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Thoughts on peace...
Nov. 9th, 2008 11:09 am...inspired by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telynor's thought-provoking collection of quotations on the subject.
First off, love and peace actually have very little to do with each other. Love can provoke as easily as it calms, and the violent deaths that have been caused by some form of love, love denied or love unrequited or love frustrated or love enraged, must surely be beyond counting. Love often brings an end to peace, and inspires us to fight for the thing or the person we love. So not all works of love are works of peace, or vice versa.
And anyway, what is "peace"? The opposite of war? Simply not fighting? The problem we have here, as with "freedom," is that a name has been given to a basically abstract and largely negative concept, thus making it seem like a concrete positive thing. It is a positive thing (in the sense of a thing that has a definite existence) when people disagree. It is a positive thing when they disagree strongly enough to fight about it. There are two ways to prevent fighting; one is to enforce a peace, through fear or superior force, and the other is to ensure that nobody thinks anything worth fighting for. It's hard to see the upside of either of those approaches...but there is no third way. It's simply not possible to magic everyone in the world into agreeing with each other and being content with their lot for ever more. If it were, we wouldn't be human.
I always get into trouble around this time of year for pointing out that poppy-wearing and wreath-laying and speech-making have not prevented the world from being soaked in bloodshed pretty much continuously since 1945, and this is why. A war is something. Peace is simply the absence of something. I am passionately non-violent and anti-war (note the phrasing), but how much of that is because nothing of mine has been threatened in my life? Would I have the courage not to fight if it were? I hope so, and yet I don't know if that is courage or simply stupidity. If it is stupid not to fight when one is threatened, how can one claim that peace is worth striving for? If it is acceptable for me to fight for my way of life, how can it be unacceptable for someone else to fight for theirs? And if it is acceptable for anyone at all to fight, then what is the virtue of peace?
I honestly don't know.
Comments not disabled: please don't bite.
telynor's thought-provoking collection of quotations on the subject.First off, love and peace actually have very little to do with each other. Love can provoke as easily as it calms, and the violent deaths that have been caused by some form of love, love denied or love unrequited or love frustrated or love enraged, must surely be beyond counting. Love often brings an end to peace, and inspires us to fight for the thing or the person we love. So not all works of love are works of peace, or vice versa.
And anyway, what is "peace"? The opposite of war? Simply not fighting? The problem we have here, as with "freedom," is that a name has been given to a basically abstract and largely negative concept, thus making it seem like a concrete positive thing. It is a positive thing (in the sense of a thing that has a definite existence) when people disagree. It is a positive thing when they disagree strongly enough to fight about it. There are two ways to prevent fighting; one is to enforce a peace, through fear or superior force, and the other is to ensure that nobody thinks anything worth fighting for. It's hard to see the upside of either of those approaches...but there is no third way. It's simply not possible to magic everyone in the world into agreeing with each other and being content with their lot for ever more. If it were, we wouldn't be human.
I always get into trouble around this time of year for pointing out that poppy-wearing and wreath-laying and speech-making have not prevented the world from being soaked in bloodshed pretty much continuously since 1945, and this is why. A war is something. Peace is simply the absence of something. I am passionately non-violent and anti-war (note the phrasing), but how much of that is because nothing of mine has been threatened in my life? Would I have the courage not to fight if it were? I hope so, and yet I don't know if that is courage or simply stupidity. If it is stupid not to fight when one is threatened, how can one claim that peace is worth striving for? If it is acceptable for me to fight for my way of life, how can it be unacceptable for someone else to fight for theirs? And if it is acceptable for anyone at all to fight, then what is the virtue of peace?
I honestly don't know.
Comments not disabled: please don't bite.