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Peace, the other name of progress
2008-01-02 08:23:25
By Editor
When the United Nations Organisation was formed after the end of the Second World War, it was thought that the world was seeing the end of all inter state and intra nation wars.
The mood was that humanity had seen the futility of shedding blood and realized that peace was the only viable path to permanent prosperity and tranquility.
Quite unfortunately, the dream has not fully materialized.
At this moment, there are increasing fears that the ghosts of the past that had turned hell loose on mankind are now taking over once again, at times in a very primitive but ruthless manner and at other occasions in a sophisticated but even more brutal behaviour.
At the heart of this grave human suffering lies the greed of those who will never be satisfied by any level of possessions, and, in other cases, there is hatred and grossly unjustified paranoia that has become the opium of minds, such that the very value of human life has become meaningless even to those to whom the future means so much for them, and these are none other than the young people of today.
In fact, the present generation cannot be blamed fully for this predicament, because the current global turmoil is a byproduct of the sins and greed of their fathers and mothers, and this—sad to say—has made the young generation go to the extent of shunning a very vital component of peace—that is—the truth.
Quite oddly, personal security and internal peace are cherished by each and every human being.
Much as there are wars and bloodshed taking place all over on each coming day, those who foment the wars usually lead their battles from safe havens, as far away as possible from the pounding of artillery or warplanes.
If somebody decides to look at the matter a little bit more deeply, he may come to the conclusion that it is the youths who are being used as cannon fodder in any major civil strife and inter-state wars.
This is a fact which the youth of today are yet to fully realise.
Even in wars involving major powers, those who are sent to the battlefront are as young as 16 years of age, and these have practically missed the child-soldier tag by inches.
It is their coffins that are ferried back home or buried in hostile territories as agony grips their parents.
In other scenarios, warlords, power mongers and aspirants of national executive office—especially those in the developing countries, specifically Africa—have no qualms about uprooting children as young as eight from their families and training them to kill, loot and plunder.
At times, the children are sent to wreak havoc on their own home territories and spill the blood of their kith and kin.
For the youth to be free from the opium of violence, there is need for the adult-led society to undertake a proper soul searching by practising justice, and this is even more important for those at the helm.
We have to remember that war is usually a product of injustice, which may start at family level and be entrenched at state level, where the time bomb usually bursts.
The other component of peace is freedom. Where there is no freedom, chaos is looming.
However, freedom goes with responsibility.
Where freedom is unbridled, recklessness steps in because nature does not allow a vacuum.
So if the freedom of our young people is not properly nourished and guided at tender age, then we can only be creating the time-bombs ourselves.
These are the components of peace, which should be enshrined in the community of nations if we are really serious about global tranquility.
We have to remember that peace is the other name of development. A country that is not peaceful is not yet developed.
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