Is Peace Possible?

[judgeposer]

[...] So I'm looking for ideas.

In Hookah Forum's Serious Discussion, the notion of whether peace is possible has been danced around frequently, and I think that most people in Western civilization believe that world peace will never be possible. I disagree, and I may write more on that in this thread if you respond. What do you think? Are we just violent creatures, doomed to bash each other with sticks until we're all injured beyond repair, because the stick has proved so often to be the easiest and quickest solution to the challenges we face? Or are we capable of more than that, and are the obstacles to peace not people themselves, but the Westphalian state system that makes the imperative for national interest more important than an imperative for international interests?

I think that we definitely can't define peace as simply the absence of war... peace requires some degree of equality. [...] I tend to think of "world peace", as an aspiration, to be the point when the international interest is just as important to people as the national interest. [...]

The problem is states.

[...] That's an interesting perspective, certainly with something to it. Even though it's sort of my vocation in life to try and help people live without fear, I'm probably the worst person in the world to do it, because I don't have morals or fears (sock monkeys aside). Instead I have principles.

I don't refrain from killing and stealing because I think it would be morally wrong, nor because I'm afraid to go to prison... I refrain because we're all individual people, we deserve equality, and to think I have some special right to infringe on someone else's equality would be arrogant. I don't want to be arrogant, therefore I refrain.

I guess that would just have to be the last fear to be tackled, making the impossibly hypothetical assumption of an eventual Utopian world, haha. Naturally I think it would be better if we didn't need that fear, but you're absolutely right, it serves an important role in society for maintaining order. [...]

But fear of punishment isn't really what I mean when I define peace as the ability to live without fear- nor is it reasonable to expect people to be able to live without fear of natural disasters, disease, and other unavoidable tragedies. Living without fear is when you know that you can criticize people who have power over you without being punished for it, being able to know that you are likely to have enough food and water to survive the next year, being able to conceive a child without the probability of infant mortality. Ultimately, living without fear in the way I mean, is the freedom to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If we define peace as an absence of fear, then asking whether peace is possible rests ultimately on someone's subjective assessment of whether they have fear? -no Perhaps our true inquiry would be whether someone has a reasonable belief to fear. I haven't yet thought of a way of constructing a definition and inquiry that does not depend on someone's interpretation of their surroundings. To escape that, lawyers have created the "reasonable man," which displaces someone's subjectivity with with some hypothetical person of ultimate reasonableness. Obviously this has its shortcomings too, but its a good way to initiate inquiry without having to deal with systemic subjectivity.

No matter, Gia, I do believe that your definition does adhere to what most mean when they ask this same question. Ideally, those who have an interest in asking the possibility of and trying to achieve world peace have at heart some sense of a conflict-free environment, which we can surmise does not have war, famine, intentional destruction, and other associated man-made tumult.

Having said that, however, I think you've set up a false dichotomy by asking:

Are we just violent creatures, doomed to bash each other with sticks until we're all injured beyond repair, because the stick has proved so often to be the easiest and quickest solution to the challenges we face? Or are we capable of more than that, and are the obstacles to peace not people themselves, but the Westphalian state system that makes the imperative for national interest more important than an imperative for international interests?

While I have not studied peace or even whether we can achieve wold peace, as with any question of this intellectual regard, I begin with a conception of the human person--of what we "are." For instance, if we begin with the premise that the human person is an inherently quarrelsome creature, then of course our answer to whether we can achieve peace will result in the negative, thus ending our inquiry with a conclusion necessitated by our conception of the human person--our first premise. So, what we take ourselves "to be" can condition and sometimes determine the answers to these otherwise perennial questions.

I don't believe that we are inherently violent; I believe quite the opposite. I believe humans are a social creature. From this initial premise, I can place into context if not also explain then the human need to build communities, to have and use language, and to develop organizing institutions and rules in the form of governments and laws--the human "impulse." Through time, human communities have grown and solidified in the form of nation-states, which you cite as a possible inhibitor to achieving actual peace.

Even given my conception of humans as social creatures - as those that need to live in community - I don't see war contradicting that. Part of man's socialty is his willingness to fight others that pose a threat to that way of life. So, in the smallest of aggregates, we can see this play out in situations that require that we defend ourselves against an attacker, e.g. a mugger or similar assailant. We have designed our laws to recognize this as a "right," a right to defend oneself against an unjust attack. In communities, or even larger, as nations, we can (and have in the American experiment) give(n) that same recognition. Our countries wage war (obviously not the preemptive kind) defensively, to protect our existence when we believe it is threatened by another. This, I believe, bears out our personal right to self-defense, just on a larger scale, directed at whole other communities or nations. We still have the problem, of course, of why attack? - why did that aggressor become such? So, while the victim might have justification to repel his attacker, what placed the assailant in his position? Some combination of circumstance and free-will, I would suggest.

