they sought to more accurately gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the other. In the end economics prevailed and nuclear holocaust did not come to pass. Strangely, it was Vegetius' maxim that seemed to carry the U.S. to victory and to what some thought was the "end of history." The U.S., through a massive campaign of military spending, exhausted the inefficient centrally-planned economy of the Soviet Union who felt obliged to try and keep up with the U.S's almost free-wheeling military expenditure.
So had man finally discovered the secret to peace? The generation of World War II might not have believed in an end to all war, but had they at least stumbled upon a recipe for durable peace? We may never truly know the answer, for as quickly as the Western world rediscovered peace through strength, it largely abandoned the concept. The "peace movement", much in vogue the last few decades, rejects the peace through victory ideal of earlier generations. In its place it posits pacifism, diplomacy, and non-violent resistance as the putative advancement of mankind. Are they right?
Abandoning the wider sweep of history, we now move very specifically to the recently concluded war between Israel and Hezbollah. From almost the very outset prominent figures in Europe as well as America were heard calling for an immediate cease-fire. Frequently from the rhetoric one might imagine that the word cease-fire had become a shibboleth for civilized, thinking people. Victory strangely seems to be dying the slow death of disuse.
Of course undergirding the call for cease-fire is a basic belief in the perfectibility of mankind. This line of thought sees peace growing out of mutual understand and dialogue between erstwhile combatants. Perhaps given sufficient time and an impartial mediator, otherwise hostile parties came come to terms without resorting to armed conflict. It is an interesting and thoroughly hopeful concept, but is it one based in reality?
A survey of the historical record is likely to make one rather suspicious of grandiose peace plans, but we can leave all that and simply focus on the very narrow topic of Israel and Hezbollah. Now that a cease-fire is in place, what is the strategy from here on out? Where is the common ground? One of Hezbollah's founding principles was the elimination of Israel. That principle remains in effect today. Given that Israel is unlikely to renounce to its own right to exist, we immediately perceive the impasse that has frustrated efforts at peace in the Levant for decades now. Many now argue that the cease-fire represents nothing more than a time-out to allow Hezbollah to restock on arms. Others say that UN Resolution 1701 lacks "teeth" to use the words of Dr. Mark Heller, an expert in strategic studies at Tel Aviv University. Rather than seeing the cease-fire as peace, many on both sides of the conflict look at the pause as a momentary break in action.
In his farewell speech to the U.S. Congress, General Douglas MacArthur said, "once war is forced upon us, there is no alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory - not prolonged indecision. In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory." (Old Soldiers Never Die, 573). In the Middle East, however, we have nothing but indecision, and nothing even approximating victory. Both sides lay claim to it, but neither has accomplished what they set out to do. Though Hezbollah may claim a moral victory, Israel still remains. And while Israel can tout the material damage she inflicted on her enemy, her kidnapped soldiers remain missing and Hassan Nasrallah lives to fight another day.
Can a lasting peace be built on such a foundation? Was MacArthur simply a war-monger who could not recognize peace after a life of nearly uninterrupted war? Or, has the Western world forgotten its lessons? Is peace, durable peace, only ever the product of war. Perhaps war and peace are not mutually exclusive concepts, but generative forces bound up within one another. Perhaps peace is naught but the fruition of war, while war, in its offing, is the decay of an overripe peace.
I can't say for sure. Can you?
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0 Nerd-Its
North Korea
I think Kim Jong-il's leadership is proof that peace will never be a global thing. He's declaring the right to pre-emptively attack a military drill that has been happening for 31 years? Now ... for those who have been in Korea, it's easily recognized as his usual banter. He'll do it again next year just as he always has. He'll do it again in February and March to for the RSO&I exercise. But the point is, Kim Jong-il is a modern day example (non religious based) of why we're not all wearing silver jump suits and living in soma induced splendor. There will always be somebody seeking power by lording their influence and persona over people that are weaker willed. And there will always be people that stand opposed to such actions. Unless all humans were identical clones, differences will always create frictions that will lead over the course of time to some imbalance that will be settled through violence. And if we were all clones, what a boring world Earth would be.
0 Nerd-Its
You may say I'm a dreamer
Imagine there is a OmniNerd
It's easy if you try
No better site above us
Just a big blue sky
Imagine smcbride and mikeforbes
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no Diggs site too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no Mircosoft
I wonder if you can
No need for for word or windows
A brotherhood of man
Imagine Eye.of.Sage
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only nerd
I hope someday you'll join us here at OmniNerd
And the world will live as one
This comment has 4 replies.
