Tonight's Anniversary, and the Evolution of Peace

Hi Everyone,

Well, you are all probably aware of the anniversary we observe tonight. Six years ago tonight, shock and awe was visited on Iraq. The reasons for this and the controversy surrounding the War in Iraq are not the central issues of this post. My purpose is to take this anniversary to talk about the opposite of war: peace.

As some bumper stickers proclaim, "Peace, An idea whose time has come". That is a pretty accurate assessment of the process going on. I have spent a lot of time pondering questions of war and peace and good and evil. And something has occured to me, and what occured to me is the central theme of this post.

It occured to me that peace, like many other things in life, has had to evolve over time. Like democracy, even, which had only existed in a few scattered places in the past, but then began to fully bud with the foundation of the US, so too has peace had to go through an evolution process, often a long and imperceptible growth process.

In the past, fighting was a very simple way to settle problems. It is an instinct, a primitive urge, which is probably why children often get in fights. Back then, in the caveman days, all they could do was swing their fists or maybe swing a club at someone. Without many other ways of communicating, this was an easy way to settle disputes.

As societies developed, these fights involved more and more people, hence the development of war. As time went on, these wars got larger and larger. The tools of war became more sophisticated, and thus, more destructive. People moved from clubs and rocks, to swords, to guns, to rifles.

Last century, the 20th Century, was one of almost continual warfare (the word continual means literally nonstop). In 1914, World War I broke out. At this point, a new level of warfare was reached. What makes this significant is all the new technological advancements in ammunition: tanks, poison gas, machine guns, so on. The business of war was far more catastrophic at this point.

In the aftermath of this war, which cost millions of lives and left a generation and the continent of Europe in shambles, some new depth was reached. People with the most toxic, the most hateful ideas were able to seize power. They utilized the most ruthless methods, put so many under subjugation that soon, another war broke out, World War II.

The human cost of this episode was far more horrible, far more evil, than anyone could imagine: a machine of death, a Holocaust which crushed 6 million lives, truly hell on earth. This was, without a doubt, the darkest chapter in human history. And still another depth had been reached. By the end of the war, scientists had discovered a new weapon: the atomic bomb.

For nearly 50 years after 1945, the world was slowly torn apart by a Cold War. For all that time, the US and the Soviet Union pushed their ideologies and those who would toe the line for it in poor nations around the world. In places like Iran, Guatemala, Hungary, Cuba, and more significantly in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Capitalist and Communist superpowers backed leaders, often brutal ones, were backed to forward ideology, regardless of consequences.

Then still another frontier was reached on the weapons front: nuclear weapons. For four decades, the prospect of a total war involving these new weapons was a terrifying reality. One of these superpowers was also an incredibly grim and repressive regime, which embraced an extremist view of the world and put down anyone who didn't accept it. This was the reality of life for nearly 50 years from 1946 to 1991.

And that was the 20th Century. The 21st Century has gotten off to quite a start. So far, we've had 9/11 and this new conflict, the War on Terror. Plus, now we have a whole new level of warfare: biochemical weapons, dirty bombs, anthrax. These are things that are worse than you could imagine in your worst nightmares, and people make them. They're out there. And all those nuclear weapons the Soviets used to have, they're out there too. All this adds up to make the next few years, perhaps the next few decades, a very treacherous landscape for us to navigate.

So we know what the stakes are, judging from this. So what's gone well? How has peace evolved? Well, pacifism has been an underground movement as early as WWI and probably earlier than that. During Vietnam, the revelation that one's own leaders could be wrong and could lie shocked many people, and galvanized a generation of people to resist war, en masse, for really the first time. Again, the revelation that the government has been corrupted has stirred up a painful, but worthwhile, questioning process, particularly in me.

Earlier, I likened the development of peace to the developing of democracy and our own country. Just as those men took a gamble that a government of, by, and for the people could work, so too can we now bet that a more peaceful, more just, more compassionate world, can exist. Until the time of the founding, a large, impoverished mass of peasants ruled by a single monarch was the accepted norm of government. Philosophers everywhere predicted that a democracy would fail. But a collection of people bet that they were wrong. And neither they nor the naysaying philosophers would live to see their bet pay off. But it did.

Do I, or anyone else have all the answers for how to make this peace possible? No. The world remains a threatening and dangerous place. There are threats that still need to be addressed. We need to stay strong and do what we have to to keep the decent people safe. Sometimes this requires the use of military and warfare. This is the central challenge of trying to create peace. Pacifism is a wonderful wish, but it is still only a wish. What do we do about the world as it is? Because it is this way, with some scumbags who would give anything to harm our country and others still roaming around out there. So how do we get from here to there?

No answer will be easy. This sort of "world peace" that many people talk about, while possible in theory, is likely to be along, long way off. But, again like the Founding Fathers, their vision and dream didn't materialize right away. It didn't even materialize fully in their lifetimes. Their vision is still evolving. But while the Founding Fathers' dream took long to evolve, and had its flaws, who today can doubt that there is something to it.

I don't wanna get really preachy here, but I just wanna share this thought, cause I think it's important. My point is that often, people have written goals off as impossible. Sooner or later, there was that impossible reality staring them in the face. It seems that when people decide that as the saying goes, "Where there's a will, there's a way." I often end up repeating this to myself.

So why do I keep bringing up the Founding Fathers and America? Again, I don't mean to get overly preachy, but it seems to me that this country can be as helpful for this purpose as anyone else. Remember how I detailed how I have fallen in love with my country again. For all of its flaws and mishaps, I think this country still is one of the most conducive to the peace, justice and compassion I spoke of earlier. Is there work to be done? Yeah. But as Martin Luther King said, "The moral arch of the universe does bend toward justice." It does, and wherever the path ahead takes this observer in the coming years, I will do what it takes to turn these lofty words and dreams and quotes into hard, solid reality.

This is the Daily Reeder, Over&out.