While I hoped to share something lengthier, perhaps even more rigorous, I think my answer to your question is clear at this point: our right to self-defense poses significant inhibition to achieving world peace.

Now, I don't mean to sanction every militaristic conflict as the playing out on the world stage our right of self-defense - because I don't believe that's the case either. But, as a theorietical beginning, I do believe we have to grapple with the problem of the causes of conflict, whether circumstance or the simple desire to dominate. Answers like inquity or for dominance don't seem to me to account for the freedom to choose something else--but perhaps that's where I'm wrong/short-sighted.

[gaia.plateau]

Because we don't live in an utopian society/world, true peace will never be possible. Whenever there are differences between people, whether it be racial, socioeconomic, ideological, etc. there will be people who will do whatever it takes to get things they do not have. Even at that, there are people who are flat out greedy who want more than they need.

To achieve peace, we would need to sacrifice free will, independent thought, and all seven of the "deadly sins"

tl;dr... Peace can only be achieved when everyone is lobotomized and/or dead

Well, since Utopia means non-existent, we can never possibly live in a Utopian society or world goes without saying, like, "an apple is not an orange".

Racial and social ''differences'' are symptoms, they are never the root causes of conflict. Socioeconomic "differences" can be amended by a reconciliation between the extremely rich Global North and the extremely poor Global South- this would come about were it not for states, and state interests.

do you really think that free will exists? Or sin, for that matter?

Gaia - this is just a bloody precursor to your taking over the planet isn't it

I shall answer this in the format of moon writing with a giant laser canon in about 15 years. Look for "gaia + JD = <3" in the Southeast part.

[gaia.plateau]

In order for there to be world peace, you need to fulfill everyone's basic needs. Food, water, shelter, sex. 4 basic needs in the human species. I think it's possible to fulfill those needs in humanity given the right set of circumstances and the spreading of global trade.

What about booze, music, and hookah?? Good god, man.

For example, Nigeria has oil fields that the West want access to or resources from. The West has food and medical care that Nigeria can only dream of. You open up a limited medical facility and trade FOOD in return for oil (instead of money, which is worth something today, worthless tomorrow).

It's a little more complicated, unfortunately. Impoverished countries like Nigeria, for the most part, did in fact have significant medical care until the 60s. What the rich, developed countries (DCs) and international monetary institutions (IMIs) of the world have done, is force less developed countries (LDCs) to take "aid", which means loans with tremendous interest to be repaid, with great strings attached. Most significant of these strings are structural adjustment programmes (SAPs). The DCs and IMIs are able to use SAPs to force LDCs to eliminate things like education and medical programmes- this makes their populations even more impoverished, desperate, and politically marginalized, which makes the LDC in question easier to control politically and socioeconomically.

Again it all comes down to states and state interests, taking priority over international interest. All the countries of the world are like dogs on a roof, some big, some small, barking, growling, and biting at one another, fighting over bones. Some of the bones have a little gristled meat left on them, but most of them are completely worthless, even to the dogs, especially because what the dogs don't realize, is that the building is on fire.

I just made that metaphor up now, but I think it's a good one!

Will you get as good of a return on selling the oil? I think so, with oil only down because the economy is down, selling gasoline for $2.50 to $3.00 a gallon on average looks like what it's going to go for during the last half of '09. It may cut into profits quite a bit, but a steady profit is better than a wildly fluctuating profit any day. Africa has largely been burned by Western countries since its colonization. If we begin to mend those wounds by actually being honorable and fair to them, I think it will go a long way in healing the violence. Greed will largely stop that from happening though, unfortunately.

What we really need to develop... are cars that run on poverty. Put a poor person in your trunk, and while you car channels their desperation and hunger into energy, they're making money and the environment is saved!

I believe it is because of balance. There is peace all around us and conflict all around us, but absolute peace or absolute war will never be possible. If it does happen (which so far it never has occurred 100%) then it would be balanced out by it's opposite and equal reaction. You can call this view scientific or you can call it belief, either way, it's still right.

So... should we get to work on making absolute war then? I'm in.

[gaia.plateau]

This of all topics persuaded me to register.

