Excerpt #34 from my book, Interconnected, Interrelated & Interdependent, Like It or Not:
REDEFINING PEACE
Of our propensity towards war, Emery Reves has written: “It is a mysterious characteristic of human nature that we are prepared to spend anything, to sacrifice everything, to give all we have and are to wage war, and that we are never prepared to take more than a first beginning; adopt more than minimum measures when we seek to organize peace. When will our religions, our poets, and our national leaders give up the lie that death is more heroic than life?”
As we attempt to “give up the lie” and endeavor to unravel today’s hostilities, it is necessary that we simultaneously involve ourselves in formulating a conceptual framework that redefines peace as something more than just the absence of war.
It is a task demanded of us by our growing and evolving civilization.
As war is symptomatic of a consciousness that is being increasingly questioned and beginning to fade, then a more visionary definition of peace would include a description of the consciousness which is beginning to emerge.
We wish that its pace would quicken so we can invest our time, resources, and funds into so many other areas in great need.
In distinguishing between a struggle for a just and secure peace and only a new balance of power, Woodrow Wilson, addressing the Senate in 1917, stated: “There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace . . . a peace among equals . . .”
True peace, like war, is a symptom.
While war is the culmination of our confrontational and competitive excesses, peace is symptomatic of all that is constructive, cooperative, and nurturing.
Whereas war is the most debilitating addiction by which humankind suffers, peace represents the most wholesome expression of the human spirit by which humankind is sustained.
Each represents much more than the absence of the other.
Indeed, they are the antithesis of each other.
There is a very significant aspect to this differentiation.
It is one that moves us beyond merely attempting to eliminate war to one that encourages us to aggressively seek peace.
The shift is subtle but important, for it involves a transition from opposition (to war) to affirmation (of peace).
As a result, our deliberations occur within a more positive environment, and accordingly, our chances for success increase.
This is a conceptual framework that inspires us to move out of the neutral zone in the direction of true peace.
Again, this is not just about wars between nations.
It’s about “mini-wars” that go on between us every day, everywhere, over everything imaginable.
Today we are beginning to realize that we are each but a part of a system of relationships that embrace our family, friends, neighbors, business associates, groups and organizations, community, nation, and whole family of nations.
No single object in nature exists independently.
It is apparent that there is no constructive place for hostilities in such a pattern.
There are those who have gone beyond questioning the necessity for a new world order and have begun giving it definition and expression in their own lives.
For it is obvious that we cannot revolt against the outward effects of a hostile world while continuing to inwardly nourish and preserve their causes.
We must first establish within ourselves the peace we ask of the world.
By reason of our very existence, we are compelled to conform to the behavior demands of the reality in which we exist.
That is, if we are to live in accord with each other and our environment.
When we violate the dictates of our reality, we inwardly and outwardly suffer at the hands of our own abuse.
The battle between that which sustains our individual lives and that which destroys them is one which each of us is mostly in a position to control personally.
There are exceptions, of course, where events occur beyond our control.
Those who have become aware of this simple truth have begun altering the patterns of their lives to conform with behavior that sustains life.
They have begun transitioning from abusive to nurturing behavior, from the loneliness of self-centeredness to the joys of sharing, and from the suffering of excessiveness to the comfort of moderation.
Their metamorphosis has resulted, not in pain from relinquishing destructive habits, but in the joy one experiences from health, from improved relationships, and from a growing awareness of one’s higher potential.
Those involved in this transformation have begun to know, not only peace in their lives, but the freedom and security that follow.
“Peace rules the day where reason rules the mind.” (William Collins)