Men of peace

“ You can’t call yourself a man of peace unless you’re capable of great violence. Otherwise you’re harmless.”

I’ve seen countless variations of this theme. And I’ve come to realize in the modern era those words carry less weight. The physical threshold of who can commit great bodily harm to people has not been lower. 

Extreme amounts of violence can caused by properly placed fertilizer and a detonator. A keystroke can shutdown massive infrastructure, All you need is a the ability to hold and aim a firearm with a working trigger finger to kill someone. It’s a far cry from the decades of training and conditioning it used to take to be a warrior. I mean it’s why armies transitioned to firearms. It made it easier to conscript more into service with shorter periods of training.

Now I don’t say this to diminish what happens when someone truly trains to operate as a professional warfighter in today’s battlefield. The lowered threshold to entry makes those who properly train that much more effective. It’s a sight to behold.

But. We have to reflect on who is capable of violence in the current world. And that’s almost anyone. School shootings, bombings, terror attacks, cyber attacks all bear this out. The various egress of attacks are growing.

It used to be a man with a sword could stop another man with a sword. Then you shot the man with a gun before he could shoot you. But now some of the greatest devastation can be caused by a computer thousands of miles away. 

We have to have cyber protection. It’s why the space force was established. We still need air superiority. Infantry and all their force multipliers and logistics on the ground. We need law enforcement still as well. And then first responders to mop up the pieces before you can rebuild. That’s war in the modern era. Almost always urban. Multifaceted. Hacker vs hacker. Pilot vs pilot. Soldier vs soldier. And on and on and on.

There’s never been an era of history where the idea of a peacemaker seems more relevant. More pertinent. And one’s diplomatic abilities are not dependent on their fighting skills anymore. 

Now I’m not here to say that warriors don’t make great diplomats. That they’re not some of our greatest peacekeepers. Peacemakers. Because they are. Them and first responders understand trauma on a deeper level than most and converting that energy to peaceful causes and genuine change is powerful. Arguably the most powerful force. But they can’t do it alone.

See in today’s age we need the buy in of everyone to turn toward peaceful resolutions. We need to watch our interactions on social media. We need to support all leadership that works to defend and protect and reduce violence. 

When the threshold of who can commit violence is lowered the responsibility to confront that, falls on a much larger group of people. It’s no longer just the minority who qualify to put on a uniform anymore. And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Hopefully more people can find ways to buy into local and international communities to make change and support peace. Because the world needs all of us to be men of peace at this point. No one is harmless. And that’s both a good and sobering thing.