Welcome to the forums Dr. B. Glad to be of inspiration.

[Peace] is primarily about knowing, with certainty, that your life is never in jeopardy because of the actions of another.

Would you include arguably unavoidable crime into this equation? There will always be crime as long as there is materialism which holds up material wealth as the goal of life, combined with socioeconomic systems structurally designed to marginalize parts of a population. And even without these factors, who knows. I don't think that it is necessarily an obstacle to peace, for there to be the possibility of being mugged on your way home from a movie, or for one's caravan to be robbed by bandits in transit. We accept these things as random happenstances, and as I just laid down, they are inevitable in a materialistic society. I think that I would find it wearying to include the elimination of materialism, prevalent since the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago, to be necessary for there to be peace. Edited January 2, 2009 by gaia.plateau

[gaia.plateau]

Just throwing this out there:

Have you considered that as "advanced" as we are the result of war and death is a natural method of population control, keeping our species balanced with the ecosystem at large?

Frankly without conflict we'd be waaaay further depleted in our natural resources and further up the creek than we already are.

There are four ways of responding to this idea, that mass slaughter is a population control mechanism.

The practical response.
This might be feasible if we used sharpened sticks to kill people. But we don't; we use grenades, stealth bombers, nuclear weapons, and etc. A single stealth bomber costs more to make than it would to feed some Subsaharan countries for a year. Without conflict reducing population, we'd have much more resources for supporting those populations. Further, militaries contribute to about 20-35% of green house gas emissions in the world, compared to the people that those militaries are usually sent to kill (very poor people), who contribute something like .03%. So from an environmental POV, the rationalization that mass slaugher is important for population control hasn't a leg to stand on either.

The moral response.
Quite simply, as moral human beings we cannot murder on massive scales just to make more room for the rest of us. How would you feel if the police came into your home and shot your family dead, then gave you the explanation that there wasn't enough room for them?

The historical response.
There is such a great wealth of historical evidence against this idea that I don't know where to begin. There has been war for ages, yet there has only recently become problematic population expansions. Massive war preceded massive expansion in 1914. Massive expansion really began in the 60s, 70s and 80s, after massive war had grinded to a halt.

The meaningful response.
Most importantly and evidenciary of counterintuitiveness, war creates population expansions and explosions. War makes people impoverished. The more impoverished people are, the more children they give birth to as a survival mechanism. See? Just two steps.

Also realistically take humanity's drive for success and triumph, which necessitates a loser and you will inevitably come to war/fighting.

I believe you're thinking of America's drive- an ideological construct designed to serve as a control mechanism, which is still working fabulously, evidently.

I don't think war will ever disappear, as long as there are class systems and inequality which will always in place so long as we have that desire to conquer and triumph, the previously mentioned drive for success.

So why can't those class systems and inequality disappear too?

There have no always been such systems, and there does not always need to be. There's only one country in the world where a drive for material success has become the sole path to meaning, and it has become so because of propaganda, not genetics.

Frankly I think it's great to live ones life for love and peace and spread these great values on a small scale, but it's pure naivette to suggest that we could EVER have total world peace bla bla bla.

Yes we are capable of more than stick weilding skull bashing but will we ever get there? nopers.

The only thing that is more frustrating than prophecy, is self-fulfilling prophecy.

World peace is possible, but one of its greatest obstacles is the widely held Weltanschauung that it is not.

I am an extremely cynical person, in almost all things. I don't believe in an afterlife, or in true love, or in tree spirits or fairies or John Edward or miracles or Santa Claus or even morality. But I do believe in the possibility of world peace. I believe it because I know what will happen without it, and therefore life is completely meaningless unless one believes in that possibiliy.

I mean just look at all the variables, heres a hypothetical situation: You live in a Utopian Society in which SOMEHOW world peace has been achieved and violence is considered a thing of the past. Then one of your friendly neighbors gets a brain tumor and those violent tendancies are brought to the forefront of his psyche again, overtaking the reason he once had. He snaps due ONLY to uncontrollable neural impulse and kills someone. Not only do you now reintroduce murder but you have people condemning and in defense of the man, thus creating tension and splitting things into factions of moral belief. More death ensues.

Peace is not the absence of violence, it is the absence of war and oppression.

What the hell is wrong with death? This is a phenomenon that I really have seen only in America, at least to this degree. Death is really not that big a deal, it is as natural as anything else and everyone has to do it eventually. There is no point at all in being afraid of death, and in fact that fear is probably the most naive emotional response I can imagine- far moreso than belief in the possibility of world peace.

