Peace needs......... What?

Peace needs cooperation, the willingness to compromise, a common vision of success, and a desire to be peaceful.

Unlimited resources are helpful. A ruthless autocratic dictator seems to be a viable strategy.

Education.

A power or powers big enough and willing to use overwhelming force on anyone that breaks the status quo. Wipe out one little country and the rest will be peaceful for a little while.

But when that power balance shifts expect most of the pent up aggression to pop off somewhere once the pressure is off.

A very open mind, which is not biased or prejudiced.
All of which are not possible within a human being.

At it’s very simplest, peace needs people to simply refuse to engage in war. Wars are instigated and planned and promoted by a very small minority of people in power and carried out by masses of the relatively powerless. And the masses of the relatively powerless are the ones who suffer and die because of war. People just have to say enough is enough. But they don’t. Maybe someday they will, I don’t know. But people have the power to do it. If they choose to.

Peace needs… the absence of fear and ignorance.

Peace needs a desire for it and a commitment to it. People need to want peace and to commit to peace. They need to demand peace. Then it will happen. War is not inevitable. It is not a force of nature. Human beings may be wired for a certain amount of aggressiveness, wired to fight and defend ourselves, defend our young, our territory and resources, just like animals. But wars are not bar fights or riots. They are not spontaneous. Even the simplest tribal skirmish requires a choice to engage in warfare; it requires planning.

Peace needs people to decide, once and for all, to resolve their conflicts and differences without slaughtering one another. To respect and acknowledge that everyone has needs and rights that are as valid as our own.

In the end though, all peace really needs is for people to simply choose it. To choose peace over war. It’s really that simple.

You need Xena. Case closed.

I’m here my lovey. At least, I’m here in her form of attire.

Lobotomies.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I really can’t be bothered to look that word up in the dictionary… so I’m going to ask you. What is this ”Lobotomies”?

@MilkyWay the plural form of lobotomy. It’s an operation in which the connection between certain parts of the brain are severed or removed. It is infamous (perhaps justifiably so, perhaps not) for having the side effect of making patients into zombies. More info.

Basically, I’m implying that humanity’s brains would have to be altered for true peace to be obtained.

….to begin within.

Slightly relevant, and I don’t remember where this quote comes from, but…true peace can only exist when everyone who disagrees with me is dead. Sad, dude.

Reagan said it best

Open heart, open mind.

Love, education and understanding. We all should be bonded by the simple fact that we will all share in death one day, yet we all struggle to have more, more, more and none of us no when we are going to die.

The utter destruction of all humans. There is no other way.

A universal end to hunger; an economic stability that will facilitate peace of mind; an end to lack of hope; sufficiency of worldly goods to allow each person to be able to have empathy for and help others. And there will be angels playing their harps and heavenly choruses singing the glory of all mankind. And there’ll be a heavenly fish fry, everybody welcome.

Sic pacem, para bellum.

Peace needs strength. You cannot maintain peace through weakness. Those who are most likely to violate the peace do not respect goodwill, cooperation, kindness, compromise, or compassion. In fact, they see these things as a form of weakness, which will cause them to attack. This is a basic truth which most of the people on this site fail to understand. I am constantly frustrated by the mawkish hippy peacenik bullshit promulgated by so many people on Fluther, since people fall all over themselves in their haste to mash the “Great Answer” button. There should be some kind of Gandhi equivalent to Godwin’s Law, where liberal pantywaists and milquetoasts who haven’t actually read anything Gandhi wrote – and are blissfully unaware that he stated that he was utilitarian, and would support violence in places where violence works, and peace in places where peace works – would automatically lose the argument when they bring up Gandhi’s name like a magic talisman.

A while back I watched a video of an anti-war rally at a university in California. A couple of organizers with megaphones were talking to a group of about a hundred hippies and peaceniks when police arrived. The cops waded into the middle of the crowd, tackled the organizers to the ground, and literally dragged them away in handcuffs. The crowd did nothing except chant “shame shame” and demand badge numbers.

I can absolutely 100% guarantee than no sane cop would walk into the middle of a hundred masked anarchists and begin beating up organizers. It just doesn’t happen. The willingness of anarchists to use force – to protect the peace through strength – means that there is less violence, not more.

You ask what peace needs? Peace needs people willing to use whatever amount of force is necessary to create and protect it.

I agree with much of what was said already. But I strongly believe you cannot force peace. Peace is something one must come to through understanding and tolerance. It must come from within.

@Symbeline…Xena rocks!

@SmashTheState as someone who just spent the past three hours reading three separate books about the voyage of the Great White Fleet and its aftermath for my undergraduate thesis, I must say that I wholeheartedly agree with you, though probably from a different philosophical superstructure.

Peace will never, ever happen. Peace – being defined as ‘absence of conflict’ would mean stagnation and utter lack of progress.

mankind needs conflict in order to grow and survive. Anything that stops that process, which is to say, every country and group sitting down and singing Kum Ba-Ya – simply means that mankind has stopped yearning and wishing for something better.

So peace is NOT a good thing. Moments of calmness are fine, but ultimately true peace is a death knell.

I disagree, elbanditoroso. There have been many periods in human history when people of many cultures, ethnicities and religions have lived together in peace. During these times arts and sciences flourished. Humans are creative and inventive. They are also competitive, which partly explains Capitalism’s success.

Seizing the resources of others is neither an imperative for growth nor an encouragement for development (other than weaponry). Trading, on the other hand, does. However, as long as humans respond to their instinct driven impulse to react in terms of us and them, peace will continue to elude us.

Peace, as always needs one like this. Enjoy!

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Aaah, then yes. I agree with you :)