Sadly, it also points out the obvious. War, perhaps as an extension of individual conflict, is the one universal expression of human interaction. Nations that were unwilling to prepare for and engage in it no longer exist. The Swiss? Does anyone forget that the Swiss Pikemen were once the scourge of European battlefields? Even now, they preserve their peace and neutrality by being eternally prepared to go to war to do so.
Forget the last century. Has there EVER been a time when a little war or two haven’t been merrily blasting along somewhere on the face of the globe? We remember the big ones with names and tend to miss the little ones, even though an AK-47 is just as deadly in a factional struggle in the Ivory Coast as its predecessor was in Stalingrad.
History recalls Leonidas and his 300 Spartan spearmen at Thermopylae. Can anyone name a Spartan poet? Gandhi was an aberration in India, a few decades of peace set against a millenium of warriors and soldiers, whether the Moguls or modern nuclear-armed generals.
Humans haven’t outgrown war, perhaps they never will. Millions marched against war on Saturday. Hundreds of millions in the same countries didn’t.
I don’t recall the source of the quote about he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind, but outside observation seems to suggest that such sowing is deliberate - for some perverse reason, humans seem to enjoy riding the whirlwind.
We abhor war yet glorify it. We claim we love peace yet abandon it all too readily when the bugles blow. If you think about it, it’s rather amazing that as a species we’re still around. Know what’s sad? I have this awful feeling that if we ever make it to the stars, those we find waiting there will be, in this sense, just like us.
Guess I’ll go play another chorus of the Minstrel Boy or Garryowen.
War, peace, revolution… There’s nothing new under the sun, just history repeating itself over and over. Same old dance as the past umpteen thousand years, just a different tune.
The question is “What is Peace”. It is not the opposite of War.
In hebrew the word “Shalom” (peace) deals with completeness, the word “milchama” (war) has the same root as the word for ‘bread’ because it devours as one does to bread.
On a macro level, as with nations, peace is not the opposite of war but the absence of war. On the micro (individual) level, peace can have many definitions according to one’s station and needs. Certainly the absence of strife could quality, but equally so could the absence of the stress of need or fear.
Peace is also what the observer declares it to be. Were the cold war years, excluding Korea, Vietnam, and associated military mini-adventures, a time of peace for the US? Some would say so. Others would say that the sustained systemic competition between the two superpower blocs was really a time of low-level war.
IOW, my response to your question is that peace is defined in the mind of the observer or participant.
I come like a comet new born
Like the sun that arises at morning
I come like the furious tempest
That follows a thundercloud`s warning
I come like the fiery lava
From cloud-covered mountains volcanic
I come like a storm from the north
That the oceans awake to in panic
I come because tyranny planted
My seed in the hot desert sand
I come because masters have kindled
My fury with every command
I come because man cannot murder
The life-giving seed in his veins
I come because liberty cannot
Forever be fettered by chains
I come because tyrants imagine
That mankind is only their throne
]I come because peace has been nourished
By bullets and cannon alone
I come because one world is two
And we face one another with rage
I come because guards have been posted
To keep out the hope of the age
From earliest times the oppressed
Have awaked me and called me to lead them
I guided them out of enslavement
And brought them to high roads of freedom
I marched at the head of their legions
And hailed a new world at its birth
And now I shall march with the peoples
Until they unfetter the earth
And you, all you sanctified moneybags
Bandits anointed and crownded
Your counterfeit towers of justice
And ethics will crash to the ground
Ill send my good sword through your hearts That have drained the worlds blood in their lust
Smash all your crowns and your sceptres
And trample them into the dust
Ill rip off your rich purple garments And tear them to raags and to shreds Never again will their glitter Be able to turn peoples heads At last your cold world will be robbed of Its proud hypocritical glow
For we shall dissolve it as surely
As sunlight dissolves the deep snow
Ill tear down your cobweb morality Shatter the old chain of lies Catch all your blackhooded preachers and choke them as though they were flies Ill put a quick end to your heavens
Your gods that are deaf to all prayer
Scatter your futile old spirits
And clean up the earth and the air
And though you may choke me and shoot me
And hang me your toil is in vain
No dungeon, no gallows can scare me
Nor will I be frightened by pain
Each time I`ll arise from the earth
And break through all your weapons of doom
Until you are finished forever
Until you are dust in the tomb
Tom
Poem by Joseph Bovshover
[ This Message was edited by: Blackbeer on 2003-02-19 00:18 ]
With this type of reasoning, the average man would still go on beating his wife. And children, if he had time left to take this good care of them… :roll:
On 2003-02-24 09:12, madguy wrote:
The average man doesn’t beat his wife!! >
~Larry
( glad you agree for the kids )
I didn’t say he does. Strongly believe he used to. And probably quite a few complained it was inevitable, and necessary… Like war, and a few good hangings now and then.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”
The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This – although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense – is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.
Life and love and how they grow
yet not of how it is so
Words and thoughts colliding within
logical, whimsical are lines drawn thin
Colors and shapes create themselves
only to be lost in abstract swells
Definitions of worlds slip the hand
to find one’s soul adrift from land
Searching the skies for light and way
to scream out the meanings of lines of grey
Lines of emotion, of pure expression
fighting towards fires of deepest passions
Lost are they in a world of words
leaving the shapes of line and curve
Embracing at last the very hearts
each other’s lover no longer apart
Someone dear to me, asked me to post this in the forum. Don’t forget to love one another. On any level. I figured this topic was as good a place as any to post it.
(Sorry if this poem offends anyone. I was told by one person it was a bit risque. It’s not meant that way overall. However, that interpretation is meant to be included I will admit.)
globalism
nationalism
feudalism
city states
clandestinism
atheism
agnosticism
deism
theism
pantheism
monotheism
socialism
communism
welfarism
capitalism
conservatism
liberalism
moderatism
humanism
None of these will end all war, as long as human aggresion, ignorance, and hatred exists.
Does this mean that we shouldn’t strive to get along one with another?
Not at all! We may be unable to control what everyone does, but we can, to a large extent, modify our own behavior in a productive manner.
Does this mean we shouldn’t work to bring peace among others?
Certainly not! The world needs mediators. Many wars have been avoided through diplomacy.
There is a great deal of blamecasting going on from all sides, but those spewing out venom against those of a different political persuasion than themselves, though they imagine themselves to be espousing noble ideals or even peace itself, are actually engaging in their own form of vicious warfare too.
)