peace – thotbag

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Is-peace-always-possible/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

Of course, peace is always possible. The challenge is making it desirable enough for all parties to commit to making it possible.

Peace is otherwise impossible when one or more parties refuse to accept compromise as the only path toward achieving any form of peace, whether temporary or lasting.

We have to accept the reality that some people are so broken they would choose to burn the world to ashes rather than give up their power or relinquish their power designs, and so that means the only path to peace is through the destruction of those types. Sadly and ironically, the argument of an escalation of conflict as the only path to peace is validated by the entrenchment of those who endorse imposition as their means of achieving peace through subjugation.

For some people, reason as a path to peace is rejected in favour of catering to hubris. Sometimes, people are so confident in their ability to overpower those they believe entitled to victimize that they will adamantly reject compromise even upon their final breath.

Peace requires giving up at least some of one’s power, while conflict escalations are almost always about exercising, protecting, or expanding power.

It is easy to become cynical in a world filled with so much violence that there has never been a period in human history where wars have not been waged, at least somewhere on the planet. It’s easy to think humans are an irreparably self-destructive species, but that’s a perceptual choice.

The reality is that although our species has never been “war-free,” humanity has predominately existed in a state of peace. Most people are comfortable with enough personal power to live peaceful lives.

However, a small percentage of humans are unsatisfied with that level of personal security and require much more power to quell their insecurities. Their antics are far more successful at capturing public attention because conflict is like a drug that enraptures people’s imaginations, while peace is boring. With this skewed mindset, it’s easy to believe peace is impossible.

To make peace possible on a universal (or global) level, we must address the fundamental elements giving rise to conflict, which begin with addressing factors that undermine psychological health. It’s a massive task that is conceptually simple but logistically impossible today. Whether we will mature enough as a species to achieve optimal mental health sufficiently to mitigate the aggravating factors for conflict escalation is a toss-up. We are currently on a trajectory toward extreme aggravation and conflict escalation that could dramatically reshape the human landscape.

It isn’t very comforting to contemplate how we might survive our challenges over the next few decades. If we can maintain most of the trappings of modern democratic society, our experiences will encourage systems that can address our psychological issues in healthier ways.

I want to believe that once we emerge from the other end of the dark tunnel of regression we have entered, we will be much closer to reaching a new bar for global peace.

We have cultivated it by allowing our societies to grow into corrupt monstrosities that people have no choice but to struggle to survive within.

We have placed a physical resource like money at the top of our values and have dehumanized people every step of the way. At the same time, we convert human beings into disposable commodities.

We are dehumanizing ourselves at every level by endorsing a system that devalues the ineffable qualities of humanity because they are not viewed as profitable by industry. Instead, we have ways of further dehumanizing people by leveraging their despair against them with global institutions that dictate dogma to follow without question.

Everything has become reduced to a competition for tentative comforts that bear no intrinsic value or meaning beyond serving the immediate gratification of shallow desires.

None of this contributes toward the growth of those qualities of humanity that we value. None of this brings us together as people in common cause for the betterment of all. Everything is catered toward the propulsion of individuals we stratify with blind worship.

When we replace human qualities we cherish with an avatar, like money as a metric for determining their value, we become divorced from our humanity.

While living in a world that views wealth as an indicator of all positive human qualities, people inevitably start to develop disparaging views toward their neighbours because everyone has been left fighting over the same scarce resources that are left behind by the plutocrats dehumanizing all of us with a system they parasitically siphon of wealth at our expense.

We can only live so long with oppressive conditions before the effects grow out of control and well into making our environments breeding grounds for chaos.

Misanthropy is just an early stage of widespread systemic collapse.

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora. For answers to additional questions, my profile can be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/profile/Antonio-Amaral-1/“

Rate this:

Rate this: