Head's Blog | Si vis pacem | Embley School, Hampshire

Si vis pacem, para bellum… but why? Firstly, it has nothing to do with John Wick - OK it’s where the title for his series came from but in classical antiquity it set out a political strategy to enable peace to reign by preparing for war. Through the centuries and into the modern day, the adage can be seen behind the proliferation of arms in various arms races. If my stick is sufficiently bigger than yours, you will leave me alone. Well maybe yes but maybe no. It seems to take no account of the depth of feeling, the degree of injury or the, perhaps, irrational view that regardless of the weaponry some will take the view that they will wage war regardless.I touch on this because a Mexican colleague was talking to me recently about the current state of the world and bemoaning the fact that no one seems to learn from the past. The bellicose Bismarck certainly didn’t in the 19th Century and the global conflicts that followed fail to evidence much in the way of getting wiser even after the event. I suppose I would argue that the state of peace cannot exist when balanced on the knife edge of conflict where it is sought indirectly. It seems reasonable to suggest that peace prevails when certain conditions of being human are agreed, accepted and respected. 
 
I have mentioned in these pages about the right I have to swing my fist stopping just short of where your nose begins. But if peace is to be understood as the absence of war or the conditions for peace are entrenched in adversary, it is as shallow as a pauper's pocket. Peace is the necessary context for human flourishing. It is the context that conditions us to be the best version of ourselves. Industrial progress is advanced in emergency but little of what makes us human is. In fact, it is more likely to go the other way; war facilitates the reduction of the ‘other’ to a thing. It may be psychologically necessary to do so because it is easier to bear the consequence of action if the victim is nameless and faceless. 
 
Through the recent Remembrance services, we gave voice to the voiceless and identity to those who might otherwise be forgotten. The essence and shared nature of the human condition was revealed through the struggles shared, the bonds formed and in the feeling of loss by those who survived. But also, in the stories of mercy and kindness; moments when lines of division were crossed and rations shared with the ‘other’. The profound feeling of loss felt by all sides unites in a common grief from which those who have passed call on us to remember and I think, most crucially, to do something to avoid it happening again. Is it not an obligation or duty for us to remember those who gave their all and in remembering to commit to action? 
 
Perhaps the road to peace is paved less with the preparation for conflict than by attention to understanding the difference of others; to understanding our shared humanity; to call out consistently and with integrity born of the belief in our shared nature where wrongdoing is taking place and to address it. If we want peace, we begin with understanding why we want it. As the requirement for human flourishing, it is the context where I become what I am by allowing others the freedom to be. Si vis pacem...