MAD vs sane approach to peace

When we opted for piling up bombs, we needed a spoiled nation of firebrands to support us. For manufacturing this kind of nation, we fed the masses on heroic fantasies, consequently we have none in the majority to protest against the squalid codes of militarism

Before I could force my mind to the serious contemplation of MAD way to peace seemingly ordinary event helped me declaring it “strategic nonsense” and rise above its depths. As the   chance had it for me; I was passing by an armed guard standing in front of an old bank that he asked me for a cigarette. I hurriedly took one from my packet and handed over to him. Before he would say thanks I shot a question, “How old is your friendship with this gun”?

“Thirty years!” he said. “I have never used it”. He said with distinct regret. He lighted his cigarette and added briskly while cigarette dangled from his lips, “But now it has grown too heavy for me! So heavy that I feel an irresistible urge to use it”!

He added offering a stale pour of smoke on my face.

A few days ago a man had enlightened us with the peaceful intentions behind piling weapons and getting ready for war; brining several sane-sounding spiels together with special emphasis on deterrence theory to nuclear weapons.

The Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), he said, was the royal road to peace —the road was expensive as it demanded every player in the global conflict to have enough nuclear weaponry to destroy other. According to MAD, it has the promise of a time when a strike would result in the destruction of both parties in conflict—seeing these nuclear powers will permanently avoid armed conflicts even if the tensions reach a boiling point and, consequently, ideal of a (tense) global peace will be transformed into vivid reality. That is how he presented “mad” approach to peace which, according to him, harnesses the very belligerent human nature for peace.

But my sudden encounter with the armed gunman had offered me the insight somewhat deeper than the bottomless strategy.

The gunman exposed the ignitable state of humanity and fragile nature civilization. If we equip ourselves with something; we are condemned to use it! It told the whole story of our current wretched state.

When we opted for piling up arms and bombs, we needed a spoiled nation of firebrands to support us. For manufacturing this kind of nation, we fed the masses, especially young ones, on heroic fantasies— we fabricated a distorted history to demonstrate men killing and maiming one another in the name of abstract virtues—consequently we have none in the majority to protest against the squalid codes of militarism—we had spread virus of vulgar nationalism   to eat into every vital of empathy and compassion which makes a human person, truly a human person—we polluted our squares and streets with martial images to evoke hostility—coerced young people in the schools and colleges into believing in worn out heroism and encouraged to make it live again— we preached an ill-disguised version of   “muscular religiosity”   in every corner to have the surplus yield of self-heroicizing masses..... ad infinitum...

What are we going to achieve in the end?

All this preparation and behavioural manufacturing will grow too heavy that we will be making war with the weapons we piled up in the name of peace—it will be difficult resisting we you have gathered at the cost of hunger, ignorance and disease—even if you will resist, it is impossible to pacify millions of people who are nurtured on heroic deceptions. When masses want you to do what you tamed them to believe; you are condemned to face an Orwellian compulsion to shoot the elephant or get flattened.

Weapons cannot pave the roads to peace and if they can it would be of fragile and tense nature. Peace is absence of tension and fear. Peace cannot prevail through coercions or at gunpoint. Sweeping aside the MAD one; there are some sane approaches to peace as well.

The armed gunman pointed to right thing that he feels uncontrollable “impulse” to use the gun as it had become an unbearable burden for him. We may know that all human activities are prompted by impulses and desires and some of them have political significance and are used as strings by certain forces to make peace and mutual co-existence impossible.

Rivalry, for example, has been used as string of war. Rivalry is made to work as strong a motive for mutual destruction that people happily embrace poverty, hunger and ignorance if they can thereby ensure complete destruction of the rivals. The best example of political use of this motive was seen in Pakistan when Bhutto cleverly holds the same cord of mobs by declaring; “Pakistanis would rather eat grass for going nuclear”.

