We are at peace but the world is at war. That has been the story for most who live in what used to be called the First World, since the end of World War 2. We’ve known a lifetime of peace.
So why do we live in such angry, fear-filled times?
Let me define my terms:
As an American born in the numerical middle of the 20th century, A Child of Victory, I have lived through an unprecedentedly long period of peace. Yes, America fought wars in Vietnam, and Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan but none of these conflicts required total mobilization of society’s industrial capacity and universal conscription of able-bodied men as in World War 2.
Throughout this period of peace, the rest of the world was at war. Countries in what used to be called the Third World became the proxies for the conflict between the US and Soviet Union. Africa, Latin America, swathes of Asia all suffered through wars, their governments supplied with armaments from one superpower or the other.
Yet as this long First World peace nears its 80th year the societies that in theory should have benefited most are wracked by anxiety. Their democratic political systems are corrupt and in desperate need of renewal. Free market dynamism, the necessary complement to successful democratic political systems, has disappeared replaced by rentier capitalism and widening social and economic inequality .
The United States hovers on the brink of calamity. It is in a rhetorical state of Civil War which is reflected at the national level in a Congress incapable of fulfilling its functions beyond passing continuing resolutions to keep the federal machinery functioning.
Beyond that the Republican party, so rabidly anti-communist during the Cold War, is in thrall to a Soviet spy who is now dictator of Russia.
The United Kingdom in a free* and fair election voted to leave the European Union and condemned itself to both diplomatic irrelevance and further economic decline.
The * after the word “free” in the previous paragaph is there because the anti-EU disinformation/propaganda campaign run by the overwhelming majority of Britain’s “free” press was instrumental in convincing those who provided Brexit with its 52-48 margin of victory in the EU referendum.
Across Europe, anti-democratic parties are using democratic means to gain a foothold in legislatures and the European Parliament.
If the beating of swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and nations not learning war any more was something devoutly to be wished the reality is something else.
The quote I’m paraphrasing is from the Book of Isaiah Chapter 2, verse 4
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
The words are inscribed on a statue outside UN headquarters, ironically the sculptor, Evgeniy Vuchetich, was Ukrainian.
But the quote from Isaiah is taken out of context. The chapter is not about finding our way to a golden age of peace. It is the prophet’s harsh warning of judgment day coming against the descendants of Jacob/Israel who have forsaken HIS laws. “Hide in the rocks” “Fear the Lord,” and the glory of his majesty, when he arrives in the final days to shake the earth with judgment. After which there will be no more war.
But Isaiah does not prophecy peace will then come. Judgement … but not peace.
War creates anxiety, obviously, but what if extended periods of peace create anxiety as well? Some days I have a terrible thought: our current problems come from too long a period of peace. Chris Hedges titled his best-selling book length rumination on his experiences covering wars in Central America, the Balkans, and the Middle East
Chris is being ironic with that title. But what is the meaning of peace? Other than in sermons—Hedges’ father was a clergyman and midway in his career covering wars, Chris earned a divinity degree from Harvard—peace as a force is not discussed.
Maybe a book on the subject should be titled. “Peace Is A Longing That Gives Us Meaning.”
The longing—not the reality—is the beauty of peace. And having written those words down I recoil from the thought.
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A few years ago I wrote a series of five essays for BBC Radio 3’s The Essay slot called Our Father’s War. I had just turned 70 and wanted to publicly remember the men of my father’s generation who fought in World War 2 and pass along some of the stories I had heard from them growing up and try to interpret their meaning in the present.
They were all dead, of course, so there was no going back and questioning them about the experiences they had told me about. I did contact their children, many of them old friends and classmates of mine, and was surprised to find out that these men had not shared the stories with their own kids. Nor, in some cases, did my friends and classmates seem to care.
A mighty engine of collective repression was at work in society in the first decades of this long peace. This allowed people to rebuild their psyches, forget the family and friends who had been killed, to bury the sights and smells of the battlefield, and get on with building the new economy and just … living.
The arts is where these memories were publicly examined. Novels and films were the safe space for remembering.
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War as a source of drama, but peace? Drama comes out of conflict but peace is the absence of conflict, right?
But there is no longer any reason to expect war in western Europe. Indeed, there is every reason to expect the opposite. Reagan talked of a generation of peace, but in Europe we are already on to the third generation for whom war is an experience of history books, films and television screens.
Almost 100 years ago, Norman Angell and others wrote that war had come to an end in Europe, and then found that the new century brought the most terrible wars in history. Nothing is certain, but the fact that Angell was wrong 100 years ago does not prove that he would be wrong now. The only lesson of history is that history does not repeat itself.
Cooper goes on to lay-out what he sees as a likely consequence of this post Cold War world, a more globalized economy is in prospect and with it a fading of the nation-state and that will have profound consequences:
The weakness of national identity may bring more divided societies. National feeling was one of the things which brought rich and poor together. Today the rich have no country; instead they have an apartment in Manhattan, a villa on the Mediterranean and an e-mail address. What about the poor? Most likely they will be left with a set of values which the dynamic parts of society have long since discarded.
The urge for community will not fade with the nation. We can expect to see smaller communities formed around ideas, ideologies or religions.
I would add one more item to “ideas, ideologies and religions”: conspiracy theories.
I will end this post with the penultimate paragraph of Cooper’s 1999 essay which acknowledges peace is not likely to last and foresees where our societies are headed:
How does the long peace end? In war—how else? Perhaps in civil war. It may come with the return of the irrational from within. National communities will be weakened but rational materialism will not be enough. It is the irrational which brings us together. And it is beliefs, usually irrational beliefs, that people die for, not rationality or consumerism. We cannot yet imagine what beliefs or values may divide and destroy our societies, or reduce them to chaos, but they will seem as compelling and right, as God and Nation appeared to our great-grandfathers.
WWII was a narrative of American moxie and bravery as I understood it from my childhood. Loved the tv show The Rat Patrol about North Africa. Born in 61’ here. My dad was a Korean War vet and his two brothers served in WWII, the oldest never returning, the other came back with a Bronze Star. My father though, was also ready to send me to Canada if the draft for the Vietnam war had continued. My cousin was drafted and he was not the same after he came back. Few were.
Unspoken was the admiration the Third Reich had for the Jim Crow laws of the American south. I was part of desegregated busing in 2nd and 3rd grades in Lansing, Michigan and might have had a class with Magic Johnson before we moved to a small town that chased away the only black family who dared to move to that town. Williamston, Michigan.
Peter Tiel, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk along with others, have created an ecosystem in which these tribal possibilities can again find form, exposure, and funding. The isolation of vast sectors of society by the pandemic was gasoline for those gathering the lost. Humanity is in the casino business with 8 billion chances.
"We cannot yet imagine what beliefs or values may divide and destroy our societies, or reduce them to chaos, but they will seem as compelling and right, as God and Nation appeared to our great-grandfathers."
Seriously? Seems like rabid theology is back in fashion, toxically so