0 Nerd-Its
Fight for it
Does peace represent the absence of all conflict in the world? Does peace mean no major wars anywhere in the world? Does peace mean that the country I live in is currently not engaging in a prolonged military conflict? The first is of course impossible – criminals, extremists and psychopaths will always cause some dissent. The third already happens – Germany has been at peace by that definition since 1945 and will remain so until we can breed some backbone back into her people. The second definition is the peace that I believe Will is referring to, and that I believe is attainable.
The peace that the Democrats are looking for is utterly unattainable. Humans are a belligerent species and some conflict is inevitable. Talking will not bring peace, nor will negotiations or sanctions. There’s just too many bad people running around out there. But that does not mean that peace is unattainable. Liberty – good old fashioned Bill of Rights style liberty – is a powerful thing. Once you’ve tasted it, you don’t want to let it go. Thousands of Iraqis are grabbing on to that very concept – slowly, but they are grabbing on.
But Lady Liberty is not enough, sadly, because of those very bad guys that I mentioned before. There are thousands of Iraqis that can’t seem to get their hands around the concept, and so they are killing one another wholesale. This is where Will’s unconditional surrender comes into play. You can force people to be peaceful. It might not be pretty, and you might have to violate their precious human rights at first, but if force can keep a man down in the gutter for decades a la the Ba’ath Party, then force can lift a man up and keep him there.
Peace is attainable because the concept of Liberty is sound. But to gain that peace you have to fight for it. You have to fight to bring it to people and fight to keep it with those people. And once you have it, you have to fight to defend it, because inevitably there will be some bad man that lets his ego take over and he will think his way will be better than the peaceful way, and he will bribe and cajole his way until he is in position to threaten your peace, and then once again, fighting will be required to maintain the peace.
What is infinitely more important than peace, however, is the liberty that I base my peace on. For 60 years, there was peace in the Soviet Union. But can anyone honestly argue that this was a good thing? Enforcing peace is as simple as a totalitarian regime that stamps out all resistance before it has a chance to form. That is an evil peace, because a life that isn’t free is not a life at all. Peace without liberty is no peace at all, because eventually, good men will rise to overcome the tyranny.
Sadly, bringing about true peace on this planet might yet mean many years of war, but it’s worth it in the end.
This comment has 13 replies.
0 Nerd-Its
Peace? Not With Inequality
As pessimistic as it may sound, no, I don't believe it is possible to acheive peace. I think the reason is quite simple too. Peace, as Will points out, requires everyone to be doing nothing, or rather, it requires that everyone is equal in certain ways regardless really of what they may or may not be doing. I think these specific areas of equality are the real things that never happen, and therefore prohibit any sort of long-term peace.
There are three specific things in my mind that immediately destroy equality and are inherent in every human:
- religion, or the source that a person believes defines morality
- race, both skin color and ethnicity, i.e., genetics
- imbalance of negative human nature between two or more people, e.g., the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed, gloth
I think anyone would be hard pressed to find an example of a non-peaceful period when one of these three things wasn't the cause for war. Given this, I think much thought or discussion on this topic is wasted unless one can find a way to remove these inequalities. As long as they exist, lasting peace never will. People will side with others that are equal to them within these boundaries and use them to rally against other groups.
And just as an aside, I should point out that indeed I believe we should always have peace in mind as a goal. I think of it much like an asymptotic bondary in mathematics. It is something worth trying to achieve, even though we as humans fail over and over again. Though we may never get there, we can get close and that is worth a lot.
This comment has 6 replies.
0 Nerd-Its
"Man's" history of war
The continuous references to "man" in this essay is, rightly, gender specific; though I think the author did not intend this. Will man/men evolve to the point of fore-going the bashing of one another with ever more horrific penile shaped weapons with ever greater ejaculations of fire and brimstone, or nuclear hell fire, while destroying everything that he himself and his particular brothers did not build? As long as there are profits to be made, spoils to be had, and power to grab, we will most likely be subjected to constantly revisited war. All the grand sounding rationales for destroying chosen "adversaries" are really just justifications for insatiable greed and power lust, the need to own and possess more than anyone else in order to wield power, the male domination instinct.
Would women, given a few years to adjust to wielding their brand of power, fall into the same behaviours? It seems doubtful; women have had to survive by their wits, diplomacy, strategy, conversation and communication for so many millennia that given real power in the world, not subject to "man's" leftover patterns of hostility, possessiveness and the unquenchable drive to dominate one and all around him, women would most likely come around to running the world like an extended family, power-sharing with others in a multi-layered habitat with children, elders, and everyone in between involved in their particular modus operendae of making one's way through life while adding to the community at large. This is not just "delegating", it is hierarchy stretched to the point of circularity in an ever turning double helix, the structure of all life.