The desire for peace is not about the desire to protect and preserve human life. In fact, I have written often and even been on a radio show to discuss my belieffs that human rights laws are bullshit. I believe that every country should be able to torture, to enlist child soldiers, to use chemical weapons, to murder injured soldiers and POWs, and to commit genocide. Laws that say it is okay for country a to committ mass slaughter against country b on the battlefield, but only under certain conditions, legitimates war, and prolongs its prevalence. Ceasefires are more damaging to peace than a thousand trucks filled with RPGs.

As long as people are more concerned with human death than they are with human life, there cannot be peace.

[gaia.plateau]

As long as human kind is human there will be a struggle for wealth, or perceived wealth, be it real estate, natural resources, or the right to determine who gets to pick the rules for everyone else, there will be conflict.

Let me translate this into equation form...

* If there is human kind there is a struggle for wealth
* There was no struggle for wealth until about 6-10 thousand years ago
* Only creationists believe that humans were created 6 thousand years ago
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

= TheScotsMan is a creationist.



It's a mathematical absolute truth!

[gaia.plateau]

Until people learn to be free with themselves, love their fellow man, and learn how to help others instead of themselves, I dont see it happening. It'd be great if society would forget about money, forget about possessions, and just be happy in life, but we live in a monetary culture, where money and possesions are everything that seems to matter.

There doesn't need to be any of that hippie shite

There just needs to be the realization that war is quickly bringing about the end of human existence on this planet - the governments of states need to realize that this imperative needs to override all issues of national interest. That's the only thing needed to bring about world peace.

Conflict comes from having differences.

Could you or anyone else name one conflict that came primarily from having differences?

Conflict comes from individual people wanting power for themselves, in which case they are corrupt, or wanting power for their country, in which case they are patriots.

When we witness the ends of corruption and patriotism, we'll witness peace.

[gaia.plateau]

I think you've set up a false dichotomy by asking:

Are we just violent creatures, doomed to bash each other with sticks until we're all injured beyond repair, because the stick has proved so often to be the easiest and quickest solution to the challenges we face? Or are we capable of more than that, and are the obstacles to peace not people themselves, but the Westphalian state system that makes the imperative for national interest more important than an imperative for international interests?

I didn't mean to suggest that there were only two options I guess I should have added "Or is there another explanation?" at the end.

Through time, human communities have grown and solidified in the form of nation-states, which you cite as a possible inhibitor to achieving actual peace.

...

our right to self-defense poses significant inhibition to achieving world peace

It isn't so much the nation state and the imperative of self-defense which pose obstacles to the aspiration of world peace, but rather, the imperative for states to put their own interests above the interests of all, ie prisoner's dilemma, hunter's dilemma, etc.

To extrapolate the latter... 4 hunters are in the woods, tracking a deer. If they are able to catch the deer, they will all eat heartily. One hunter sees a rabbit, and knows that if he shoots, he will startle off the deer and they will never find it again, but he will have just enough food to survive the night.

There will be world peace when countries stop shooting the fucking rabbit.

[Johnny_D]

So the answer is then paper communism?

Works on paper - not a chance in real life...

Everyone has the same car, Same house, access to food. Everyone works in some capacity?
Everyone should live in peace I guess

Sounds good....on paper!

[NUBBS]

Could you or anyone else name one conflict that came primarily from having differences?

Adam & Eve. One chose to listen to god, whereas the other didnt. Therefore one has to slap a bitch!

[judgeposer]

It isn't so much the nation state and the imperative of self-defense which pose obstacles to the aspiration of world peace, but rather, the imperative for states to put their own interests above the interests of all, ie prisoner's dilemma, hunter's dilemma, etc.

To extrapolate the latter... 4 hunters are in the woods, tracking a deer. If they are able to catch the deer, they will all eat heartily. One hunter sees a rabbit, and knows that if he shoots, he will startle off the deer and they will never find it again, but he will have just enough food to survive the night.

There will be world peace when countries stop shooting the fucking rabbit.

Quite perhaps. I want to comment further - I enjoy the direction of the thread - but first, I need clarification. When you say "the imperative for states to put their own interests above the interests of all" do you mean that the states have interests of their own, as states qua states, or that states place the interests of their constituents above interests of other states and their respective constituents? I guess, more simply, do you take states as a composition of their parts, their constituents, or as some sort of leviathan, headless actor with imperatives of its own?

