Peace. A 17 Year-Old's View.

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Concerned Philosophers for Peace : One Thread

I will start off by saying (for some reason) that I wonder if i am wasting my time, considering there is only one other bulletin board post, and it's over 500 days old. But with a large amount of time on my hands, I feel that I should let all you "experts" know what I feel about peace.

Peace has been a relativly new subject area for myself, and I have yet to really ponder deep into the matter, so please respond if you see any holes in my thinking here. First of all, I think that people fail to take peace with as much consideration and unbiased viewpoints as it should be taken. Humanity goes into the subject of peace with the thought-process of "peace is good, war is bad" without ever giving the matter a second thought.

I'll make something clear now; I don't think peace is the best hope for society as a whole.

First of all, until human nature changes, there shall be no peace (I'll get back to that in a second). Secondly, in peace, liberty is banished. The freedom to revolt must, and SHALL, forever remain a right and ability of the citizens'. As long as humans remain persuasive AND different, they shall NEVER willingly join together in agreement. To truly obtain peace, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE must agree on EVERYTHING. Obsurd. But that is what must happen. If one person disagrees, and only one, the peace is broken. All must be in accord. The only way to accomplish this is forced adherence. And that is not true peace. That is "1984" (the book).

Now think about war. What POSITIVE values does it contain? The world cannot exist in a stable manner without war. War fuels the economy. It creates new nations and forces discovery, inventiveness, and creativity. Without war there is no patriotism, honor, or pride torard one's nation. An untasteful population control, possibly?

There is much more I want to say, but it remains hard to scribe without first a response with which to jumpstart me. After all, philosophy is much like poetry as far as inspiration. You cannot go to an empty, peaceful, field of grass and receive any substancial amount of insight. Inspiration relies upon observation. You must OBSERVE things happening to form an opinion of them. Just so is the fact that I would never have formed my own opinion of peace if there were no pro-peace individuals, such as yourselves, in existance. Sorry, I'm getting off the subject completely. I encourage any rebuttles or comments whole-heartedly.

Adam

-- Adam Schmidt (theadmiral@the-pentagon.com), June 11, 2000


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