Women would have to evolve past the rigid (another penile/penal reference) conditioning of seemingly endless centuries of patriarchal man-ipulations, but women are above all else, adaptable. We've had to be. Eventually, under the guidance of wise women leaders/facilitators, men would have the opportunity to evolve beyond the drive of their instincts to constantly compare penises, bash other people bloody, and destroy everything to get at some particular treasure they feel they must have...from land to oil to gold to.....whatever.
To get to equality, women will have to spend some time in positions of real Authority, working out a workable balance of powers. I don't know if men will ever be able to rule without war, or with a touch light enough and nurturing enough to grow peace. Because peace, unlike war, is flexible, organic, subjective. It cannot really be imposed by delusions of "victory" or anything else. Unless it is carefully planted, tended, nurtured and allowed to grow in the consciousness and collective unconsciousness of humanity over a period of generations and generations, in an environment that is hospitable for it, it will always be only a temporary cease-fire.
It will take complete catastrophe, entropy, and/or world wide socio-economic-political-religious breakdown for this passing of power/authority to take place. Man/men loath to share power with anyone, especially with women. We are the first and last "other" to which man/men can compare themselves favorably, even if that is only their fantasy, and feel better about themselves in their weaknesses and unending insecurity.
There can be no security or peace when the unquellable drive to possess and dominate is really the most powerful force in our world. Man/men will ever seek death, endings, destruction, in the cycles of life, even if only to rebuild his own sand-castles for his own refuge and glorification. In its place, this may be necessary, tearing down and returning to dust in order to build again. But as the dominant force, it simply becomes a perpetual cycle of repeating the same things while constantly expecting different results.
No. Under conditions as they are, real peace is not achievable. Peace is not something to be "achieved". It is rather a small seedling pushing with all its might to break through the incrusted walls of human consciousness to grow into the Tree of Life that would nurture and nourish our world and all in it. Do we dare plant such a thing? Would we eat of its fruit as if we'd never been forbidden it?
"Now let me dare to open wide the gates past which men's steps have ever flinching trod......" -Goethe’s Foust.
A.Crogh........................>/<
This comment has 2 replies.
0 Nerd-Its
"Man's" history of war
The continuous references to "man" in this essay is, rightly, gender specific; though I think the author did not intend this. Will man/men evolve to the point of fore-going the bashing of one another with ever more horrific penile shaped weapons with ever greater ejaculations of fire and brimstone, or nuclear hell fire, while destroying everything that he himself and his particular brothers did not build? As long as there are profits to be made, spoils to be had, and power to grab, we will most likely be subjected to constantly revisited war. All the grand sounding rationales for destroying chosen "adversaries" are really just justifications for insatiable greed and power lust, the need to own and possess more than anyone else in order to wield power, the male domination instinct.
Would women, given a few years to adjust to wielding their brand of power, fall into the same behaviours? It seems doubtful; women have had to survive by their wits, diplomacy, strategy, conversation and communication for so many millennia that given real power in the world, not subject to "man's" leftover patterns of hostility, possessiveness and the unquenchable drive to dominate one and all around him, women would most likely come around to running the world like an extended family, power-sharing with others in a multi-layered habitat with children, elders, and everyone in between involved in their particular modus operendae of making one's way through life while adding to the community at large. This is not just "delegating", it is hierarchy stretched to the point of circularity in an ever turning double helix, the structure of all life.
Women would have to evolve past the rigid (another penile/penal reference) conditioning of seemingly endless centuries of patriarchal man-ipulations, but women are above all else, adaptable. We've had to be. Eventually, under the guidance of wise women leaders/facilitators, men would have the opportunity to evolve beyond the drive of their instincts to constantly compare penises, bash other people bloody, and destroy everything to get at some particular treasure they feel they must have...from land to oil to gold to.....whatever.
To get to equality, women will have to spend some time in positions of real Authority, working out a workable balance of powers. I don't know if men will ever be able to rule without war, or with a touch light enough and nurturing enough to grow peace. Because peace, unlike war, is flexible, organic, subjective. It cannot really be imposed by delusions of "victory" or anything else. Unless it is carefully planted, tended, nurtured and allowed to grow in the consciousness and collective unconsciousness of humanity over a period of generations and generations, in an environment that is hospitable for it, it will always be only a temporary cease-fire.
