Peace - an interesting concept?

A good question to ask is this – Has there ever been peace in this world? Not a funny question really because if we are totally honest, has there ever been peace? Certainly loads of us here think that the last 70 or so years have been peaceful but loads of us are absolutely wrong! We here in Britain might feel good and possibly in western Europe as well but the rest of the world have not. There might not have been a total world conflagration like the two world wars which incidentally were European originated but plenty of local insurrections, revolutions, even between religions. Us Europeans are pretty warlike, and ever since the colonisation period of the 16th and 17th centuries have been pretty active on the battle fields. You might say it’s all history now but I beg to differ. It’s still pretty active in many ways, different perhaps to the WW2 activities but nevertheless just as problematic. The people of the Ukraine and of Russia as well are still suffering the mental attitude of the Mongolian people. The Chinese still believe that hegemony over all other world communities is their overriding responsibility. The Iranians think it is time to ensure their faith is uppermost and believe the West is a devil in disguise needing to be euthanised. Whatever their reasons for thinking all of that there should be no doubt it will end soon. Israel at the moment is fighting for its existence, let there be no doubt of that. The idea of a two-party state is a wet dream of old politicians who cannot see the wood from the trees. And talking of wet dreams, let’s be fair that most politicians suffer them. HS2 is one of the biggest, lasted for a number of years, another wet dream is called ‘Stop the Boats’! But yes, it seems likely that Europeans over the past 500 years have laid the destruction of the planet. War-like, acquisition madness called ‘Trade’, you name it whatever you want but today the chickens are entering the roost. This morning I read an interesting piece of reporting that said the Russians, Chinese and Iranians are now in the process of paying for criminal gangs to do their dirty work. So, these three nations can deny responsibility for the upheaval created in their name. One of the things I noted in the UK was the ‘Protests’ by Palestinian groups on the streets of London and some other places. I never realised how many were ‘living’ in this country. In fact so many that the British fabric of society has and is changing. Some groups are even calling for the imposition of shariah law! Perhaps we should wonder who paid them? Again and again we have indicated our politicians are just sleepwalking. Maybe in the name of wanting to be ‘With it’, appeasing any and all pressure groups? In reality they are destroying the fabric of society without even knowing it.

In the end it all comes down to the same thing, the fight between peoples, nations and now even criminal gangs, for hegemony. It is of course probable that at the bottom is the human psyche. The desire for being counted, the drive to stay alive at all costs, the need for resources to do so. It is as was stated by many before, if we cannot control our base instincts we are simply on the road to annihilation. The funny thing is, our faiths and I am referring to the largest, are all talking about peace. Self control, love your neighbour as yourself (you would not deny yourself anything?), respect life. Yet all these tenets of faith are disregarded. And that is most probably the saddest thing of all.