Better active evil than passive good?

Some feel that it is men and their distorted values and reasons who escort nations into war, while it is women with their instinctive caring natures who engender peace. That is an argument many would contest.

However, those who believe it is men and their egoist driven ambitions that cause war should note a painting on the wall opposite, “Journeys and Destinations” – a small painting capturing the moment the World War One peace treaty was signed.

Anyone would in fact find value in hesitating for a moment before an image of the Palace of Versailles bursting with men eager to be a part of history, and so be among those who witnessed the signing of the peace treaty between German and the Allied Powers in June 1919.

The fine piece of art shows the main hall in the palace full of men and not a woman in sight. The treaty those men signed brought only a brief hiatus to war and was so restrictive to Germany, in particular, that it became something of a trigger for World War Two.

Peace is something far deeper, complex and grander than an absence of conflict for it demands the embrace of a positive paradigm; a paradigm in which people say “no” to distractions and entertainment whose essence, and language, is confrontational and violent, as is the foundational philosophies of most modern films and television programs.

As with shrines of remembrance everywhere and for whatever reason they exist, the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance cements in our psyche the reality of conflict and although it is important we remember the event/s, it is equally important that having learned from it, that we move on.

Such things as the Shrine of Remembrance have the power to keep us rooted in the past and while it is true that future success is inextricable linked to an understanding of the past, it is an error to look toward tomorrow through the prism of what was.

Peace was one of the four “pillars” on which the shrine was founded, but it is something that will forever elude us unless we expand our thinking, challenge and change our adversarial and belligerent behaviour, understand mutuality and be cautious with our of vernacular.