How would you guarantee peace?

Peace is a very sensitive state which takes just the slightest wrong action to trigger a set of events which will eventually lead to its destruction. It doesn’t take much to disrupt peace; a wrong look, a misunderstanding, an unfunny joke etc. Don’t get carried away, in this article I am not talking about how to maintain peace between two nations, that's way too big of a scale and way too complex a problem. I am talking about how to maintain peace at your very own tiny scale, the peace between your friends, your relatives or simply in your neighborhood.

For our lives to move on smoothly we all need peace to a varying degree, in our homes, neighborhoods, workplace and much more. This very often times isn’t easy to achieve, you don’t need to look for problems, they always know just where to find you. Of course, the solutions I propose here aren’t failsafe, they depend heavily on how you choose to implement them and even then, they might not work.

Some context

No need for us to reinvent the wheel here, there are already countless institutions which have put in place systems to maintain peace and orderliness between large groups of persons. These systems already work pretty well so why do you want to change them, all I’ll do is bring these systems to your awareness and that's it.

Rules, Regulations, Middleman:

Governments maintain peace with a set of rules and regulations which everybody has to abide by, with a middle man (police) in charge of enforcing these rules. It's as simple as that. Even when you lived with your parents, it was the same system which was in place. They set the rules and enforced them, when someone went out of line or when you had a quarrel with your sibling, they’ll swoop in to enforce the rules. The same goes for even the biggest corporations, there are rules and regulations and a body which enforces these rules. This system has proven for millennia to guarantee peace with an accuracy above 95%

The question now becomes how do you apply it? It's quite simple, whether it's in your house, neighborhood or office place, make sure to set rules everybody can agree upon then find the middleman to enforce them.

Contracts:

These are another powerful tool to maintain peace, with these there is already a designated middleman which is the judicial system. When two persons sign a contract, they are compelled to abide by the rules whether they like it or not and run the risk of losing their freedom if they break those rules. The good thing about contracts is that they are immutable, you can’t just wake up one morning and decide to change them or not to abide by them. For example, we agreed not to fight each other, so if you wake up one morning and decide to fight me then that's a breach of contract, and you are going to receive the full force of the consequences which are coming for you.

Training:

Peace is a state which is misunderstood very often, everybody tries to give his own definition as to what peace means and as long as things are going their way, they are willingly going to accept the status quo, but once things take a turn which isn’t favorable to them, then they seek to disrupt peace. Fights break out when people have strong opinions which go against each other, a solution to this could be a comprehensive training which explains to everyone what peace is about and the importance of maintaining it no matter what we feel or think.

There are peaceful ways for us to resolve our differences, having strong opinions isn’t something new nor bad but the way we go about it makes a whole world of a difference.

The training we can go through concerns aspects like; open communication, empathy, learning forgiveness, active listening and understanding boundaries.

Some loopholes

Of course there are loopholes to every system, one major one in this case would be persons who are against peace. Don’t be fooled, not everybody out there is an advocate for peace, they might tolerate it because it works for their interests at the moment but the second it doesn’t then they won’t hesitate to switch mode. It's quite sad and disappointing, but in the end that's just humanity. So watch out for such people, those who are ready to give up peace when it no longer serves their interests.

Why is it important?

It's important to guarantee peace because people change, circumstances evolve and so you can’t promise to yourself or to any other person for that matter, that +you are going to be the same forever. A situation might push you to give up even on your morals and principles, and this will affect negatively those who were counting on you staying the same. In order to avoid this, you should put in place these safeguards which will be for the benefit of every one in the end, including you.

Thanks for reading ☺️

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