Peace is most commonly defined as freedom from disturbance; tranquility!
Its common synonyms: are tranquility, calm, calmness, restfulness, peace and peacefulness, quiet, quietness, quietude, silence, soundlessness, hush, stillness!
Peace is also described as lack of war or the absence of terror!
It is the very foundation of a stable and organised society.
Without peace, all other things are at a stand still! No schools can function, all normal services are impeded and even hard won and expensive infrastructure are either destroyed or abandoned!
The absence of peace is war, war is anarchy and a degradation of humanity to the level of the beast and the demotion of society into a dog eat dog jungle.
All sane societies work for peace. All sane governments strive to provide a season of peacefulness for its people. Indeed the success of any epoch of human civilisation is dependent on the length and duration of its peacefulness. Therefore advanced societies tend to be those societies that have had elongated periods of peacefulness that allowed their culture and ethics to develop.
Much of Africa has had its progress truncated by colonialism and war!
Peace allows the growth and development of human society to high levels while war brings humanity and human development to its knees!
Indeed, peace allows education to flourish, it allows trade and industry to flourish, it allows the flowering of the best in human beings.
War on the other hand brings forth the beast in the human psyche! War draws forth the lower man, that aspect of man that is red in tooth and savage in the extreme. That aspect of man that knows not humanity, nor love, nor charity! War being forth by the primeval man whose only desire is to survive.
That man you know in peace time changes in war time and becomes an animal so much so that you may not recognise him. The man of war is an unfeeling and uncaring godless machine. He is either a hardened killer or a soulless survivor. And it takes generations to overcome the scars of war. Indeed, no man who sees the brutality of war and death will ever remain the same again. The scars last a lifetime and nations hardly recover the loss of viable and otherwise productive individuals.
This is the reason why most nations never allow war because of its heavy toll on society and the horrendous toll on morals.
Peace is a foundation of all that is good and pure while war is the basis for all that is horrible and decadent.
Those who play the ostrich on the current woes of our nation are mostly ignorant of the long term cost of the carnage going on.
First is the spectre of unexpressed anger and hostility which will definitely find outlet sooner or later to the chagrin of the nation.
Second is the toll of revenge killings, which can never be ignored. We are yet tribesmen and the ethic of tribes require revenge at any opportunity. Those who think that the various killings will go unanswered are ignorant of the core code of tribes, a code which neither eligion or civilisation can expunge.
Furthermore, manhood in Africa is defined by capacity to protect one’s own. Every African man has that at the core of his being and will never feel fulfilled if he is regarded as a coward. He is compelled to seek vengeance. Even the most peaceful, the most educated and the most peace loving people revert to primitive emotions and actions once their group survival instinct is threatened.
In other words, war is a Pandora’s box that let’s out all manner of evil once opened! It is better therefore that the cankerworms in that box is never allowed to see the light of day!
Therefore let there be peace. Everyone, whether in or out of government must seek peace in the land because the opposite of war is too terrible to be contemplated. Anyone who is in doubt should look at pictures of Syria before and now. They should also look at Libya before and now. That is the kind of toll of war on development, civilisation and humanity!
No matter how developed or organised a society is, war sets it back.
Talk less of a ‘patch patch’ nation like ours. War will see us back ward and modern warfare, if allowed to bloom will unleash hellish situations on the citizenry!
Our leaders must act now to checkmate our nation’s slide into anarchy and low-level warfare! One can never tell where that ugly road will lead. All that violence by non-state actors must be stopped before self help reactions become imperative and irreversible. There are two many firsthand eye witness accounts of either official tolerance or outright collusion. Such reports are daily undermining state authority and respect.
Arms manufacturers are looking for markets and they will stop at nothing to sell their goods. Anyone who expects the so-called international community to do for us what we can do for ourselves is naive and ignorant of the ways of the world!
Let there be peace or we all will rue and regret because in war there is really no victor. Society is the ultimate loser and society is you and I and our families.
Let there be peace!
