Peace: a word that has become like blasphemy

There are important words that are suffocated by events, to the point of becoming unpronounceable. As in the case of the word peace: Just try to mention it in any discussion and you'll be silenced within seconds. The dictionary has acknowledged the expulsion of this word from our everyday language, leaving its use exclusively to those pesky priests, from the local parish priest to the Pope. The semantic erosion is rooted in the habit, which we consider natural, with which we observe war, wherever it breaks out and whoever starts it. Deaths, injuries, innocent victims become merely numbers in a macabre accounting. We are accustomed and passive in the face of evolving war, and the concept of peace is not even considered as a utopia. The word has been erased because what it implies is no longer a possibility, and therefore whoever utters it evokes something that cannot exist, as the facts demonstrate.

In a frightening cultural and psychological step backward, we have now come to believe that only armed violence can resolve conflicts and even international relations. There is always a good reason to bomb homes and people, and ultimately, war is now considered a price worth paying to nurture the idea that it is the best remedy for ensuring our ability to coexist. There have been other periods in history, not too long ago—think of the 1970s, for example—when violence was considered unavoidable for resolving conflicts. But then, at least, it was imbued with ideological influences and motivations: today, it is violence in all its forms, as both a means and an end, that obliterates international law and excludes any possibility of multilateral negotiations not preceded by the usual bombing. Only violence, and nothing else, can bring order to our lives.

The regression is unstoppable. After the horrors of half a century, the first part of the twentieth century, bloodied by two world wars (effectively a single conflict with a short interval), everything that had to do with weapons was confined to the objective of deterrence, a key word in the long season of the Cold War, when the dominant thought recalled the ancient Latin saying, attributed to the Roman writer Publius Flavius ​​Vegetius Renatus: Si vis pacem, para bellum; If you want peace, prepare for war. Henry Kissinger, the most influential figure in 20th-century American foreign policy, certainly no pacifist, considered the goal of peace inseparable from the objectives of war itself. Woe betide anyone who gives way to weapons without simultaneously opening a solid and constructive channel for negotiating the terms of a lasting peace, one that isn't merely a fragile truce. Now, it's war that's becoming long-lasting, potentially endless.

Everything has turned upside down, and while we are experiencing the highest number of armed conflicts the planet has seen since the end of World War II, war has become the political instrument of any negotiation, excluding the possibility of stopping it before it erupts, and denying the role and function of any international institution charged with seeking negotiated solutions. It is weapons that make politics, and not politics that also, and in exceptional cases, contemplates the use of weapons.

The eclipse of the word "peace" has rapidly spread, like wildfire, even in regulating relationships between people. Our language is already warlike, filled with insults, shouting, and threats. Schools appear to have abandoned this aspect of education, and must contend with students willing to do anything in the name of violence, and parents who beat teachers who dared to give a "good boy" a bad grade. Films, video games, TV series, and talk shows often glorify violent reactions as swift and effective, while dialogue is perceived as weak or ineffective: the line between victim and perpetrator, which should be clear and visible, becomes blurred and tenuous. Social media is the universe where violence ferments and expands.

The violence of war, which excludes any peaceful approach other than that of an unconditional surrender, like the private one, which starts from an insult and then overflows into a horrendous and lucid murder, is tailor-made for men and women in love with their narcissistic ego, incapable of any dialogue that does not degenerate into insult, refractory to any form of doubt, just to be sure, just ask the artificial intelligence a question.

In several surveys conducted in the United States, approximately 1 in 5 people believe that violence is essential to resolve the country's deep political divisions, while a third of young Americans between 18 and 29 consider democracy a limit, now outdated, with which it is impossible to address problems, and strongly prefer the violent and bellicose methods of autocratic regimes. Among the many surveys in Italy confirming the cultural shift in favor of the use of force to regulate not only relations between nations, but also those between individuals, a recent ISTAT survey is particularly significant. It focused on young people (those on whom we must bet for our future...) and on violence between individuals. Approximately 11,1% of boys and girls (aged 14-19) consider it acceptable that "in a relationship, a slap might happen every now and then," and 7,3% think it's okay to slap your girlfriend if she's dared to flirt with someone else. Meanwhile, 36% of young people consider it acceptable, always or in certain circumstances, for a boy to routinely exercise control (cell phone, social media) over his partner. The technological face of violence has erased the words "peace" and "peaceful coexistence."