Adam’s Peace

This is Part 1 of the Pragmatic Peace series.

Here is the “Table of Contents” for the entire series:

• Part 2, Beginning Pragmatic Peace, discusses the pragmatic method, as well as how to recognize addictions.
• Part 3, Temperance: Pragmatic Peace

Before I can go on any long discussions on how to pursue pragmatic peace, we first need to understand exactly what pragmatic peace is. To do this, I’ll give each word’s ‘pragmatic’ definition, then combine the two.

Pragmatic

The word, pragmatic, is closely related to the word practical, with a couple of minor differences. Without getting into a discussion of its origins and evolutions as a word, we’ll take the pragmatic approach when looking at the word pragmatic.

First and foremost, when you’re looking at something pragmatically, you’re asking, “does it work?” After you have figured out if it works or not, then you take steps to optimize how it works.

For example, there are several pragmatic approaches to washing a car, as well as several approaches that just don’t work. You can fill a bucket with soap and water, grab a rag and a hose, and just start washing the first part that you come to… It’s pragmatic, because it works eventually… but the second time you wash the car using this method, it is no longer pragmatic, because, hopefully, you’ll have more experience, and you will have seen a better way to wash the car. Instead of just washing the first part you can touch, instead, you’ll start washing at the top, so that the dirt doesn’t wash down onto a previously clean spot and make it dirty again. Each time, you’ll learn something new from the previous attempt, until you find the most effective and efficient method… In a nut shell, that’s the pragmatic approach.

In order to be pragmatic, though, you need to have a fair idea of what doesn’t work before you try those methods. For instance, washing a car with sandpaper wouldn’t work, because it would take off the paint as well. That doesn’t mean that, once you find one method that works, you should only and always use that method… just keep an open enough mind to entertain radical ideas before trying them out to see if they work. If you’re not sure, start a small scale experiment. If you’re still not sure, then make a decision and stick with it until you have more evidence. If the evidence later tells you that you’re on the wrong path, well, it’s never too late to start again.

So, the pragmatic approach is like the scientific method, with one big exception… If there isn’t enough evidence, make a decision anyways. If you’re wrong, you’ll find out that you’re wrong a whole lot more quickly than if you never made a decision in the first place.

Peace

When most people think of peace, they think of a calm, tranquil scene, such as sunset at the beach, sunrise in a forest, or some other still moment. There is, of course, political peace, which is most often defined as the lack of war. To most people, peace is the lack of action.

I say, that’s absolutely wrong. Peace isn’t about sitting still… otherwise, the roaring of the ocean at sunset would be taking peace away, not adding to it. The growing trees in the forest and their swaying limbs would disturb the peace, rather than enhance it, if peace were about sitting still.

So, then, what is peace? Simply put, it is deliberate and constant activity. There is certainly nothing deliberate nor constant about war, no matter how people try to justify and dignify it. There is more to the definition of personal, inner peace, but I’m already approaching this from its pragmatic side, so I’ll leave the nuances for later, when they matter.

Imagine sitting on your couch, only listening to your breathing and the beating of your heart. At first, you would feel calm and at peace, because every part of you is moving deliberately and constantly. Eventually, though, (and this is especially true of us Americans) your mind will wander and you’ll get bored. This boredom comes from your mind no longer moving deliberately, due to lack of stimulation.

Let’s say that we can overcome this boredom by practicing meditation. Next on our list comes our bladder filling up. The body has been deliberately, peacefully extracting waste from the blood stream, storing it away to be disposed of later… Well, now the body can no longer store more waste, so your sense of peace is interrupted by a call of nature.

Imagine that you can somehow overcome these frequent interruptions to urinate (without going into details, please. I don’t want anybody to describe how to build a better catheter in the comment sections. While it’s an interesting exercise, it just isn’t pragmatic). The next interruption to peace comes in the form of hunger. We can begin to see just how difficult having a sense of inner peace can be to achieve if we just sit still, even if we discount a person’s own drives and ambitions. Finally, sitting on a couch for extended periods of time, strapped to feeding and waste disposal tubes would leave our muscles weakened so that any movement becomes painful, and leaves our skin so ravaged that sitting still is also painful.

Certainly, peace and stagnation are not compatible. Change, then, is necessary for peace, but only if that change brings us joy.

Pragmatic Peace

Putting both of these terms together, we get, as our working definition, a pseudo-scientific study of change, emphasizing action and experimentation, with the purpose of increasing our lasting joy.

I say that it is pseudo-scientific, because joy and peace are subjective. What brings me joy may not bring you joy, so it is impossible to get the same results from the same experiments.

In my next post, I’ll discuss some basic human requirements for pragmatic peace, along with the most common, and most ironic, pitfalls that keep us from feeling any sense of lasting peace.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Pragmatic Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.