Is World Peace Achievable?

This is perhaps the most widely debated and sought after ideal that has plagued humankind for eons.

Taking a reductionist approach to this problem, we must look at the various underlying factors that all contribute to this quandary. Who are the ones calling for world peace to begin with? Humans. What are humans motivated by? Desire. What is desire built up of? What we believe to be our reality.

Humans, as an ever-growing collective body, have come to face many obstacles toward achieving world peace. World peace, as we continue to expand beyond our small tribes which initially migrated out of Africa, has become an increasingly difficult task due to many different cultures and races of people living in more and more compact communities. With different ways of being brought up in this world, we are each faced with the insurmountable task of having to accommodate for other peoples’ unique beliefs, understandings and perspectives.

Population control aside, another obstacle to world peace is desire. With increasingly limited resources, there is only so much that we can attain to quell our desires. Cars, clothes, food and shelter, all come with a finite sum of availability, which in turn comes with an increasingly growing price tag. Even at its most basic level, because resources will always be finite, our desire will forever stand in the way of ever achieving true world peace because we will always fight for the very last remaining breadcrumb that is available to us. Think about this: if there was only one remaining piece of bread left and it was between your child and a grown stranger, who do you think you would give that piece of bread to?

Desire aside, the main thing that stands in the way of world peace is our reality. What is real is only real to you; and how you choose to see the world is only how you choose to see the world (case in point, this article). We are each unfolding a narrative in our mind about what we see; what we perceive; and what we choose to believe as our reality. Ask yourself this: do you consider $1 million to be a lot of money? For the person who only has $20 in their bank account, a million dollars could solve a lot. However, for the person who has $20 billion in their bank account, a million dollars is hardly a drop in the pond.

Fundamentally, with so many opposing realities, overflowing desires and an abundance of human beings stretching across this planet, the notion of world peace is little more than a luxury to be championed by the affluent among us. What peace is there to be had for the person who is too hungry to think about world peace in the first place? What peace is there to be gained for the person who is constantly being attacked for their beliefs? What peace is there to be fostered for the person who refuses to step outside of their own perspective and see reality from the vantage point of another person?

No, what we ultimately seek is not world peace but tolerance and harmony.

There is no space for world peace, only tolerance, when we cannot even achieve peace within ourselves. How can we be a champion for change, if we ourselves have not even attained an understanding of what peace is to begin with? What we truly need is not peace, but tolerance for both ourselves and others. It’s okay to feel a certain way. It’s okay to believe in opposing viewpoints. It’s okay that things are the way that they are. Only then, through this filter of understanding, will we ever have any hope of achieving some sense of harmony; harmony both within ourselves and in our collective society.

But what is harmony, if not the inevitable flux and flow of all things? Harmony is change. Change necessitates balance. If there is no change, a constant veering back and forth between dystopia and utopia, we would simply be left with a disproportionate polarity with one objective beating out all others. We would become robots and not humans. We would become slaves. Harmony, ultimately, is about taking the good with the bad and accepting it all as it is. In truth, the universe is already in harmony; for, the very nature of the universe is to constantly change. To swing the pendulum back and forth between this and that. To the universe, there is only harmony — it is only the human mind that has created a supposition of peace. A supposition that 99.999% of us would disagree with.

-seek out balance, for the world and the universe already are what they are.