It will take complete catastrophe, entropy, and/or world wide socio-economic-political-religious breakdown for this passing of power/authority to take place. Man/men loath to share power with anyone, especially with women. We are the first and last "other" to which man/men can compare themselves favorably, even if that is only their fantasy, and feel better about themselves in their weaknesses and unending insecurity.
There can be no security or peace when the unquellable drive to possess and dominate is really the most powerful force in our world. Man/men will ever seek death, endings, destruction, in the cycles of life, even if only to rebuild his own sand-castles for his own refuge and glorification. In its place, this may be necessary, tearing down and returning to dust in order to build again. But as the dominant force, it simply becomes a perpetual cycle of repeating the same things while constantly expecting different results.
No. Under conditions as they are, real peace is not achievable. Peace is not something to be "achieved". It is rather a small seedling pushing with all its might to break through the incrusted walls of human consciousness to grow into the Tree of Life that would nurture and nourish our world and all in it. Do we dare plant such a thing? Would we eat of its fruit as if we'd never been forbidden it?
"Now let me dare to open wide the gates past which men's steps have ever flinching trod......" -Goethe’s Foust.
A.Crogh........................>/<
0 Nerd-Its
"Man's" history of war
The continuous references to "man" in this essay is, rightly, gender specific; though I think the author did not intend this. Will man/men evolve to the point of fore-going the bashing of one another with ever more horrific penile shaped weapons with ever greater ejaculations of fire and brimstone, or nuclear hell fire, while destroying everything that he himself and his particular brothers did not build? As long as there are profits to be made, spoils to be had, and power to grab, we will most likely be subjected to constantly revisited war. All the grand sounding rationales for destroying chosen "adversaries" are really just justifications for insatiable need and power lust, the need to own and possess more than anyone else in order to wield power, the male domination instinct.
Would women, given a few years to adjust to wielding their brand of power, fall into the same behaviours? It seems doubtful; women have had to survive by their wits, diplomacy, strategy, conversation and communication for so many millennia that given real power in the world, not subject to "man's" leftover patterns of hostility, possessiveness and the unquenchable drive to dominate one and all around him, women would most likely come around to running the world like an extended family, power-sharing with others in a multi-layered habitat with children, elders, and everyone in between involved in their particular modus operendae of making one's way through life while adding to the community at large. This is not just "delegating", it is hierarchy stretched to the point of circularity in an ever turning double helix, the structure of all life.
Women would have to evolve past the rigid (another penile/penal reference) conditioning of seemingly endless centuries of patriarchal man-ipulations, but women are above all else, adaptable. We've had to be. Eventually, under the guidance of wise-women matriarchs, leaders/facilitators, men would have the opportunity to evolve beyond the drive of their instincts to constantly compare penises, bash other people bloody, and destroy everything to get at some particular treasure they feel they must have...from land to oil to gold to.....whatever.
To get to equality, women will have to spend some time in positions of real Authority, working out a workable balance of powers. I don't know if men will ever be able to rule without war, or with a touch light enough and nurturing enough to grow peace. Because peace, unlike war, is flexible, organic, subjective. It cannot really be imposed by delusions of "victory" or anything else. Unless it is carefully planted, tended, nurtured and allowed to grow in the consciousness and collective unconsciousness of humanity over a period of generations and generations, in an environment that is hospitable for it, it will always be only a temporary cease-fire.
Peace will take complete catastrophe, entropy, and/or world wide socio-political-religious breakdown for this passing of power/authority to take place. Man/men loath to share power with anyone, especially with women. We are the first and last "other" to which man/men can compare themselves favorably, even if that is only their fantasy, and feel better about themselves in their weaknesses and unending insecurity.
There can be no security or peace when the unquellable drive to possess and dominate is really the most powerful force in our world. Man/men will ever seek death, endings, destruction, in the cycles of life, even if only to rebuild his own sand castles for his own refuge and glorification. In its place, this may be necessary, tearing down and returning to dust in order to build again. But as the dominant force, it simply becomes a perpetual cycle of repeating the same things while constantly expecting different results.
No. Under conditions as they are, real peace is not achievable. Peace is not something to be "achieved". It is rather a small seedling pushing with all its might to break through the crusty walls of human consciousness to grow into the Tree of Life that would nurture and nourish our world and all in it. Do we dare to plant such a thing? Would we eat of its fruit as if it had never been forbidden us?
"Now let me dare to open wide the gates past which men's steps have ever flinching trod......" -Goethe’s Foust.
