There is a Meme.

[merlinofchaos]

It goes something like this:

Someone posts that they want to create a Meme, and that meme would be a wish for peace. And the author requests that everyone link to this post with the phrase "I wish for peace."

There is no message at the link.

No noble rhetoric about what peace means.

No ideology about how to achieve peace.

No honest talk about the horror that is war.

Only the naive and ignorant wish for something as ephemeral as peace alone.

But peace is impossible in human history. There is no peace as long as there is freedom. Because there are always people who succumb to the forces of greed. The desire for money, the desire for power. The debasing, internal need to be better than someone else. And, if they manage that, then the debasing, internal desire to be better than everyone else. To know that I'm right, you're wrong. To know that my ideology is right and your ideology is wrong. For these people, it really is us vs them.

And in times of peace, these people float to the top and destabilize things.

Peace is a noble, important cause. I too wish for peace. But I feel it's important to understand what peace means and what peace costs.

Peace is not cheap. Peace is not easy. Peace is not free. And peace, no matter how hard you wish, will not happen by wishing.

To quote a popular science fiction television show, "Sometimes peace is just another word for surrender."

Comments

[mallen.livejournal.com]

IMO, the reason we do not have peace is because we are not dealing with reasonable men of good faith. To me there is a qualified difference between the absence of armed conflict and peace.