Tuesday, July 22, 2003

All right, what's boring about peace? How much adrenaline do people need, anyway?

Now, I admit to being easily bored. I hate waiting, and spending forty hours a week doing some repetitive, detail-oriented task -- features largely in my vision of hell. I like a challenge, and I don't want to outlive my ability to learn.

AND all the things I like to do can more easily happen in peace. There's more time for art, and good food, and good conversation. There's easier travel to exotic places, and better chances to get to know people from other cultures. Without a large share of our economy draining into a destructive hole, we can build more interesting architecture, and film grander spectacles, and educate more people. Everyone has a better chance to realize their dreams, and make this a richer and more fascinating world, when the economy is good.

Only the unimaginative find war the most exciting possibility. Ask any soldier -- war means long stretches of boredom. Peace, on the other hand -- peace means freedom and choice and art and business. Peace lets us work on justice and freedom, and war distracts from it. In peace, freedom expands, and in war, it contracts.

Oh, war has its moments. Peace is infinitely more interesting.

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