It’s Time We Redefine Our Concept of World Peace
Has everything gotten out of hand already? Quarantined inside my home for two months now, I ask this because everything is just a mess, and the world feels like it’s going down a terrible place with each passing day.
After the deadly Spanish flu a century ago, we are once again faced with a threat that directly hits us, humans. And more than anything, it has shaken yet again, our world’s concept of peace.
Even accelarated climate change, bringing famine, drought, extreme typhoons and hurricanes can’t even match the terror COVID-19 has brought into our lives.
While other threats, being slow and debatable, only indirectly hit us, if we really couldn’t care for other living things in our planet, the hunting arrow of this pandemic is directly pointed at us, as if it was meant to reduce us, destroy our peace, and cause us to scramble.
Our world concept of peace is based on human security, law and order. Our governments are designed to protect us, humans, and to pursue our interests.
Even Wikipedia states:
World peace, or peace on Earth, is the concept of an ideal state of happiness, freedom and peace within and among all people and nations on Planet Earth.
You see, our criteria for peace only includes us, people, in the equation. And while it can resolve our primitive instinct to dominate and survive within ourselves, it’s problematic because it doesn’t include our relationship with other living creature of this planet, and the aim to protect or conserve them. Something we can swiftly dismiss by asking, are they really essential to attain peace?
Perhaps if there is one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic clearly is teaching us right now, it’s the fact that “everything is interconnected.” Our individual actions will affect everyone, in a ripple. In chaos theory, this is also known as the butterfly effect.
We are facing this pandemic right now because of our own irresponsibility in handling, caring, and studying our wildlife. We have accelerated climate change because we have put our environment in the last of our priorities.
There is inequality, famine, and poverty, among our own species, because a progressive economy is more important to us.
Isn’t it about time that we realize our insufficiency as a race? In our pursuit to attain world peace, if we really gearing for that, we have forgotten the essence of harmony, and focused heavily, on comfort and pleasure.
Comfort and pleasure, as guiding light of our peace are quite temporary, and futile. How easy it is to take these two away from us to terrify us?
The moment they are removed, what do you think will happen to our law and order? To our security?
I am writing this article because COVID-19 is slowly stripping us of our comfort and security. Even if we get out of this, which we will after some time, how much time will this world concept of peace can hold?
Why do we pursue things that are temporary, things that will eventually lead to our own demise?
In the Bible, I am amazed that Christ differentiate God’s peace to what this world can give us:
“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
John 14:27
Here, He is talking about peace that is not temporary. Something that can still our troubled heart, and something that can make us confident, hopeful, and brave.
Reflecting on this verse alone, I realize the recent events in our world are not here to destroy us. They are here so that we can open our eyes, so that we can envision a better future, not only for humanity itself, but for the whole planet.
If we are meant to progress as a race, and conquer the stars, like on the sci-fi movies that we loved, we must first take care of our home world, and all its creatures.
As much as we are in a process of self-discovery, we must also take into account the destiny of human species and its realization, and the part that we, as individuals are playing for it.
Redefining the world concept of peace starting from ourselves will create a ripple in the future. And this is our chance to create a better and more holistic path in our journey.
As we are called to stay at home, perhaps, we are also called to look individually on the inner longings of our hearts. The chase for comfort and pleasure seems tiring, and in vain already, if we ever going to continue it.
What if we desire harmony instead? What if we desire something that is permanent, and ever lasting? What if we long for something that can truly secure our children’s future, and their experience of this beautiful world too?
Perhaps only then, can we write a better story for the future of the world.
