@V_ Something I was thinking about this morning. I wonder if anybody has some other ideas about this topic. The conclusion sounds sad.
@V_ Personally, I would question the idea that peace leads to stagnation. I think change is a given of biological life. It’s impossible to avoid it. Conflict comes when the pace and scale of change is outside human limits. Change will happen, but if it is naturally, slowly, and at human scale then conflict is less likely. So peace can coexist with change.
@V_ Very much depends on what we mean by a "world at peace". To me, a world a peace is not a world free from disagreement and dispute, but a world where disagreement and dispute doesn't lead to violent conflict. Rather than stagnation, I imagine such a world will unleash human creativity and innovation. As @jabel says, change is inevitable. Creativity need not be wasted on fighting. I was feeling down this morning about the prospects for the future in this election year. But in the end, democratic politics shows us a way to manage disagreement without violence. We still have some way to go, though. cc @denny
@V_ I think the truth of what you're saying is at the bottom of pretty much every world religion. Suffering is inevitable; how do we deal with it? And it isn't just about human-directed change; imagine a community that keeps its same technology, social organization, religion, etc. for a thousand years, and you'll still have droughts and floods. You'll still have disease and old age. Marriages will not be perfect. Adult children will fail to get along with their parents. Happiness is less about avoiding conflict than about how you deal with it.
@V_ If you want to go pop-science-philosophical, there's a theory that without tectonic activity (and the resultant earthquakes, volcanoes, disaster, destruction, etc.) there could not have been life on earth.
@V_ you’re not wrong. I would posit that “conflict” (which is inevitable) doesn’t have to lead to war. There are nonviolent ways to resolve conflict. The trick, though, is getting buy-in from all parties involved.
So I guess it depends on your definition of “peace”?
@V_ Years ago I read Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", which I thought gave some interesting thought to this. Basically the premise is that the protagonist comes from an anarchist society which successfully overthrew capitalism in a revolution ages ago – in theory, the perfect utopia – but it has, indeed, fallen into a rut of stagnation. Innovators get accused of egotism, so everything stays the same. Given LeGuin's own politics, I'm sure she wasn't saying this is an inevitable consequence of post-capitalism (which I'm conflating here with "peace", I know 🙂), but simply cautioning that this is a tendency we mustn't let ourselves succumb to. There'll always be creatives and innovators and all of that, because it's human nature. In a post-conflict, post-capitalist world, there'd actually be fewer material barriers to people pursuing those things. The trick would be to have a society which doesn't get complacent with itself, too.
