On Peace

One of the reasons why I think we don't see very much peace in the world, today and throughout history, is that we don't really have a good definition of it. Looking at Wikipedia and the ever-handy Answers.com, peace is defined as the absence of hostility, a time with no war, freedom from quarrels and disagreement, and inner contentment. There is a further meaning of growth and prosperity.

The problem I have with this is that peace is largely defined as an absence rather than as a thing itself. How can we hope to achieve an absence and hold it with any consistency? Can you even imagine what the world would look like in this state? Images of peace in the popular imagination come down to pastoral scenes, montages of children playing and smiling faces; they are nice scenes, but they are not what our stories are about. We view it as a kind of unchanging state, with nothing of note happening. It is only a lull between passing storms. In that form, lasting peace is against our nature, and the nature of the world. It is impossible without neutering the soul of humanity, and without taming nature to a degree that seems unlikely.

War, or conflict, is a much clearer set of ideas. Can you imagine a world at war forever? I think it's not so hard. Certainly there has been a lot of effort put into making stories that explore that sort of thing. It's not something that we want, necessarily, but it's something that we understand and flirt with. It is popular to consider it an inevitable part of human nature. Humans are beasts and beasts destroy themselves; or worse, humans are viruses that consume everything to the point of extinction and then kill themselves fighting over the remains. Whether we like the idea or not, it is a core idea of our society. From that point of view, we adore conflict and war, and revel in the pain that it brings, in the strength it requires to survive, in the glory and the pity, both ghastly and ennobling. It's all very dramatic.

War will never end while people hate it so; it will only end when people come to love and embrace peace in terms equally dramatic. Peace understood as an absence cannot be embraced because there is nothing there to engage with. Peace needs to become a vital, active, aggressive thing (see my earlier post On Violence). People need to be truly powerful and to experience their strength in their daily lives. People need to find their own dynamic purposes and to connect with each other. We often forget to mention that as much as humans destroy, we also create a good deal. We made all this. We will make something else. Peace comes from embracing human nature, not disowning it.

When peace becomes as dynamic a metaphor as war has been, one that we use to show our determination and focus of will, among many other things, then it will be easy to leave war behind and change our idea of hostility as a basic assumption in human interaction. Emotions like fear and anger are constructive powers that can lead us to overcome great obstacles when we learn to be strong.

Are you skeptical of what I'm saying? Do you see huge holes of logic? Do you have trouble seeing how this could ever be? Well, I have trouble, too, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Just because it's different from all we know of history doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means that we have to put as much energy into it as we have into war and conflict. War is only easier because we have so much practice at it. It is only inevitable because we don't do something else. Which is why peace defined as an absence will never grow; we still remain focused on war. Looking for the reasons behind war is useless. Look instead for what we want to become.

So how am I defining peace? Peace is an active process of flow (around, over and through obstacles) and aggressive creativity (at every level, from personal to global), cooperation and change. It is dynamic, exciting and unpredictable. It looks for the best result for all concerned in the present and the future (to the seventh generation?). It is concerned with the individual as the key component of the group. It has room for everyone. It is brave and adaptable to all manner of circumstances. It makes people happier just to participate, just to know that it exists.

Wow, pretty cool, huh? So how do you do that? I don't know, exactly. It's not a job for just one person. It's a shared creation. It's something that we have to define together. It requires that people trust themselves. It requires that people use their true strength. A basic supposition of peace is that everyone does their best at all times, even those whose best is pretty dreadful.

What I can do is to try and create images of this peace, to help others imagine what it could be like. That is what I want to do.

What do you want?