I'm not talking about pacification by the victorious powers. I'm not talking about restoring the status quo full of oppression. I speak of a peace based on rights, justice and the promise of a future.
Peace is not the absence of war. The peace project is about building a world in which war becomes implausible with open eyes and dignified feet.
I am always suspicious of those who, in their arrogant pessimism, fear that war is part of human nature. Recent studies have shown that it is cooperation, including between species, that enables survival in a forest. Two billion years ago, life became possible when cells learned to walk together. Civilization emerged 12,000 years ago as communities emerged.
In the egocentrism of an era of social networks, permanent storefronts, image empires and a cruel economic system, our generation could take inspiration from the principle translated from Ubuntu by African philosopher JS Mbiti:
“I am because we are.”
Incompatible with the construction of individualism that shapes our standards? Surely. But I will not give up my utopias in 2024.