The Peace Coin

After many years of observing people and politics, it seems that there come issues that defy resolution. In our nation we see the abortion debate and the nuclear weapons nondebate. It seems that each side goes further and further into its own reasoning, which means further and further from the other side of the issue, and after time nobody is listening to each other, which means that nobody's understanding. An extreme example of this is the Israeli-Palestinian issue, which after all this time is so much a cultural passion issue that neither side can hear the other.

Recently I've been thinking about the whole issue of peace. The hawks are trying to settle things in the Middle East and bring about peace. The doves object strongly to the tactics, hoping instead for peace.

Huh?

It seems that each side agrees on what peace is: people being civil to each other so that conflict and violence aren't a problem. Realistically, since we're dealing with humans in all their blessed imperfection, we won't find Uptopia on earth, but in the balance things could be much quieter.

The problem comes in the process. Hawks believe in peace through setting rules, enforcement, and compliance. To a degree very few of us have problems with this...most of us do somewhere around the speed limit. What works here is the threat of negative consequences for breaking the rules. The reward is the greatest amount of freedom allowed when so many people share a common living area. Enforcement can be arranged quickly, given that there is a force that is large, strong, and skilled enough.

Enforcement contains a danger: the overuse of it results in oppression, which breeds anger and resentment. Hardly peaceful. (This is where many doves object to the Bush administration: the Bushies are still arguing for the right to torture, against national edict and international law. This extreme attempt at enforcement crosses the line into damaging, for those tortured, for those who find satisfaction in administering it, and for the society that it is done in the name of).

Doves, on the other hand, believe in cultivating individual and social conditions so that people and groups regulate themselves and don't need an external authority telling them to behave. If this could be acheived on a large scale there would be general civility, not to mention little need of a governing authority. This cultivation takes a long time to accomplish. Longer than a single presidency.

Peace is a single coin with two sides. It's physically impossible to have a one-sided coin. It's folly to pretend that there is one right side and one wrong side.

Both sides are honorable, even necessary. It would be folly to assume that everybody in a society would submit to cultivation, and it is likely that there would be somebody slick enough to pretend and then take advantage of others. Something needs to be in place to limit the behaviors and damages these people perpetrate. Thus enforcement. Cultivation, over time and on a large scale, would generally decrease difficulties in a society and make enforcement a more occasional necessity.

Yet we are at poles in our beliefs about peace and it seems that neither side hears nor understands the other. Thus we are not at peace even with ourselves.

The solution is defined in the problem: we need to sit down together, shut our mouths and open our ears and minds, talk with those not like us until each side is convinced that the other hears and understands, then work together to acheive the common goal that both sides share.

I can imagine a danger inherent in this solution. In redefining peace, or at least the path toward it, we would also have to redefine enemies. So many people are invested in the fight, in the passion, that to give up the thrill of combating an enemy and feeling righteous would be a great loss. In fact, should we learn how to no longer see a brother as an enemy it could generalize to the whole human race. Sheesh. Nobody as an enemy. What would we do for entertainment? Now we have to redefine entertainment. And so on.

Yet what would the Prince of Peace recommend? He certainly didn't advocate for war, literally or figuratively. Even if it's unfamiliar in human history, maybe swallowing our pride and working together is the right thing to do.