Idea of Peace, No peace at all | Page 4 | INFJ Forum

Idea of Peace, No peace at all

The OP is a bit confusing - my grasp of it is that you're interested why people seek idealized peace when it does not make clear sense? Acts of violence are natural and in line with survival instinct.

To that I agree. Yet I would like to expand: humans have some unique abilities that can override survivalism: namely morality and willpower. So they operate under different conditions then rocks, flowers or animals do.

Having morals means we constantly assign some value on the scale "bad" to "good" and by willpower we can stick to our decision and ignore all resistance.

The aforementioned tells that killing people is bad, so not killing is good. It means that peace is good. And woila - we suddenly have hordes of peace activists outside.

Nietzsche argued that there's no universal good and evil - and he was right. So morality is relative. Yet he did not offer a solution that can actually replace it. The only alternative is degradation to survival instincts.

When you speak that we should see the universe as it is - then we have to admit that it's meaningless. There is no difference whether a galaxy lives on or is destroyed. There's no meaning to our survival, no meaning to the work we do.

BUT... we can choose to assign the meaning - that's our free will working. So we choose to create morality, we choose to believe that every human is valuable by existence, we choose that peace is good and we ourselves become our choice. It's called the positive philosophical choice. And by it world peace is possible !

There's also an alternative approach to this problem. Humans are wired in a certain way that allows them to feel emotions of another person - it's called empathy. So killing another person becomes difficult because we can feel their fright and desperation. And that's not a pleasant feeling to experience. So it's no wonder that actions that generate unpleasant feelings are labeled "bad" on morality scale. The golden rule is a perfect example of this: "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another".

UPDATE: since I mentioned a need to fill morality vacuum in oneself there can be other philosophical choices. A negative choice would mean that all humans are evil by nature and a plight to a planet. A middle choice (those people like to call themselves realists) is that some people are good and some are bad. For example little children are good but pedophiles are bad. It also suggests that people can change their alignment (since pedophiles once have been children too).
 
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Why is compassion the deepest part of the human condition? Remind me to explain later about how I think that we are in a prenatal state of nirvana, how that relates to compassion, and how the only true good is nirvana.

Im late so I cant do it now and I don't want to forget.
 
the question here is not peace or violence, chaos or order but instead. Peace or righteousness
 
Originally Posted by Lucifer
How do you define righteousness?
how does your heart define it. sorry no long list of scripture for this one at least not yet

You should try, I think it would be a good exercise for a person that talks about righteousness themselves.
 
Martin Luther King Jr. once said "We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

Wise words from King, and very important message.
 
Wise words from King, and very important message.

As one builds his body through physical exercise, one also builds their mind through mental exercise.
 
One problem I always have with peace idealists is that they're normally inconsiderate to anything that isn't peaceful.

That aggression towards anything that does not represent peace is but another form of violence (idealogical) that will indeed spark more conflict. I do not believe the general idea of peace itself is real peace.

Peace keepers aim to destroy/smother ideas of violence and what they consider ignorance through their own teachings. Either way the opposite idea will lose power as the opposing idea gains strength, it's all a tug of war of dominance and finger pointing of who is more right and who is more wrong.

For peace to be absolute you would have to look all directions, favor all but favor none. Be all things and also be nothing at the same time. Since so far as we know matter and energy does not disappear, this seems unlikely at our current stage of thought.

It find it funny that the idea of either absolute chaos or absolute order are both destructive and indeed more or less unnatural. Absolute violence or Absolute peace seems to also be both destructive and indeed unnatural as well.

I do agree less violence usually means less suffering for living things in general, however peace and non-violence does not escape the power struggle of ideas. Therefore general peace is probably no solution at all, instead it is but one of many points of views.


Another point I'd like to make is the arrogance of human thought.

What makes a person think that they themselves or anyone else is more important then say a pebble in the river?

What makes a person think that they themselves or think living beings are more important than a planet without life (collections of pebbles)?

What makes a person think they themselves or anything living is better than entire galaxies without life?

The idea of peace plays on the belief that the living is of more value than the non-living.

But it is non-life that sparks life itself and once we die we become non-life. From non-life we become life.


I think the real question is, can we transcend both aspects of life & death as well as thoughts itself and go beyond.
I think there's a great deal of misunderstanding happening in this post.

1. Peace activists are not all 'peace idealists'; that is, many do not believe that anything that isn't peaceful is wrong. Many peace activists are against unjust war and suffering (yes, there is a belief that war can be just). Also, peace activists are not anti conflict. It would be completely ignorant to believe that one can get rid of conflict. There will always be opposing ideals and peace isn't about saying who is right and who is wrong, rather advocating that war isn't a good answer. If there is ever any hope of getting rid of war, there has to be another institution to solve conflicts.

