The Price of Peace (I Did Some Calculations)

Issue 109

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If this is your first read, welcome to The Conscious Politics Op-Ed (formerly The Conscious Politics Sunday Newsletter). Currently being published as and when the stars align.

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My first reaction to hearing the words the price of peace the other day was: What are you talking about? Peace is here. Peace is what is. It’s all day every day — right under our hate and fear and righteousness and all.

To be sure, we’ve done a heckuva job smothering our peace with myriad demonstrations of man’s inhumanity to man — for millennia. So you could be forgiven for not remembering or knowing or realizing — or ever being shown — that we humans, with some glorious exceptions, have utterly lost the idea that peace is actually, always, what is. It’s the natural state of Nature, the birthright of us all. Thus my second reaction to the price of peace is you’re right! Peace does come at a price so I did a few conscious politics calculations to assess what those costs might be and herein is some of that work — for those who actually want peace.

Peace will cost you the idea that you’re better than anyone else. Or more right than anyone else. Or more justified in your positions than anyone else. It’ll cost you your judgment, plain and simple. Maybe it’s the judgment you consider benign, a part of everyday life like gossip or your displeasure with your friend’s dating choices or your disdain for that asshole at work or the disparate things you and your friends hate and talk about hating all the time. Maybe, further down the continuum, peace will cost you your belief in the concept of enemies. Maybe, further still, peace will cost you your desire to see violence inflicted upon others — at your hands or at the hands of a proxy you’ve designated. And, Dear One, peace will most certainly cost you the judgments you make about your Self every day. So keep your judgments, if you choose, but know that doing so will mean no peace, not for you.

Related: peace will cost you your unwillingness to forgive. That’s because I’ll never forgive and I want peace are mutually exclusive. One is old consciousness, one isn’t.

…if you happen to be experiencing mild to severe levels of real fear and also have a desire somewhere within you for peace, let me disabuse you of any notion that you can get there from there — it’s just physics.

Peace will cost you blaming others for the circumstances of your life. That’s right. Take some responsibility and then take some more because to blame others for the circumstances of your life is to defy the belief that we humans are the architects of our life experiences. Sometimes those experiences are created consciously, often unconsciously, but that part doesn’t matter. There’s something unwanted in your life experience? Welcome to the club. All that matters now is what you’re going to do about it and if blaming others is your best or only idea, you cannot ever have peace. Also? It will cost you that belief you have that taking responsibility is equal to blaming victims. That is not what take responsibility means so peace may just cost you some immaturity. Grow up.

It’ll actually cost you a collection of other long-held beliefs, too, like, off the top of my head? War is inevitable; people are evil; might makes right; you have to fight hate; it’s hard; arguments about equivalency; this has never happened before; terrorism can be destroyed; peace isn’t possible. Please, add to this list.

Peace through strength? Hmmm. I’ll give it a think.

Peace will definitely cost you “civilian casualties” and “collateral damage” as concepts because, I promise you, nobody can knowingly kill children, on purpose, for some supposed higher purpose, and expect to make peace. Come on.

Here in America, my friends — my actual friends and the strangers to whom I refer colloquially as “my friends” — peace will cost you your political apathy. That’s for sure. It’ll cost you that belief you have that opting out of being (well-)informed about politics and the choices your representatives in government are making, on a daily basis, in your name and/or not voting is some kind of noble statement or strictly personal choice that has nothing to do with others. Except often the result is being governed by people who have worldviews and policies that are, at best, other than what you’d prefer and, at worst, actually harmful to you. (FYI, war mongers love it when you don’t vote.) Moreover, not voting deprives all of us from knowing the truth about where we stand, collectively, as a society, at any given time with respect to any given issue(s). The untruth that not voting creates in a system that relies on trustworthiness pollutes any path to peace.

What about control, you ask? Give it up. It’s time. Allow your fellow human beings to be who they are and to govern themselves because that’s what being created as equals, endowed with inalienable rights, actually means. Simply, peace cannot be had while controlling the destinies of others.

And fear not! I did not forget fear. It is time to say good-bye to it because, new-consciousness-wise, it’s over anyway. Done. Finito. On the ground, however, today, in real life, if you happen to be experiencing mild to severe levels of real fear and also have a desire somewhere within you for peace, let me disabuse you of any notion that you can get there from there — it’s just physics. So be afraid. Have concerns and worries and anxiety and all of it. Fine. But there ain’t no fear in peacemaking so give up your desire for the peace or give up your fear.

Retribution? Revenge? Bye-bye.

Helplessness and hopelessness? No and no. These are high costs of peace because I promise you, peacemakers are neither helpless nor hopeless.

Oh! And sorry not sorry, peace does not have sides so peace is gonna cost you being on a side. Womp, womp. That’s because peace is unity and unity is the definition of no sides and oh, by the way, another name for new consciousness, where peace lives, is unity consciousness so there’s that.

Peace will also cost you the belief that violence against this planet, Earth, our home, isn’t a thing or that it doesn’t matter.

Peace through strength? I’ve thought about it and, well, yes. For sure. But not the kind of strength you know as military might. Rather, it’s peace through strength of conviction: conviction of intention, intention for peace. Peace through the strength required to see and hold fast to a clear vision of it; the strength required to turn away from, not feed, negativity, anxiety, fear, and the like; the strength required to believe that peace is possible; the strength required to actually be the peace you wish to see in the world…and go from there.