After concluding my series of essays which hope to bring peace to Palestine, and Israel, I wondered what the walk on the path to peace would look like. Specifically, how would we know how far we’ve come since the cessation of hostilities? After giving it some thought, I came up with a way to subjectively measure the progress. In this essay I shall discuss what it is, starting from a very rudimentary approach, and building on it to make it more sophisticated.
As always, we’ll start with a thought experiment. Take a moment to pause and reflect on what you think the relationship between Moshe, Moosa, and their nations would look like if the hostilities ended. Perhaps you envisioned a utopian outcome where all is blissful, or maybe a more pragmatic outcome which requires both the nations to put in time, and effort to normalise the relationship. In the course of this essay, we shall start with the simplistic, utopian outcome, and then build on it to discuss a more sophisticated, pragmatic outcome.
In its simplest form, an end to hostilities results in peace. In other words, there is war, and then there is peace. In this binary view of the world, an end to the war results in immediate peace. I posit that this is a very naive way to look at the outcome, and I shall explain this using the framework of collective consciousness. In my fifth, and final, essay I mentioned that emotions are both a cause and consequence of events that become a part of the individual, and collective consciousness. Looking at the history of the two nations, it will take some time, and effort for the consciousnesses of both the nations to be at peace with each other. With this in mind, we’ll refine the binary view to include one more outcome - stalemate.
Let us now introduce a state of stalemate that exists between the states of war, and peace. This is a state of equilibruim, a purgatory of sort, which provides the two nations’ consciousnesses sufficient time to heal. We can summarize this by saying that peace is better than stalemate, and stalemate is better than war. In a state of stalemate there is neither war, nor peace but there is the potential for either of the two. This interim period can be used to either prepare for war, or to chalk out a path for ensuing peace. This view of progress, although realistic, is also very mechanical. A state of stalemate is the one of perfect lull where there is neither peace, nor war. An immediate transition to such a state, although possible, seems less plausible given that emotions are a part of collective consciousness. We will refine the view one final time and view the states of war, stalemate, and peace as a spectrum.
Let us now view war, stalemate, and peace as a spectrum. On the far ends are war, and peace, and in the middle is stalemate. Nations of the world who have been at war, and desire to be at peace will have to first, gradually, work towards a state of stalemate. From there, they will have to work, gradually again, towards peace. This, in my opinion, is the most pragmatic way to view the progress after a cessation of hostilities, and fits perfectly well within the framework of collective consciousnesses. The time, and effort it will take to transition to from war to stalemate, and finally to peace, provide the necessary ingredients for the consciousnesses of the two nations to be at peace with each other.
With this view in mind, let us hope that can work towards peace in the land of the prophets.
Thank you for reading.
Footnotes and References
[1] We can view this essay mathematically, too. The first model is a set of ordinal values
[2] We can also come up with interactions among nations which can act as milestones to measure progress as they move from war, to stalemate, and then to peace. For example, some amount of trade and commerce can indicate a state of transitioning to a stalemate, whereas completely opening up to trade and commerce indicates transitioning to peace.
[3] Combine the two footnotes, and we can empirically measure the state of relations between two nations. Perhaps someday I will write about it and call it ‘Peace, Precisely’.