Suppose that... | Embley, Private School Hampshire

You know, I remember it like it was yesterday even though it was about a hundred years ago now. Sitting at my desk, I was tasked with developing an understanding of how Prussia came to dominate the federal states of what is now Germany in the 19th Century. I know, gripping isn’t it? I know you can hardly contain yourself reader. I had little choice, I was studying in the Sixth Form of my Augustinian run college and actually quite content to think this through and to frame 20th Century political Europe in that prism. ‘Si vis pacem para bellum’ was attributed by AJP Taylor (yup, that also dates me), amongst others, as the political platform of the emerging leader of a bellicose Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck engaged in a foreign and domestic policy designed to see a dominant Prussia in a federated collection of states. The power of Prussia’s military capacity being the driving force - or at least the instrument through which he was keen to exercise influence.
 
You see the same principle behind the arguments for re-armament and the arms race that precipitated any number of conflicts. If we appear sufficiently threatening and sufficiently pugilistic, we can porcupine our way out of trouble. A bristly and prickly foreign policy follows with others perhaps matching us bristle for bristle. Hard to see how harmony is arrived at. Bit like making peace - burying the hatchet but marking the burial for future reference. It doesn’t seem to have the full commitment to harmony one might hope for. This point is not one that rejects the right to defend ourselves if we are in difficulty. It is entirely appropriate to be ready to defend, an individual’s right to swing their fist stops where my nose begins. But my point here is less about the right of self-defence, 19th Century nationalism or political porcupines. Si vis pacem…
 
The macro political picture might see peace as the absence of war, but I wonder if that is all it is or even if that is the some part of what it is? We should concede that the absence of aggression is at least an ingredient for peace. But is there another Peace that might be available to us? The first is a peace between us and the world, the latter a Peace we reach with ourselves and then the world. I don’t mean this to sound new age, but isn’t there a connection between the degree to which we are comfortable in our own skin, to which we are content, that leads to Peace? The BBC reported recently the death of ‘Pepe’, Uruguay’s colourful former president. A man with a checkered past but who espoused a modesty he summed up in interview:
 
"They say I'm the poorest president. No, I'm not. Poor are those who want more [...] because they're in an endless race."
"So what it is that catches the world's attention? That I live with very little, a simple house, that I drive around in an old car? Then this world is crazy because it's surprised by [what is] normal".
 
I am not taking Pepe as an example of anything beyond tabling an idea that he was at Peace with himself and in choosing to avoid what the world seems to think is important, lived an authentic life. There are Stoic examples of this in Marcus Aurelius’ work the ‘Meditations’, but also in Zen Buddhism and in the Gospel.
 
In his first remarks as Pope, Leo echoed the call for Peace. I wonder if the Peace he was talking about was simply the absence of violence? Suppose we took Peace to be an active willing-the-good-of-the-other? An action, a verb; perhaps we are at Peace when we are actively working for the good of someone else, looking at how we support, counsel, encourage and in so doing we find a Peace for ourselves? Suppose we looked at Peace as the realisation of the best version of myself in all I do? Starting with thinking about myself less not thinking less of myself. Suppose we looked to be the very best academic we could be, that we were open to the challenge of big ideas and worked hard to realise solutions, especially when the solutions seem far off? Suppose we decided to be optimistic rather than not; I do think this is a choice not a disposition and one we can train ourselves for… suppose that? Would that solicit the Peace we crave, that in being our best at being us we seek the good of others and as a rising tide lifts all the boats, we make the world a better place? Si vis pacem… suppose that?