To be sure, I don't want to create a false dichotomy there, because I do realize that one can believe in BOTH possibilities. I just wanted to know what you meant more precisely - where you see the give/take between the two, if at all.

My intellectual hero, whom I've mentioned elsewhere on this board, Alasdair MacIntyre, has written on the bureaucratization of the state to the extent that it begins to represent its own interests, as if it is a human actor. This he sees possible when a society has grown so large that any claim to a collective project becomes meaningless, e.g. nationalism. He gained some bad press for a comment he made furthering this point when he said to die for one's country is like dying for one's utility company. Anyhow...thoughts/clarification?

[SuburbanSmoker]

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact, in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now."
-Daniel Quinn

I read a book last year named Ishmael that has alot to do with this topic and it was very insightful. Might be worth checking out if your interested in an outside the box look at the world.

[gaia.cove]

I was waiting for more replies before coming back to this, but due to unrelated circumstances this will be my second last post on the forum, so I thought I should tie things up.

So the answer is then paper communism?

Works on paper - not a chance in real life...

Everyone has the same car, Same house, access to food. Everyone works in some capacity?
Everyone should live in peace I guess

Sounds good....on paper!

No one has the answer, certainly I don't. I'm not supportive of communist style government, though it's important to note that both our countries are arguably more socialist than capitalist. I share Churchill's sentiment that "democracy is the worst form of government I can imagine... except for all the others". That said, I'm a post-Westphalian optimist... which means that like many, I don't see the state system lasting much longer, though unlike the majority, I believe that it's a good thing. As long as there are states, state interest will dominate over interstate interest... so any aspirations for peace seem to be waiting on the collapse of countries

Happy trails, brother.

Adam & Eve. One chose to listen to god, whereas the other didnt. Therefore one has to slap a bitch!

Careful NUBBS, the phrase "smack a bitch" is now prohibited, under pain of ban. "Slap a bitch" can't be far behind.

I enjoy the direction of the thread - but first, I need clarification. When you say "the imperative for states to put their own interests above the interests of all" do you mean that the states have interests of their own, as states qua states, or that states place the interests of their constituents above interests of other states and their respective constituents? I guess, more simply, do you take states as a composition of their parts, their constituents, or as some sort of leviathan, headless actor with imperatives of its own?

Both. The first University research paper I ever wrote, for a class on North American politics, was a prediction that the American people would reelect Bush in 2004 for one reason and one reason alone- the masses wanted to maintain hegemony, by which I mean global military and economic dominance, no matter what the costs to the rest of the world. It was called "Holding On to the Bomb". Though it is almost always the elites who shape and determine the national interest, and who sometimes propagate nationalist ideologies to support it, state constituencies tend to share these goals. I can think of no better example than the Serbian nationalist movement in the Austro-Hungarian empire which was the primary cause of the First World War.

It is therefore just as important to foster the imperative of the international interest of peace in men, as it is in giants.

I read a book last year named Ishmael that has alot to do with this topic and it was very insightful. Might be worth checking out if your interested in an outside the box look at the world.

Yar, I read it after high school. Not a bad piece.



I would explain my super secret ultimate peace plan, the Jedi one, but it's rather complex and I am extremely high on codine right now as I just had my tonsils removed yesterday (I am writing this now, having logged on and realized that I have been banned for joking about domestic abuse, because the pain is too great to sleep through). You'll just have to imagine what it would have been like.

Hasta luego y au revoir mis amigos y amis.

- gp

[kikkoman1231]

World peace will never exist. Varying philosophies, religions, beliefs, etc. will undermine progress to peace.

Whether it's Protestants vs. Catholics, Jews vs. Muslims, Empire vs. the conquered. As long as people align themselves to groups and do not judge by "content of character" (whatever that means) peace will never be achieved. I know it is a cynical way to look at things, but let's face it. The individual will always act in what he or she sees fit and many will not consider what their actions will do to another.

Shit, even families fight. Kids fight over toys, elders molest their children, people will murder their neighbor because they throw up a gang sign that does not affiliate one to the murderer. North Korea stockpiles weapons and promotes anti-Western propaganda, the USA borrows money from China, Japan and Saudi Arabia. Russia withholds oil. Rape and genocide in Darfur, soccer hooliganism, identity theft...

Peace will never happen. Disagreements happen and they even happen in the animal kingdom.

Anyways, good luck with your paper!

[mustang_steve]

So long as people think about themselves instead of others, there will be war, murder, robberies, rape, and other atrocities.

This is the curse of civilization, someone will always think they should have something just because they want it.