I know of no greater work for humanity than in the cause of peace.
Frank Kellogg
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Some people are under the bizarre and malevolent misconception that in order to make peace you have to make war, that in order to heal the sprained ankle you should chop off the leg. We have seen some evidence of that thinking lately in this world. Some people fight with their neighbors over issues that might be solved by negotiation. Other's are fighting in foreign lands. Everyone who has ever known about these things has said that when one nation wages war in a foreign land it is always justified as fighting to protect the first nations freedom, and it never is.
The only thing that can protect freedom is peace. The urge for war must be finally overcome in order for there to be peace. That reads like a truism, and it is. Then why is it so hard for people to accept? Because they don't want to let go of a vestigial reaction which they will tell you is germane to the human being.
That sort of thinking reminds me of the people who said the automobile would never work because we are humanly incapable of traveling faster than 8 miles an hour, or it is impossible for humans to survive in outer space
But peace is just as possible as the International Space Station. It takes the same kind of commitment, I recently heard an American politician say that he was very uncomfortable with the fact that there are Russians living in the Space Station, That man is living in a wartime mentality. The Cold War is over. What should we do, attack the Space Station to drive the Russian out? Some people might think so.
In spite of all the "wars and rumors of wars" we are at a point of development and advancement as to be able to perceive and find "peace and rumors of peace" in our world. The causes need to be faced and eliminated. And what are they? Martin Luther King, Jr. said it very well: "Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation."
That is the challenge, the goal and the destiny. It must be done.
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WEEKEND TEST
(This is your last chance. If I don't get any entries on this one, there'll be no more weekend tests. You will have to fend (whatever that means) for yourselves.)
You are to fill in the blanks. It may take some General Research, but that's okay.
Okay, here's a big hint.
1. T___ L___
2. D___ H___
3. U T___
4. Kurt W___
5. J___ P___ d___ C___
6. B___ B___-G___
7. K___ A___
8. B___ K___-m___
Good luck.
DB
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5 comments:
I don't think that it is ever to be possible. I have a fuzzy memory of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Oddessey and one of the humaniod creatures discovering an additional use for either a stick or a heavy bone fragment.
That is how force and its potential was discovered.
Conflict is as natural to life as anything else and it may be that peace is the exception. Existence is a constant, constant struggle against something. If we don't know struggle then how would we attain anything?
There are some questions that simply cannot be answered and force is the only way to resolve them. It happens all around us, from the mircrorganic level up through the mysterious stars above us.
I would even postulate that is why in religion, the life after death is the one where it is peaceful. And does not Buddism teach enlightenment is an individual journey? That is because it isn't for everyone, this everlasting peace, this enlightenment. Were it not so, then what WOULD life be?
Peace is the anomaly, not war.
We would think that as we progress, we would strive more for peace and negotiation, and not become more partisan and territorial. Hope that we can get past this diviseness and trully become more enlightened.
Perhaps the only thing that will drive us toward peace is a further degradation of our ability to wage war and a heightened sense that we share common interests.
Evolution has sometimes occurred in gradual, stately steps, but sometimes has happened rapidly as a result of sudden, cataclysmic environmental change. I'm dipping a toe into Bill McKibben's EAARTH, which states that such change is in process right now. We may not appreciate peace as much when it is a side effect of global upheaval, but that might be the only way we'll get to it.
I am not sure what it would take for Peace. Maybe for people to be completely BROKEN.. where they had to depend on each other in order to survive.. but a lot of deaths would occur before they realized they needed each other. There would be the fight for the "Right" or the "entitlement" they feel they deserve... but after awhile they would realize they needed to work together... but would the fight to be a leader ever end?
I was dismayed to hear of some people saying that our new nuclear disarmament treat with Russia was putting our country at risk. What could be riskier than the capability of blowing up the world several times over?
Do they not grasp the irony of their words?
Hugs, Beth
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