Can the Sword be Broken?

I have been obsessed with the question of whether or not the homo sapien will ever give up the attractions of war and find surrogates in a world of perpetual peace. As William James asked, “Can we have a moral equivalent for war?” Is the tug of the reptilian brain we all inherit from our evolutionary past just too strong? Or can we someday have the courage to change deeply within ourselves?

Frederick Nietzsche’s vision is powerful and especially relevant for our current world, as we live in a nation that while the richest in history also spends more on war and the military than all the rest of the world combined and is by far the largest arms dealer the universe has ever known…..

And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifice for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, “we break the sword,” and will smash its military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best armed, out of a height of feeling – that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one’s neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared – this must someday become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth too.

From The Wanderer and His Shadow

...more later

Merle