The Nature of Peace

The Nature of Peace

Sarah Tennant

Can humans ever be in total peace? If humans are constantly in conflict within themselves, each other and the environment, how then, can there ever be a peaceful civilization? To achieve peace, you'd have to eliminate all instincts, desires and passions. All free will, original thought and the want to hold onto your possessions and the ones you love would have to also be abandoned. Peace is an ideal, conflict is reality. Peace can be defined as the absence of hostility or enmity. Alternately, a definition of conflict is the state of opposition, disagreement, or incompatibility between two or more people. The following critical essay will deconstruct three separate statements, establish how they might be connected and draw conclusions based on their philosophical validity.

Statement one calls on the notion that humans are only ever happy when they are immersed in peaceful conflict. The human being is an instinctive animal. We are designed to survive conflict and to inflict injuries on others. Given that we are designed for conflict, we in turn, crave it. This is where sociable school debates, sport games and computer games come in. These so called friendly games, which are orientated on dominating, crushing and persecuting, fulfill our natural biological and emotional instincts. Whilst involved in these competitions our emotions, including some of the most distinctive, such as wrath and vengeance, drive us to attack and dominate the opposition. In return for this conflict, our bodies then reward us with innate, powerful drugs such as adrenaline. Why then, if conflict was so unnatural and rationally undesired by many, would the human body reward itself with feel good drugs?

One could say that peace could only really come from unified thought, and with unified thought there would be complete equality. Could you sacrifice your