By: MIRZA IQBAL ASHRAF: mirzashraf@hotmail.com_____________________________________________
September 12, 2015
The Quest For Peace
ABSTRACT: In every time of our known or unknown history, societies have been struggling to maintain peace. People have always been striving to preserve peace in order to live and work harmoniously with each other. A passionate quest for permanent peace has always been a prime objective of mankind. In order to achieve this objective many religious, political, and social philosophies in different times have been presented. Many methods have been applied including a justified use of force and power by one nation or an international organization to maintain peace. In spite of all efforts through ages the objective of permanent peace is still a dream come true. With the invention of highly devastating weapons, preserving peace has become so fragile that we have come to a point where either we would all live or we all die. We now need to leave the worst behind us. It is time that with a greater resolution we have to conduct the affairs of the world in a smarter way that should leave war as a totally diminished phenomenon. … We know that peace is the practical matter of how human beings can live together harmoniously, dealing creatively and effectively with the differences, hurts, and fears that arise in their relationships. Peace is and has been as natural as life on this planet and its being there does not demand any justification. But any act, which disrupts peace, needs a reasonable justification. Today’s man has become a pathetic creature, who in the world of natural selection having been evolved as a war monger from his brutish nature, or emboldened as a best creation of intelligent design and proud to be God’s vicegerent, is trying to be god. In both cases, we need to understand that man is travelling in the wrong direction. He needs to realize that he has brought humanity to a juncture where peace would come by an insight of love for all or by a blunder of an unsightly conflict or catastrophe of a magnitude that would leave him with no other choice than peace. ― Mirza Ashraf
Ever since human beings have appeared on this planet, in all ages of their time they seem to have been living with others of their own kind in families, groups, and societies. Wherever we look into a society, we find people living together involving likeness as well as difference. Without the sense of likeness, there could be no mutual recognition of “belonging together” and therefore, no society. This may have occurred through accidental circumstances; either people happened to be in the same place at the same time sharing common interests, or may have been forced to merge into already existing group. We find groups of people in common as well as fluctuating relationships with each other, some of whom are like and some unlike themselves. This reflects diversity within the society in which people exist with their natural differences such as those on which the family rests with differences of belief, aptitude, capacity, and interest. Identities, based on commonalities and differences amongst individuals or groups of people have made the society complex, leading from peace to conflict and war. Basically their social structure is based on, primarily by likeness helping them to make life livable together peacefully, and secondly by differences leading them to conflict and war with each. Their quest for peace, the primary factor in their lives, has always been a cherished dream. But peace, violated by their differences, leading to conflict and war is still made out of the control achieved through force. Mankind is perennially caught in a routine to maintain peace through war; peace involving eventually in conflict and war again―a cycle that needs to be changed by the appeal of love for all based on “Live and let Live” rather than building peace by force.
To read full 8 page article go to: https://independent.academia.edu/MirzaAshraf