A.Crogh........................>/<
Reminds me of the 60's, peace man or I blow your brains out! I am ok and your not. We will never see, I am ok and your ok. Great leaders have to much pride and each thinks he is all knowing. To many people and not enough resources. Knowledge, LOL! We don't even know the basics like who we are, where we come from or where are we going. Its not hard, but humans make it hard. Watch children and learn, they have the answers until there learn hate from adults. Teach and preach love, but disagree with me and I'll kill you. Is peace possible, hell now. If it was Eve wouldn't touched that apple and her two sons might have gotten along a little better. What if everybody world wide could live by the Ten Commandments, would there be peace then, hell yes! But it want happen in your lifetime.
This comment has 3 replies.
0 Nerd-Its
Applying morality to the global community.
It seems to me that the problem is not well posed because wars, or at least some conflicts, are inevitable. I think even pacifists realize that.
We should rather ponder about when wars are acceptable and what kind of wars. When do wars bring benefits that outweigh the obvious ruin and devastation they bring?
Humans seem to master this concept better on other levels of society. For example almost every orderly society approves of conflicts between a police force and enemy players often labelled the “criminal”. There are no peace rallies in defence of child molesters and murderers against their control by the police force. This kind of conflict is accepted by most people. However, not all policed societies are appealing. For example, the ones that rest on laws based on irrational religious principles or made by a corrupted establishment can be very nasty.
The lack of a higher authority on a global scale makes international conflicts different. Some think therefore that the solution is in an international governing body like the UN. I think this is interesting but practically doesn’t seem to always be effective. Furthermore, I can easily foresee a higher governing body that is suboptimal and even harmful or at least not better than others big players that influence global order like powerful countries or big religions.
This leads me to think that it is _not_ who is the controlling force that is most important, but rather how it governs with regard to war and coercion. Similarly to policing on other levels of society, I think the main property of a governing body that achieves minimum war levels and maximum prosperity is that it has a comprehensive law system that stems from a rational morality based on freedom and harm reduction. Most of the moral rules of the kind required are self evident, often innately apparent to humans, recurrent in orderly societies or religions and restrict individual liberty the least possible. They are laws like the golden rule. They insure no one attacks or harms others unless it is in self defence, and proportionately to the potential harm from the attacker. Also working moral systems recognise the importance of precedents and of setting examples (positive and negative, always act admirably and condemn harshly and punish unambiguously immorality). If you attack a player, you should expect that it would be right that you be attacked if the roles were reversed. Also, I cannot emphasize enough, how “ends-justify-means” strategies must be completely forbidden for this kind of moral framework to succeed. Any group that starts making exceptions for itself becomes indistinguishable from a criminal as almost all crimes of international scale are performed under the illusion of aiming for a greater end. (even psychopaths often think they are doing the right thing) Groups that think they can temporarily shun the basic moral rules should be recognised as the enemy. Groups that try to impose abitrary rules on other groups that are not based on harm reduction and freedom should be punished.
It is no coincidence that humans have evolved a sense of morality as rational morality is an optimal solution to conflict reduction and avoidance and is thus highly beneficial. I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t achieve this on an international level. Many questions remain about how best to implement morality in a global community. Should it be based on a higher governing body like the UN or should it be left decentralised and enforced by treaties and temporary coalitions?
0 Nerd-Its
We can't even be at peace with animals
Humans can't even begin by being at peace with other animals! Leo Tolstoy says "As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields." Think about it. . . we kill billions of animals each year, and most of them are harmless enough to us. Yet we don't extend them compassion. If we can't peacefully co-exist with them or leave them in peace, what chance do we have of co-existing with people who are often hostile to us?
This comment has 2 replies.
0 Nerd-Its
Paradigm of Hope
The scope of that is huge. When you say peace does that include civil strife or minor skirmishes? Also do you define lasting peace as eternal, or for a really long time?
Given a hundred years as 'lasting' and the bulk of people being free from strife as 'peace,' I would use the Pax Romana as an example of lasting peace. While there was still conflict, it was largely along the lines of brief civil disturbance when compared to the Gallic Campaign that preceded it. In the pantheon of conflict I think it is an excellent demonstration of peace.
If 50 years is 'lasting' in the modern world, and the majority of citizens in a modern state is free of strife or violence in their day to day lives is 'peace,' I suggest that the US and Europe have had lasting peace since WWII.
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Peace by Eye.Of.Sage :: NR6 :: Show
Peace is not possible. Humans are animals who are designed to compete. Competition promotes conflict.
[This should have been an article or something.]