Metanoia - A roadmap to true peace
If we want peace, we must work to have it. Since the beginning of time, aggressive actions with concrete physical results have been operationalized. We live in a world that accepts aggression as a natural gesture, the fruit of an evolutionary path that maximizes immediate results. Without traumatic events, natural or man-made, there would be no talk of peace, since the concept would be so omnipresent and stable that no one would notice its absence to give it a name. We would be like bacteria in an infinite culture medium. We are not. We have named the concept and have a duty to operationalize it. Humanity has evolved beyond the limitations of the natural world and has built structures that allow us not only to survive, but to live in increasing physical, psychological, and emotional comfort. Any person or entity has better possibilities of developing positively by eliminating negative influences, not necessarily immediately, but in a repetitive, iterative process of small incremental improvements. It is an endless, but quantifiable, process of construction and reconstruction. What is proposed here is to architect the concept of Peace in an active, tendentially stable, and, above all, individually identifiable way, in which any person knows how to classify within themselves what is, or is not, peaceful action. I am not interested in being the last peaceful citizen, housed in a crystal tower in a world at war. I am interested in living in a peaceful world, in which unnecessary suffering is avoided, and in which all human beings have the capacity to identify words, gestures, and actions that are not peaceful. But this is not an effort ‘of another’. It is a responsible individual effort. If the citizens of the world want their peace, they have to work for it. You included. 1. On the concept of peace Peace is an active gesture, not just the negative of conflict. Capacity for peace: capacity to absorb impacts and process them minimizing harm or aggressio