When I am at home. I have peace. My gardens produce enough for us to eat. The only war we have here is the ongoing battle of keeping the deer out of the garden, and the raccoons out of the duck pen. Like Schodinger’s cat the world outside my reality can both be at peace and at war. It depends on how you measure that outside reality as to what you see. If you measure a thousand different points around the globe, what percentage will be at actual war? Can you measure a million or a billion different points and find that they are at peace at the time of measurement. Are we a world at war or at peace? The answer depends on your point of view, your choices and how you measure reality.
Say, we looked at a billion people for a ten minute period. That is approximately 1 in 7 people. We will let the excess be infants who do not have the power to direct their own actions. So, say we circle the globe looking at our one billion people from five PM to five ten PM. What are they doing? Are they engaged in a war related activity such as watching the news, fighting with an enemy or preparing to fight or recovering from fighting? Wouldn’t most be closing up their jobs for the day, commuting, or stopping to pick up something for dinner or their child from daycare? Many might be starting to cook dinner, others sorting their daily mail. Perhaps some are catching a quick nap, or a snack. What percentage of our randomly selected global population would be engaged in war as compared to those who are going about the concerns of their jobs and families? Are we a world at war, or are we a world at peace?
Now, of course, a certain percentage of the global population is at war. They make their money from war. They hope for a continuation of the killing in Syria, so they will continue to have a job making ammunition. Others are actually about the business of killing other people. Some of the power elite devote the majority of their time to planning, promoting, and executing war. However, on a global scale, what percentage of the population do they represent? Do we live in a reality where we are at war, or do we interact with an alternate reality where a power elite is at war?
I think we can choose our reality and how we interact with the war reality. How do we keep the war reality out of our peace reality? I suspect the answer may be as complex and simple as not buying into the war reality. Those who hold the reality of Iraqi children playing soccer, and Iraqi men chatting with friends on the bus on the way home from work, will be less likely to run off to the Middle East to kill those people. The person who has an image of a Syrian woman baking bread and chopping vegetables for dinner is less likely to support a government that advocates killing Syrian people. When we hold the images of peace in our heads, we are less likely to condone our government’s role in training and equipping groups such as ISIS.
Think about the realities. Think about who you want to represent your reality and make yourself heard.