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The Elusive Nature of Peace in the Modern Era


Can we have Peace in the Modern era? What would it take to bring about world peace? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the elusive quality of peace. Specifically, after the beheading of a journalist named James Foley, I wondered why a group of people would resort to such a barbarous and medieval act. In the name of religion, it’s sad to admit that many of our most barbarous acts of violence take place under the auspices of religious fervor. Why can’t some bunch of zealots start a Jihad for Peaceful Co-existence? It just doesn’t happen this way. Peace has the distinction of being all things to all people. The ever-changing definition reveals the subjective nature of peace.
 
My ruminations have led to the idea that human nature can never realize the concept of a world at peace. Our peace is not the same peace sought by those who live in different parts of the globe. Our foreign allies must struggle with a different definition of world peace. The type of peace we all know comes solely from the end of days. It is a type of final solution to the question of peace. Yet there is a separate and unique peace that eludes us.


 Perhaps Woodrow Wilson sought to uncover the elusive quality when he formed the idea that became the League of Nations. And after World War II, the United Nations charter has continued to struggle to define world peace. The UN has done miraculous things. It has helped to stabilize fledgling nations and to protect children at risk of starvation, poverty and war.

Yet they cannot control the conflicts that pop up as Barack Obama describes them like the game “Whac-A-Mole"! One conflict arises as another is pushed down. That is the nature and elusive quality we find when seeking a peaceful end to conflicts around the world.

In the last fifty years, there have been major conflicts in the Middle East. Vietnam was unstable for over a quarter-century. China has developed a type of government that represses most free speech-witness the Tiananmen Square uprising. Russia has not been able to effectively govern without some conflict or other to distract its people. There are so many obstacles preventing the world from achieving a true and lasting peace that one is tempted to say it’s impossible.

Perhaps that is so. Our own human nature reveals we are inclined to conflict at any given point in the timeline of human existence. And often we must admit that religion and religious clashes are used to prevent groups of people from living in harmony next to each other.  But the elephant in the room is always the W.M.D. The irony is that our Nuclear Bombs are ostensibly used to deter wars and to promote and restore the balance of power to freedom-loving people everywhere.
 
 

Martin Luther King said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Perhaps we would convey a more realistic notion if the leading world powers sought to find ways of restoring justice before invoking ways to find peace among nations. There doesn’t seem to be a consensus of the definition of peace. And when we view science and rational thinking as true unbiased arbiters of social justice, then it’s quite possible that peace may come only as we end our reign on this planet.

Perhaps in the long arc of the moral universe, there is hope for a lasting and just peace for all nations. But even more realistic is the thought that one man’s just and lasting peace may be another man’s spiritual imprisonment. That bodes ill for the short term, yet in the end, there will be peace in the valley. Whether it comes when the last man is left standing or lying peacefully in death is the final question. Perhaps only then may the lion lay down with the lamb.

 

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