Serenity Now

It has definitely been a while since I've written anything here. I have had a night class all summer prior to this week and just haven't had the time to think about things worth writing about. But no longer do the chains of mathematical tyranny bind me to the community college flagpole and choke the higher learning out of me. I have emerged victorious and ever so slightly aware of the benefits of private universities. The weight of mediocre facilitation and comical repression of practicality have been lifted gently off my shoulders by a fantastical freight train, laden with opportunities for pages and pages of internet memes...pro bono publico.

...Lame anecdotes aside, it was a pretty awful class.

I really have gotten to thinking over the past couple days and nights, however, and thus out of my internet-attention-emaciation, my synapses glow with cute pink strands of would-be points of conversation for anyone lost in the doldrums of motivation-emaciation. I apologize if we get meta up in here. Begin.

One of the most elusive concepts I can observe in our society (worldwide) is what I conceive to be the actual definition of peace. Often I hear people profess to be advocates of peace, but upon examination, I do not understand how they can claim this so. This happens not only on the left, with many, many people opposed to our occupation of foreign countries, but also among the right, specifically Christians who believe that we should be "non-violent." And therein lies the problem for everyone guilty of this (myself included): peace is the correct concept to seek; anti-violence is a fruitless pursuit. I pull the reasoning behind this from several conversations that I have had about perspective and focus, which are really my over-arching themes for this piece. The concept of anti-violence is flawed because its focus is no more well-placed than warmongering at heart. When you focus solely on the opposition of aggression, your only likely outcome will be to resort to aggression yourself. The forms of this aggression are noticeably different from each other and therefore command different reactions from observers. Violence, war, murder, etc. are all concepts that most sane people readily attribute a negative connotation to. However, vehement slander and hate are just as common, if not more, on the opposing side. I don't really want to search the internet with these phrases, but I have seen pictures of mobs with signs saying they hoped all the soldiers were killed. There is apparently a line, subtle to most, that is being crossed between disapproval and opposition. Peacefulness is not about opposition. It is not about a lack of violence either, though wikipedia may claim otherwise. That lack of violence is a stem from the root of peace. The definition I am choosing to work with from this point forward is much closer to a single-word synonym, "harmony."

The reason I am bringing so much attention to the definition of peace is because of the weight in choosing a definition of anything. The definition of a concept creates that concept's state of perfection. For example, were a Christian to search for the definition of love, he or she must look to the characterizations of God, who is the state of perfect love. So how exactly did I arrive at my association between harmony and peace? I believe that harmony comes from a place of selflessness which comes from love. Harmony is not, however, synonymous with selflessness or love, or anti-violence for that matter. The reason I am condemning the use of anti-violence is, as I said before, the focus of the concept. I mean...look at the word; it's got "violence" in it. Let's examine for a second the importance of focus. A man who is available and dating various women attempts to start a conversation early on in the relationship about marriage, more specifically the fact that he is waiting until marriage to have sex with anyone. This is, most people reading would agree I think, not a bad idea, virtuous in fact. It may even be very attractive to the girl who he is wooing. But what is on his mind during this conversation? Sex and marriage. And everyone should agree that the focus of a relationship shouldn't be sex, nor marriage at the early stages. It is about the other person and growing the connection between the two. Similarly, a person who carries on about how we ought not ever invade another country no matter what is happening there is just drawing attention to the concept of violence and war. It is a subtle difference, but as any teacher will tell you, the best ways to learn are immersion and repetition. We as a culture are disgustingly immersed by the arguments surrounding violence every single day.

I feel that a solution is a hard thing to achieve in the society we live in where the radical sides of the polar opposites are the most popular focus. The one thing we know we can control however, is how it affects us and how we react. The goal should be to stop perpetuating the view that everything revolves around conflict. In fact I would wager that if we kept our opinions on those arguments to ourselves and instead chose to approach conversations from a positive perspective, we would easily observe progress. The topic of perspective is a whole huge issue in and of itself, but we should all be aware that our perspective defines us and we act accordingly. As our perspective is largely a product of our experience, we must pursue the ability to adapt our perspective vigorously and become familiar with our methods of reaction. It is not easy and I suck at it, but at some point you start to realize faster and faster that you're ignorant and need to be quiet and listen. As you listen more and let the words and experiences of others sink in as products of different environments, you begin to widen your perspective. A good and appropriately meta-goal indeed. End.