Vision of a Peaceful World

When I think about a peaceful world, I ask myself what I would be willing to give up for it. At the present time, most people in the United States have a very favored status. We use a hugely disproportionate share of the world’s resources and energy. We are bombarded by constant messages to consume even more and inundated with the message that someone else will do the most difficult, dangerous and tedious tasks of producing that which we will consume.

This situation cannot lead to a peaceful world. It only exists through the use of a powerful military or police force that keeps people producing goods for others without gaining their fair share of the benefits. People who are hungry, without a future, without the necessities of life, are not at peace and not peaceful.

We here in the United States are isolated from the rest of the world and from the pain our conspicuous consumption creates elsewhere on the planet. We accept our favored status as a right and claim that we ourselves are responsible for our good fortune. We not only expect to be the favored people of the future, but we expect our children to have even more wealth and power.

An interesting discussion of the United States and world poverty can be viewed at Too Much

To understand the perspective of most of the third world’s population you might want to play a game: http://www.globalministries.org/involvement/lcma-2.htm

What would a peaceful world look like? Instead of focusing on increased consumption, we would need to value increased leisure time for family, study, reflection, and creative pursuits. Modern technology has made it possible to produce the essentials people need with a minimum of human effort, but instead of providing us with more time for human interaction and spreading the wealth to those who have been deprived of life’s essentials, we have only increased our demand for material possessions. A peaceful world would require a change in our priorities and our values. We would need to work together for the benefit of humankind and to sustain our earth for future generations instead of competing with each other for more and more of the earth’s material resources. What would you be willing to give up?