2. Peace activists do not believe that all peace is good peace. There is the idea that there is positive and negative peace. Negative peace is simply the absence of war, which in of its self creates a void and is only asking for more conflict. Positive peace is about creating structures which are life affirming and life enhancing.

3. Peace activists (a majority) are not out to chastise all who use violence (like i said before, there is a thought that it can be justified). Stopping personal violence is a lot different than stopping world violence. Most peace activists don't waste their time with person to person violence.

4. To emphasize, peace is not everyone agreeing, there can still be conflict with peace, but rather the emphasis of diminishing/reducing war. Peace is not about smothering ideas but rather compromise. Peace activists are not picking sides.

5. While no one can say life is preferred over death (to do so would claim knowledge about what comes after death) but the fact that we are alive grants us certain rights; the most basic being the right to stay alive. To threaten someone else's life is to take away their right to life. Peace does not place more value on life, rather the value that each individual has right to their own life and to take another's life away is a crime.


"But it is non-life that sparks life itself and once we die we become non-life. From non-life we become life."

That is nothing more than a philosophical idea.
 
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I think there's a great deal of misunderstanding happening in this post.

1. Peace activists are not all 'peace idealists'; that is, many do not believe that anything that isn't peaceful is wrong. Many peace activists are against unjust war and suffering (yes, there is a belief that war can be just). Also, peace activists are not anti conflict. It would be completely ignorant to believe that one can get rid of conflict. There will always be opposing ideals and peace isn't about saying who is right and who is wrong, rather advocating that war isn't a good answer. If there is ever any hope of getting rid of war, there has to be another institution to solve conflicts.

2. Peace activists do not believe that all peace is good peace. There is the idea that there is positive and negative peace. Negative peace is simply the absence of war, which in of its self creates a void and is only asking for more conflict. Positive peace is about creating structures which are life affirming and life enhancing.

3. Peace activists (a majority) are not out to chastise all who use violence (like i said before, there is a thought that it can be justified). Stopping personal violence is a lot different than stopping world violence. Most peace activists don't waste their time with person to person violence.

4. To emphasize, peace is not everyone agreeing, there can still be conflict with peace, but rather the emphasis of diminishing/reducing war. Peace is not about smothering ideas but rather compromise. Peace activists are not picking sides.

5. While no one can say life is preferred over death (to do so would claim knowledge about what comes after death) but the fact that we are alive grants us certain rights; the most basic being the right to stay alive. To threaten someone else's life is to take away their right to life. Peace does not place more value on life, rather the value that each individual has right to their own life and to take another's life away is a crime.


"But it is non-life that sparks life itself and once we die we become non-life. From non-life we become life."

That is nothing more than a philosophical idea.

Excellent argument mf!
 
how does your heart define it. sorry no long list of scripture for this one at least not yet

The reason I ask is that it is sort of hard to understand what you mean with out defining righteousness.
 
As far as peace goes I would honestly say that the greatest unification of people occurs when a groups existence is threatened. Commonality allows for minor bickering to be set aside so greater "good" can be done.

I emphasized the good as it itself is relative and over is dictated by a society and there exists variations in said society.

In short, peace amongst a group seems to be found when a group faces annihilation.
 
The reason I ask is that it is sort of hard to understand what you mean with out defining righteousness.

Exactly, righteousness is hard to define. So to the point what do you feel is righteous.
 
FYI I am not interested in global peace, I am interested in the abolishment of oppression.

If peace is a byproduct of that, so be it.
 
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peace is not global but individual.
 
I am not going to present an argument to that. :p
 
As an idealist myself I wish the world would move past all of this and see the universe for what it is. See everything for what it is. To embrace truth to embrace not only themselves but everyone and everything.

Could that happen when we still cling to ideas such as "good vs. evil"
and "chaos vs. order" and treat those as truths?

I understood what you were saying when you mentioned non-human living things being of equal importance to human beings. I think people are so opposed to this because in order to maintain the lives we live, we have to live unnaturally and detach ourselves from the natural word as we destroy it.
 
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I don't understand what you mean. How isn't peace global and individual?

this is way over simplified but. So long as there are different views there will be conflict (not necessarily violent). However one can find themselves content in their own lives and understanding of things.

I have found peace and enjoy it very much.
 
Could that happen when we still cling to ideas such as "good vs. evil"
and "chaos vs. order" and treat those as truths?

I understood what you were saying when you mentioned non-human living things being of equal importance to living things. I think people are so opposed to this because in order to maintain the lives we live, we have to live unnaturally and detach ourselves from the natural word as we destroy it.

If we could ditch all the oil and go back to a basic way of living I would be estatic. Many times I think how much better the world would be without humans in general.

Yet... Here I am, here you are. If you were getting whipped daily and atrocities were forced on you, I wouldn't be pondering the universe while I watched...