World peace

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The problem with ideological theories of justice is they don’t bear close examination.

Collective ones run into the problem “who gets to decide what is the collective best interest, on what basis, what’s to stop them tilting the scales in their own favour, and what of people who legitimately disagree?”

Individualistic ones — personal truths — work until first contact with others, whereupon the same basic conundrum arises: what to do when my expression of personal freedom interferes with yours?

It used to be only beauty contestants who aspired to end conflict and live blissed out in peace, love and happiness: nowadays a large part of the educated metropolitan elite seems to want that — at least, in their in unguarded moments.

What is the biggest impediment to universal accord? What would It take to have enduring world peace? How can we get there?

Call JC a cranky old buzzard but he says be careful what you wish for.

Proffered obstacles to utopia are easy enough to come by , though not all of them would suit the beauty-pageant questionnaire: capitalism, greed, the education system, colonialism, the Great Satan, Putin, boomers, men, toxic ideologies, the military-industrial complex, the establishment —

But isn’t the answer, the hope for something better?

We might not like the idea of conflict in the particular, but in the general the problems caused by divergent interests — conflict — is a font of progress. They frame all the things we need to be better at. In which case, isn’t the absence of stimulus for change even more horrifying?

For world peace — the total absence of dispute — implies a settled consensus. It takes as a given that all conflicts have been resolved, all puzzles solved, all expectations met, all questions catalogued, taxonomised and answered, all known unknowns known and all unknown unknowns ruled out. World peace implies total homogeneity of need, want and value. There are no inventions left, no efficiencies to be gained, no services to be improved, no sunlit uplands to dream of. We are already there.

World peace allows of no tribes, no cultures, no diversity, no in-groups, no out-groups; no partisanship, no contest, no sport, no allegiance, no competition for resource, no protection, no defence, no pre-emption, no satisfying, no compromise at all in the name of optimisation or accommodation.

It implies no love, for love implies preferment. Irony: taken to their logical conclusion, love and peace are mutually exclusive.

Peace requires no hesitancy, no uncertainty, no opportunity to improve: the objects of universe are mapped, their infinite trajectories mapped, calculated and projected to the end of time; that we are disempowered automatons on strict deterministic rails; we know and accept and will doggedly do that, and only that which we have to, to stay upon them.

There are no disputes, doubts, disagreements or contrarians. If a contrarian were even possible it would simply be a person who is wrong. But a contrarian would not be possible. Error would not be possible. Indecision would not be possible. If it were possible to err, it would be possible to dispute the consensus, and that would create conflict.

Lasting world peace implies, in short, the end of days.

See also

• The future
• Finite and Infinite Games
• Simulation hypothesis
• The Singularity
• Apocalypse