How do we talk about peace without recognizing the hypocrisy of how it is practiced by us as individuals? To value peace is to value life and re-conceptualize time, yet what I see and what I’ve been taught as an American is to value economics instead of living beings, to seek resolution through violence, and to see my singular lifetime as the framework for life itself. When we become less attached to material possessions and time in terms of one human life, it seems to me that freedom and peace will indeed be revealed because freedom and peace are intertwined.
Life, freedom (liberty), and peace (pursuit of happiness), are the cornerstones of a healthy society. At this moment in time these may seem overly aspirational but when I look upon nature they signal cooperation and resilience in the wildest creatures and forms. Abundant lands ensure diversity and survival. One of the greatest tricks ever played on us by the ruling classes is making us believe that resources are scarce and we must battle each other for survival. The land is abundant were it not for the hoarding of resources by few in order to control the many.
So here we are, in the midst of what seems to be a collapse of civil society. I say seems because information fed to us by news sources designed to highlight outlier behavior ignores the reality that the majority of our daily interactions with fellow humans tend to be positive or neutral. Most of us in America wake and go about the day with minor interruption. We have routines to follow and communities that we interact with that allow for stability and trust.
During this time of awakenings, as we watch the center collapse and push our view to the margins where neither trust nor stability reign, our great imbalance shows us the shadows where lives have been sacrificed in the interest of business and the consolidation of resources. Racism lives here. Misogyny and homophobia reside here as well. Violence and gun culture propagate here. Many erroneously believe these are identities.
Like money, they are merely tools.
Capitalism has many tools. Categorization is a tool wielded as a weapon. We each pick up the tool that feels good in our hands thinking this is our freedom and pummel the weaker amongst us with it. What fits us well has been handed to us from a catalogue created by cannibals.
What we know of peace is rarely created by nationality. War is a border, a battle for randomly deposited natural resources that should be shared by all. We substitute our peace for tools inherited from cannibals that slide us farther and farther from our innate desire for equilibrium.
Peace is not a tool, it is a state. You cannot harass or bomb your way into peace. Peace has less to do with controlling the world around us and more to do with controlling the world within. It flows like a river and calms like a breeze and is capable of great things. Peace responds, it does not react. Peace rejects absolutes like good and bad. It can feel constructive or destructive but always seeks balance. Peace is life-affirming but refuses to disparage death. In peace, life and death exist within the same cycle. For every season…
Peace does not ignore suffering and it is not an excuse for inaction in the face of injustice. It does, however, allow for disagreement and conflict without violence. Justice and revenge are not equivalent.
Separation and assumed scarcity fuels anxiety, which is a state that exists in opposition to peace. Peace cannot be conferred upon you by an outside force but separation and obscured truth can manipulate our relationship to peace. Fear and peace cannot co-exist. Time is used as a battering ram to frame a human life as the center instead of Earth as a whole and the various lives within it. Were we to step back and view our world from a vantage point that involves multiple generations before and after us across species we would have much more respect for the cycles that come and go and feel less inclined to decimate life for selfish motives.
Freedom is in the choice and, if we choose wisely, also in the consequence.
We are dust. We are air. We are water. We are stars. We are the nurturing love that binds us across the globe and keeps a collective beat towards justice and harmony. We are a moment in time. We are timeless. Peace lives in connection, freedom lives in understanding the connections.
