3 ms·
> we don’t have a plural form for peace Alliance, treaty, federation, united, concordate, joint, organization... And that's just the large scale things that ge
by CodexArcanum 11y ago
> we don’t have a plural form for peace
Alliance, treaty, federation, united, concordate, joint, organization... And that's just the large scale things that get names. There's also friendships, marriages, corporations, cooperation's, and more. There are at least as many words for peace as for war.
Sorry, pedantic nitpick anytime someone brings out the old "there are a hundred words for X but only one for X^-1"
- pistle 11y agoThat's a fair point on the use of that literary cliche. Yet, the main thrust of the idea is valid. Peace is a relief against from which special events (wars) are defined. Whether it's valid AND important to his thesis is doubtful. I argue that we don't have a war gene, but we do have genes that are related to our experience of fears, aggression, etc. and the power of these are more easily manipulated to create societies prone to war than to peace. Despite large groups of peace-loving people in most societies, violent subgroups will wage wars and turn fear into profit. You don't see the peace-lovers standing up against the war-mongers in a way which would stop the bloodshed. False binary coming... Would you spend a trillion dollars on raising the most helpless and hopeless up on a ladder of living standards or spend that same trillion stamping out shadows and bogeymen amongst the same people?
- sliverstorm 11y agoI would put it even simpler. Peace is a state of existence. War is a state of existence, and an event. State is not plural, but events can be.