If You Want Peace, Prepare for… Peace?
I originally wanted to write about nature—about the quiet, ancient beauty of caves. But then I saw a line in the news that stopped me cold: “If you want peace, you must prepare for war.“(Old Roman saying)
I couldn’t help but sigh. Will we ever stop repeating this nonsense? Will we ever stop buying into this war-mongering propaganda?
The Logic of Use
Think about why we buy things.
- Why do you buy food? To eat it.
- Why do you buy a house? To live in it.
- Why do you buy a phone? To use it.
Then why do we buy weapons?
I hear the reply already: “But that’s different! That’s for defense. It’s for if other countries invade.” Is it, though? Look at the sheer volume of weapons the US and other powers buy. Is that really just “defense”? We keep saying “it’s different,” but the logic remains the same: we buy tools to fulfill their purpose. If the purpose of a weapon is destruction, then stockpiling them suggests that destruction is the inevitable goal.
The 1% Problem
I want to rephrase that old Roman line: “If you want peace, abolish the army.”
Even better: “If you want peace, begin with imagining it.”
If you asked every person living in the world, “Do you want world peace?” 99% would say yes. So why don’t we have it?
It’s because a huge portion of that 99% has been manipulated by fear. Scared people are easy to control. A tiny 1% stays in power by keeping us terrified of one another. They occasionally “put weight in the scales” by causing a conflict, just to prove they were right—to prove that we “need” an army.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What If Nobody Showed Up?
There is an old saying: “Suppose there was a war and nobody showed up?” Gosh, we would finally have peace!
I know, I know. You might say this is unrealistic. But if I am even slightly right, we have to start somewhere. We have to progress toward this state. We don’t have to go “cold turkey” overnight, but we have to get used to the idea that peace is actually possible.
“Yes we can.” (I wonder who said that before?)
The Power of 10%
Let’s use the power of our minds. Imagine it. When the call for war comes, what if we just stayed home? What if we just stayed home and imagined peace?
We don’t even need all 99% to change the world. Research often shows we only need a committed 10% to change a system.
Even if you don’t agree with my idea of abolishing the army, you still want peace, don’t you? The least you can do is regularly imagine it. How does that feel? To me, it feels great—happiness in my heart, joy and peace in my body.
We can have different opinions, but we have a common base: we want a world without war. If enough people simply refuse to see their neighbor as an enemy and instead focus on how wonderful a peaceful world feels, the wars will eventually fade away. The armies will become unnecessary.
So, next time they call for a battlefield, let’s not show up. Let’s just imagine something better.