What Peace Isn't: Part III: Secrets of Highly Productive Folk

▼The 9th Pillar of Pragmatic Peace▼

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The 8 Pillars of Pragmatic Peace Excerpted from the “dignitatis humanae” Project

'Searching for Peace in Broken Glass'

THiNKTaNK

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Peace is not a wordy wish that dwells amidst the façade of politically, socially, personally, or religiously choreographed harmony. Apprehension of the human condition is paramount.

Underlying and overlying Peace, is an attitude of sustained accountability tapped from beneath the deepest aquifers of spiritual and sound moral bases assiduously watered by vigilant practitioners of Peace—be they at the United Nations, at sea, in the corps, on some desert, on the streets, or in the slums. For that reason, Gestalt philosophy is not an invitation to self-centeredness but rather a complement to Covey's maturity continuum.

Peace comes from the dignified conviction that good can, and must, for the betterment of the human condition, always overcome evil—costly duplicity and human error included.

Peace is its own antithesis and a misnomer in that like the natural wonder of waterfalls and yet unlike meditation, its efficacy depends on ceaseless positive action rather than passivity. And realization of that perception, if accurate, is a minor victory over indifference and injustice anywhere, for happiness albeit interlinked with peace, is not relative.

Happiness is peace correctly understood. And the powerfully pragmatic and survivalist character such understanding instills is Nature’s best: heightened dignity and unwavering hope in the face of hardship.

Never entrust Peace and its furtherance to the lazy, pretentious, the anti-intellect, those unskilled in embracing inconvenient truths resorting instead to vendetta aimed at otherizing, self-justifying while aggressively recalibrating truths; certainly not the incompassionate for in the words of Susan Jacoby, "Rampant ignorance and a positive contempt for evidence exists” today, even in our wired world.

If compassion is truly the best idea humanity has ever had, then entrust Peace to those who have apprehended the essence of that thing we call the human condition. Those willing to do more than merely signing The Charter for Compassion, merely donating, merely adopting (infants and children abroad), or merely showing up at church services or charity events to feel good.

Peace needs enthusiastic partners and foot soldiers seeking to cherish the globe. Not the aloof peace offerings of inexperienced, pretentious, or privileged theorists, —well-meaning, albeit self-centered. Peace therefore, is not a word of convenience evoked for selfish ends, but the embodiment and substance of proof.

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