To start at a beginning - is there a simple definition of peace?
That good place to start is also a little challenging!
To answer the question ... in short, no.
Like many other abstract things peace is difficult to understand and hard to define.
But the word has been in use for a long time. Today's English word peace is thought to have first came into use around 1300DC, derived from the earlier Anglo-Norman pas meaning freedom from disorder.
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So is that what it means today? Or what else is the word ‘peace’ taken (or used) to mean today?
What is peace?
In 21st century everyday life peace has widely different meanings in different places, for different individuals and at their different stages of their life.
Young children may well think of peace as something special for themselves - a place, a feeling, an event or an activity.
Many adults come to see peace as a social condition that meets human needs, a harmonious state of human relationships, a spiritual condition or an elusive ideal.
Other adults see peace as a contrast to something they dislike, the opposite for example of war, loneliness, poverty or violence.
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Looking at it anther way, WHERE is peace?
Those examples suggest the peace we experience could have special locations: some based on likes and dislikes are held within ourselves, and others based in relationships extended outwards from ourselves.
The exmples also suggest that peace may have, or lack, or perhaps combine distinctive components in ways that make it a good or a less good peace.
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Between them such examples have generated at least four ideas for thinking about peace and for understanding it more deeply. The descriptive names for those ideas are positive peace, negative peace, inner peace and a more embracingly social outer peace.
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If that shatters a cherished personal vision of Peace as a specially beautiful unbreakable idea, know for the avoidance of doubt that it (together with other ideas) has led to further valuable ideas about peace and about how it can be made stronger.
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Peace has attracted much research since the mid twentieth century. But even academics and professional researchers still see lack of a definition as a problem. “Peace is too important a goal to be without a firm conceptual basis for research and action." From 'Measuring Peace', Richard Caplan, 2019).
Clarifying what Peace means is critical to improving it.
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The Woodbridge Trees for Peace and this site are here to interest more of us and of our young to join the search for a better future.
Find more in other Posts on this site: for example more about Peace, its origin, how it might grow, and other places where you can learn even further.