Vanity is yet another motive of immense value for war-mongers. The motive is rooted in the most common and basic “look at me” desire. A famous event from history depicted the power of this desire when a Renaissance Italian prince was asked on his deathbed if he had anything to repent of.

“Yes”, he said. “There is one thing. On one occasion I had a visit from the Emperor and the Pope simultaneously. I took them to the top of my tower to see the view, and I neglected the opportunity to throw them both down, which would have given me immortal fame”. He repented.

Moreover, human person wants to be talked about and flattered and thus he fashions a God with same but far intensified desire. This desire becomes very cause of war when a war-monger engineers beautiful heroic masks, with the help of religion as a supporting myth, for those who show readiness for death to satisfy their vanities for posthumous titles of martyrs.

To reap the best of this motive, a glorified but fictitious history is required to suggest this motive seemingly attractive outlet. Whatever we have been learning in the school in the name of history was fabricated with no other but this purpose.

The bordering comparative of vanity is love for power which has been root of most of wars fought in the world. It was to some extent this desire that pushed Napoleon out of his magnificent palaces to run after Moscow.

As man is creative enough to make the deficiency of experience with imagination; powerless tends to serve powerful to make them feel strong. Since the power over human beings is known to be the most appetizing; so religious leaders are actuated by its lures so much that they derive more pleasure in saying “NO” than saying “YES”—laughing is sin, singing is sin, dancing is sin and everything that can make you happy is sin.

Love for power could be sublimated into pursuit of knowledge and if governments are creative and sincere (difficult traits in pair) and ready to teach new generations to avoid first kind by simply declaring it vulgar and second as noble.

Moreover, human’s capacity to boredom and love for excitement makes him more war-prone than animals on the earth. Fighting, among other animals, is mostly for the sake of survival but once we enter into the realm of “humanity” it takes multiple shades.

When a religious orator or political speaker stir masses to attack the neighbouring country or people of other faiths or sects; so-called believers get excited and waste no time in removing thinner masks of enforced civility. Therefore, we saw our streets thronged with mobs whenever Pakistan had a successful nuclear or missile experience.

Interestingly, if we see the nature of “creative moment”, it is a heavier one. The creative artists, poets for example, say that their poems are basically a “celebrated tragedy”. While everyone in a society cannot avail such sublime and artistic outlets; civil society can advocate for more parks, sport facilities, cultural florescence, music and other creative activities to replace them with violent means of expression.

As the majority of human population is passive recipient of sin-centred religiosity; it makes easier for religious leaders to transform this primordial fear of an ever-angry God into widespread hatred. As fear and hatred has chicken and egg relation; they are used as a behavioural bomb to have belligerent nation and an arsenal full of WMDs.

A great many people have said that man is naturally prone to war and that conflict is the natural state of nature. A servile and uncreative mind can never know that life is not only malleable in dealing with the different challenges but creative enough to invent a kind of, euphemistic alternatives for almost everything which is unpleasant or threatening its survival. I find human journey from blood-spattered gladiators to gentleman cricketer a sufficient evidence for my argument.

Therefore, we can not only call sports to be civilized replica of wars but a far effective way to provide healthy and blameless passages for the deadly impulses which are brought into play to make or prepare for war.

Sports, for example, are the best means to teach team work and above all “democratic acceptance” of victory or defeat to players and uncountable number of people at once.

Another way to global peace could be bringing up geo-centred generations. By geo-centred I mean a generation who loves planet earth more than an obligatory fancy-land where none has either gone or come back from.

Weapons are symbols of destruction, death and annihilation. They cannot be presented as symbols of national pride. Paving roads for peace through weapons is only a pretext to look good and do bad. The real roads to freedom could be marked by understanding the human phenomena and coming up with sincere and creative means to transform the destructive impulses into constructive ones through democratic socialization, egalitarian education and respect for human rights and life.

With the removal of WMDs fear of war will be removed from human consciousness; then humanity would spread its wings and with this will start our journey to vertical evolution! Historians, of coming ages, would mark it as a dawn of the sanity.