Peace is a desire. War is a fact.

Peace is a desire. War is a fact.

So said Oswald Spengler. I was thinking about this note as I listened to some speakers and participants at the Webinar share sentiments about war and urge instant peace.

History is a guide to live mindfully through times of war. It helps prevent the derangement of our minds with scrolls of doom and clouds of dreams. It helps us bring compassionate awareness to the facts of war, and to let go of the mind’s ceaseless generation of desires, whether we call them peace, glory, nation, justice, freedom, democracy.

Spengler’s full text is:

“The question of whether world peace will ever be possible can only be answered by someone familiar with world history. To be familiar with world history means, however, to know human beings as they have been and always will be. There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace is a desire, war is a fact; and history has never paid heed to human desires and ideals.”

Oswald Spengler

All ordinary citizens of the world desire peace, even if their leaders conspire for war. All ordinary citizens of the world need to see war as it is, even if the media dream machines narrate stories of good and evil.

This is an excerpt from my weekly newsletter – Glimpses of the Multipolar World – that you can subscribe to for free at jeffrich.substack.com. It comes out every Saturday morning and shares my work on making sense of our changing multipolar world with a little bit of mindful history

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