Should we bother about the UN’s International Day of Peace today?

I say absolutely!

Though not everyone agrees.

I tell a mate that I am writing a piece for the UN's International Day of Peace. He shrugs his shoulders saying:

You are wasting your time. War has always been and will always be. It's human nature. There is nothing that can be done about it.

Really? My mate has not done his fact checks but he is certainly expressing a view that is held by many and one that does not make it easier to keep peace.

Life without war has been a perennial dream of humanity.

Amazingly, over the several hundreds of thousands of years of human history, peace ruled over 99% of the time and warfare was simply unknown.

There were minor tribal skirmishes and individual conflicts but there were no national and world wars until about ten thousand years ago.

Then the world moved from being nomadic, egalitarian and inclusive of people, into a world of 'haves' and 'have nots'.

As large scale settled societies emerged as a result of the agricultural lifestyles becoming dominant, a clash emerged between nomadic tribes who wanted continued free access to previously common land and the settled societies which took into their possession ever increasing areas of land previously roamed by nomads.

Also within the agricultural societies the classes of rich land owners and impoverished serfs started to emerge.

Land-grabs and the increasing gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' provided incentives for war that later was further intensified by toxic nationalism and the tribal mentality of an 'eye for an eye' revenge mentality. Mahatma Ganhdi quipped, that this view taken to its logical conclusion would make the whole world blind.

We saw a latter day example of a colonial wars in the invasion of ancient Australia, where the opposing sides were totally unequal in terms of having weapons of mass destruction.

Here the invading colonising settlers robbed the nomadic first nations of the means for the continuation of their nomadic way of life by forcefully dispossessing them of their land.

They established a settled society across the continent so that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of the first nations have become progressively impossible, resulting in the displacement and impoverishment of Aborigines.

Although over the last ten thousand years there have been many wars resulting in the frequent absence of peace in many countries overall, the rate of wars and violence globally has been going down even during this period.

Nevertheless, nations continue spending ever more on armaments even though the opportunity cost of such expenditures is enormous in terms of resources being syphoned away from even making a dent on resettling the over eighty million displaced people, on reducing poverty, on spending the money on Covid 19 vaccine for strife prone and impoverished nations and on effectively combating the causes of disastrous global warming.

Dwight Eisenhower's advice in his famous 'A chance for peace' speech offered in 1954, has largely been ignored by nation states. He said:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

In 1968 Mahalia Jackson sang the famous spiritual, 'There shall be peace on earth' at the greatest symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, that divided East and West Berlin.

She sang:

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.
The peace that was meant to be.
I walk with my brothers in peace and harmony.
Let's take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally,
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

After she finished, a journalist told her:

I never believed in God, but when you sing it gives me goose bumps.

Mahalia replied:

It's your soul speaking and you don't even know that it is there.

Well, are we aware of our soul - that subtle voice that whispers softly 'there shall be peace on earth and let it begin with me'?

The International Day of Peace is a clarion call to us all to start to listen right now and work together for peace.

People everywhere in the world have the common enemies of the Covid 19 Pandemic, and the increasingly catastrophic Global Warming that threatens to make life unliveable for humans.

Will we therefore stop fighting one another and unite to save lives everywhere and our planet?

The UN is asking us today to 'transform our world into one that is more equal, more just, equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and healthier. The pandemic is known for hitting the underprivileged and marginalized groups the hardest. By April 2021, over 687 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered globally, but over 100 countries have not received a single dose. People caught in conflict are especially vulnerable in terms of lack of access to healthcare. In line with the Secretary-General's appeal for a global ceasefire last March, in February 2021 the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for Member States to support a "sustained humanitarian pause" to local conflicts. The global ceasefire must continue to be honoured, to ensure people caught in conflict have access to lifesaving vaccinations and treatments.

I am a member of the Blue Mountains Interfaith Group that attempts to bring all people together who believe that spiritual awakening is foundational for lasting inner and international peace. Today we are doing a Zoom presentation to pay tribute to the International Day of Peace.

The following is my contribution to this presentation.

I pray daily for inner and world peace through a personal relationship with a spiritual Supreme Being greater than ourselves that charges us with love and inner peace, inspiring us to a commitment to try to love others as ourselves, including the least of our brothers, sisters and even our enemies.

Spiritual disciplines aim to transform our identity from restless materialism-trapped ego-centrism to a spiritual identity that seeks to serve all beings peacefully with love.

Enough of us embracing such spiritual identity may form the basis for lasting inner and international peace.

This is my prayer:

I thank you God with all my heart with all my soul with all my mind.
I love you God with all my life for you love me first with all your might.
So help me God will you teach me to love my neighbour as me
To love my enemy like you love me
Even my worst enemy who's always me.

Soli Deo Gloria, alone yours' all glory hallelujah
Servus Servorum Domini oh let me be, oh let me be
The servant of your servants Almighty
Oh let me be, oh let me be.

Give us our daily bread the world over, let there be peace on earth forever
Let there be peace on earth everywhere, give us our daily bread the world over.

Shanti, Shanti, Shalom – May peace be with us all. Amen.