CHAPTER III (PART II) : WAR AND PEACE.

"Child with a Dove" by Pablo Picasso

Celestial Harmonia Macrocosmica of Andreas Cellarius

"General, your tank is a powerful vehicle.
It smashes down forests and crushes men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm
    and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.
General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think."
Bertolt Brecht

The genesis of harmony in human life is a strife (a war) towards love and well being, the good struggle+.Cadmus and Harmonia painting by Evelyn De Morgan.

Actor Michael Caine and Punch

The birds of war

war toys for boys, photo by Steven Meisel

Edward Norton in American History X, the stigma of nazism and prejudice

   Ares, the mighty, fiery god of war meets the watery and fluid nature of Aphrodite and the child born is called Harmonia. A riddle; this offspring of adultery, Aphrodite contributes her soothing and welcoming properties inside a calm unison most times that of opposite or additional powers while Ares represents the strife for a equilibrium and rationality inside the war affairs and war as a case can almost signify every struggle, a struggle without, in the external affairs but also a struggle within, towards personal growth and the effort of the individual to conquer the self, to conquer the self is to rule over the world as perhaps the eastern tradition would have it, after all the microcosmos is a miniature of the macrocosmos if we listen to neoplatonic ideas of the creation...what we meet in the outside reality is what possibly hides within even in some distant area of the conscience phenomenon. Harmonia, the tuned daughter, mothers the noun of harmony, a word spread in many languages around the earth, a call for balance inside a world of turmoil, unconscious decisions and still very much archaic terror, pain, violence, traumas and death.

Roma città aperta

A fashionable war? I-D militant issue

war and terror, the real vietnam and illogical reality of violence

girl soldiers, models playing war, photo by Steven Meisel

Despair and loss, the actuality

Linda Evangelista and unhappy face


As humanity and collectiveness we've shown our capability of producing high technology War machines and gadgets of all kinds, there are countries debating on the right of their citizens to carry a personal gun, there's Chekhov's gun, a dramatic and narrative principle obeying a certain rule, the author states it like that: "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." In his perspective the presence of a gun stands as a countepart of a promise, action is what comes to mind when thinking of the imago of the gun, many times action leading to havoc if we attempt to see the big picture. There's a charm and some mystery when it comes to the owner of the gun, a distortion of intentionality or even instincts, personal instincts but also those of the collective consciousness tracing threats and enemies, manufacturing the monster of the state war machine resembling a lernean hydra.

Banksy's famous riot of flowers

Joan Baez and her diamonds and rust activism

Carl Jung would have wondered if the war affair in its current state is the result of the mass-man, the victim of all 'isms', shouting bipolarity, separation, demarcation...confusion. Not that the ego has to identify with its opposites to keep its integrity, it's more like a challenge for the ego to understand how to keep the balance between them,to investigate among tendencies and achieve a subjective unison, a courageous negotiation without having to overlook the possible differences. The political and religious systems of today make this effort extremely difficult for any individual struggling towards this direction, of finding the unification among paradoxes and controversies, postulating one-sidedness as unique truth and dogma, that's huge pressure and actual war for the psychic organ and its organization. Jung testifies (On the Nature of the Psyche), ' The current "isms" are the most serious threat in this respect, because they are nothing but dangerous identifications of the subjective with the collective consciousness. Such an identity infallibibly produces a mass psyche with its irresistible urge to catastrophe.' According to this thinking we may assume that the "instinct of death" is served this way while in a freudian view we lack the stamina towards the "instinct of eros", we got the Ares' element but we miss the Aphrodite as his companion, creation and creativity forces are at great stake if things continue to operate this way.




   



  

John and Yoko, almost the last influential pacifists

   The previous decades of the 60's and the 70's reopened the dialogue on the peace matter, equity and liberation of speech and beliefs. The youth, at least a great part of it, was affected by these movements globally, everything indicated that a new era freeing the world from prejudices of centuries would occur, this was proven to be a false hope. The constant materialization of societies along with consequent conservative governments inrecepted those developments. Nowdays it's rather old fashioned and passé to mention human rights, real sexual liberation and generally alternative and more natural ways of living. The youth prefers to take selfies and comment on celebrity life trying to obtain the image and neglecting the importance of a content, a youth unable to doubt stereotypes in a constructive way it's a youth without much hope. The "make love not war" slogan won't turn many heads these days.
   The potential is ever present, trying to calm the oppositions and obtain a better, more sober angle we must remember Peace, this Utopia, non place. In Aristophanes' play "Lysistrata" women decide to abstain from love making going on a sexual strike so to force their men to stop the war, the city is turned in an extensive household while in the absence of men, women and their nurturing nature trying to seize the control of polis so to restore and heal the situation. Their vision and female approach was one succeeding only in the realm of poetry cause no actual society managed to exist in this aspect, but the analogy is intriguing. What if things had turned otherwise...Is this world anything more than a random rolling of dice?†††.

nothing else but love, Lysistrata vintage illustration by Notor

Moschino meeting Peace and variety campaign

Bob Geldof the youth against war and poverty

"The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.

At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony but she could finally open her lips and say, "Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him."

Quietly a young man entered. His head was wrapped in bandage soaked with escaping life.

He approached he with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. Be not sad, but smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment, for Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty.

"Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace."

Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart; and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.

At dawn the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, "Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun."
Peace XVIII by Khalil Gibran.

Peace for all the kids- ειρήνη υμίν