A World That Gives Peace

The Instability of Peace

 We live in a world in which certain situations are stable and others are not. A coin on the table is stable facing Heads, and just as stable facing Tails, but completely unstable standing on its edge. Peace seems as unstable as a coin on its edge: precarious, easily toppled, its fall a matter not of “if” but “when”. A few, sowing seeds of discord and strife, can polarize the many and set them against each other.

I have felt for a long time that the hard question to confront about peace is not how to get there, but how to make peace a more stable situation. In one sense it seems unconfrontable: getting to peace is daunting enough, but staying there? It’s hard enough to get the coin to stand on its edge, but having it stay there seems impossible. Yet in another sense, getting there and staying there may be closely related. If I stick some chewing gum to the surface of the table, I alter the conditions so that both getting the coin to stand up and having it stay up become more feasible.

One Stable System–Blood Feuds

For inspiration and ideas, I’d like to highlight a form of violence that was once prevalent in the West, but has gone virtually extinct here, though it is still prevalent elsewhere. I’m thinking of blood feuds. In a society where blood feuds are prevalent, when a person is killed, this becomes a blot on the honor of the family (or clan or sect) that the person belonged to. All fingers then point to a specific person of that family who is now first in line to restore the honor, which must be done by killing a member of the family of the killer. If the person pointed to doesn’t deliver, he loses all status within his family, and fingers will all point to the second one in line. Eventually, someone will deliver, resulting in another dead person. This is a stable system, where killings back and forth can continue for centuries

Creating the Conditions for a Peace that Endures

Yet in our society, such honor killings are rare. The system changed, not people. We live in a system where it is the state who deals with killings, and the principle that governs it is justice and order, not honor. In this system, the oldest brother of the person killed will sit in a court room and mutters loudly about the insufficiency of the sentence. What’s different is that the fingers are all pointed at the judge, not at the brother. Even if the brother ‘took the law in his own hands’ and killed the killer, we don’t expect a blood feud to flare up. The brother would get arrested, and all fingers would be pointing at the new judge.

Our society ‘gives’ murder trials, and doesn’t ‘give’ blood feuds. What alterations would be required that would constitute a world that ‘gives’ peace?

(Editor’s Note: Please visit Bert’s website at: www.foundationforlearning.org. JH)