One wish: World Peace? Maybe, Maybe Not

If this is aimed at me, humanitarianism in the sense of actively seeking to assist others is a thing I support totally. It is pretty much the basis of my career (secondary school teacher).

You're talking in the here and now, Bob, and not seeing the power of aspiration.

Churchill died in 1965, and no doubt made his quote much earlier than that. At the time of his death, WW II had ended only 20 years before, we were in the middle of the Cold War and had been to the brink of nuclear annihilation over Cuba only three years before, and the Vietnam War was just starting to get up a head of steam.

Churchill had a lot to be insecure about.

But times change and all the things listed above are fading into the dim and distant memory. They're becoming old history. I think if Churchill were alive today he'd see things differently.

Those who promote war as "inevitable" are looking at the past with no vision of the future. Short sightedness and tunnel vision, based on low aspiration and lack of belief in the basic goodness of people will always produce the doomsday scenario.

I said it would take a long time to change the human view of the world. It would be a long, slow process that would take many generations to achieve. Ours would be a good place to start that process, don't you think..?






If you read my first post, I said I think that as the instinct for war dies out, the greater, higher elements of human capacity will rise proportionately. Try to see it from another point of view.....
If we take the fear of external danger out of our lives, then won't it make it easier to be more comfortable in our own skins..?

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I hate it when this happens..... a really good conversation gets going with lots of interesting, thoughtful comment (certain 'contributions' notwithstanding) and now I have to be getting off to work. Boooo..

Thanks for discussing, folks, and looking forward to seeing what the OP has to say when he comes back.

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Striving for peace is always good, no doubt, but again, such striving needs to be tempered by the sure realisation that not all people view peace as good or desirable, or, if not that, then the peace they desire is not a good or desirable peace (for example, world wide shariah, or communism, or capitalism, or Christianity etc).




There is nothing in human history to suggest that the desire to kill others will die out. Nor, for that matter, is there anything to suggest that the desire to foist our view on others, will cease any time soon.

One thing about utopianites that always amazes me is how they fail to see the gross egoism inherent in their view - that is, they seem to say, "the world will be at peace only when everyone understands that I am right." The Politically Correct are a case in point: they are amongst the least tolerant people I have ever encountered.




I personally would not have thought so. People living with the fear of death often seem to live more than those of us who have no need to fear death, or so it seems (although I would add that this is often predicated upon believing in something bigger than themselves, be it religious, political or social).

Given human nature, world peace would probably be more easily acheived via oppression than via means people usually associate it with. But even that would only be temporary at best. I guess I'm more of a pessimist about this, but I won't say it is impossible.

Although in some aspects I believe this to be a true statement... The posed topic was (let's face it) imaginative one... But metaphorically wishful. My response as well as others were based on the seemingly unrealistic and impossible goal that it may be.

The goal of world peace is NOT the focal point. The journey and critical thought processes of what would make world peace Is. Looking at the fundamentals, as Jennifer laid out, allows us to learn from the patterns of negativity that exists and continues to prevail. We, although not being able to fully change what is and has been trending in this world at times... can keep (through activism and awareness) such global negativism in the spotlight in effort to hold off what could be an even worse reality. Just as it is understood that for peace...sometimes... war is necessary... it is also even more so true... that there can and should be better ways maintaining a peace that may have been achieved through violence and war... without resorting to such things again. The problem is... that there is not solidified solution to this formula for peace... just as the world changes...so does the formula for STRiving to achieve the "impossible" sense of world peace. I feel that there is a baseline structure... A list of fundamental stepping stones that exists... that should be used in all endeavors of world and or small scale peace. If we can ever lock into this list as a planet(of which I do not claim to even begin to know)...I think that even our conflicts will began to take on more productive and less catastrophic outcomes.




I sport the hippie mentality... hehe. Can't speak to my smarts... lol... but I hope my more detailed thoughts are useful.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

Peace can only be achieved when all goals are made common and the path to reach those goals has been chosen unanimously. There will be peace when we all become one super-macro-organism like a Hive Mind society. Any base instincts will hit a logjam in function much like an error line in programming. We can be at peace with everyone when we ARE everyone, when we give up our individuality and become part of the hive. The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Once we all are this, we will be at peace. You just wait until our technology achieves the ability to radiate our thoughts via WiFi and everyone is hooked in to the Mindnet. The age of man will be at an end. The Age of Humanity will begin

I still think a faked alien attack is underway, planned by the government of course. Give the world one common enemy and together we fight. That's the only Earth peace we will have, but then there will be a world of the worlds...

The Machiavellian treatise would be a good place to start. "the perfect leader will be one who inspires love AND fear in those that follow him, however there will be times when the leader cannot have both. It is then that he must chose fear, for a man will cross you if he loves you, but he will not if he fears you" (paraphrased). War is not necessary if your adversary fears you. How can you make one who is not afraid of death be afraid of you? Threaten his afterlife with his own superstitions. You must "become the God". You must be the divine arbitrator...

A world of the worlds huh? Hmmm... interesting.

Now there's a future world to instil genuine terror in the hearts and minds of the sane - better to be dead than morphed into the Borg.

The hell with sanity! The only use for humanity now is to become viable cogs of the ultramachine to dominate the universe. Once the universe is conquered, we'll shear the fabric of space-time and dive into regions of existence which befuddle all rationality, where math and physics no longer explain anything, and the war against the natural disorder will begin again... and then again... and again ad infinitum!

Honestly though... if you could see and feel and think and hear every single other thought in the world, exist in a world where you can fight and never die, or love and never stop, live and be happy, or even have an algorithm to take apart the discord of the human condition... why not? Is our humanity so important that we must keep all its horrors just for the sake of being human? What if being human just isn't so great after all? Why NOT be Borg? To the Borg, we probably look Klingon, so beastial and aberrant...

Hmm, sanity is possibly overrated, but I am happy to pursue that elusive and possibly undesirable thing, for the time being at least. Whether this makes me sane or not is difficult to tell.



If others seek to enter a hive mind, I suppose they are free to do so. Personally, I will happily continue in my individuality to what ever extent I currently have it (as I think we are all morphed into the Borg of our culture to some degree).

As I see it, world peace does not mean that we all become "as one", or that every human beings will subscribe to the same creed or doctrine. Such would be to claim that it is the letter that gives life, rather than the spirit.

There will always be a beauty in difference. Buddhist symbolism has identified gold with the undifferentiated nature of enlightenment, and the lotus flower with the individual suchness of each human being. So in depictions of the Pure Land, the countryside is covered in golden lotus flowers.

The same is suggested within the Christian tradition, by C. S. Lewis, who has said......life is not like a river but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

Anyway, as I see it, such a peace could never be imposed. It must come organically, as the Gospel of St Mark has it....."the earth (must) bring forth fruits of itself".

Which involves the subject of "free will"......which is nothing but the will of the Divine freed of the passions and impulses arising from the false ego. The so-called "free will" of the murderer or thief is not a "free" will at all, but one that is constricted and obscured by the false sense of ego, and its attendant desires."

So one is free when it is said "not I, but Christ lives in me".