Peace // Drawing Lines // Beautiful Souls

When people talk about peace, they speak of a specific peace where lines are drawn which favor their will and demands. In socialist circles, it is popular to talk about a “negative peace,” where there is no fighting but there is injustice. Peace is never an abstraction, it is a pause in fighting and attacking where lines are drawn, and when lines are drawn, the claim that the lines are drawn unjustly are shortly behind.

Do not ask people if they support peace, people always support peace after the lines are drawn. No one in principle wants endless fighting. With both Palestinian terrorists and Israeli far-right politicians enating a sort of endless war against the other’s entire population, which is to say not simply with each other, we must ask not whether or not one wants peace, but rather where the lines should be drawn.

In a mostfully peaceful conversation in real life about the Israel-Palestine conflict, I was told by what is abstractly and uselessly called a “pro-Palestine” person (which includes Greta and Hamas, so not exactly a useful catch-all) where those lines should be drawn, “a total military defeat of Israel.” At least the lines there are established for a clear overstepping of what is acceptable to those who believe the Jewish people have a homeland.

Since I wrote a book on egoism, I am also asked for the “egoist” perspective. Insofar as I have an “egoist” perspective, it is simply a rational accounting of self-interest in its totality of all actors, not a mandate to attack for any single egoism. This puts me far apart from any Ayn Rand or Stirner advocate discussing the glory of egoism-as-such. As a psychotherapist, the navigation of egoisms is vital to understand what forces are present in the world and helping people navigate them.

In an obvious sense, people in conflict zones want the conflict to stop as soon as possible. The only problem being that there is an active terrorist group living underneath the civilians. It is worth saying that this presents a basic conflict of interest. There is a necessity to combat terrorism that can carry out attacks against civilian populations, but there is a civilian population in harms way.

The question is, to eliminate the threat of Hamas, how many civilians are appropriate to kill? Zero? To a normal, non-politically oriented person, this is of course the right answer. No civilians should die. Also, no terrorism should happen. Maybe I should settle for this answer instead of advocating for Israel and become the “Beautiful Soul” as Hegel critiques those with no real sense of the necessity of larger forces. I can’t for some reason bring myself to utter the words, “no civilians should die” and “no terrorism should occur” however, I’m reminded too much of how Los Angeles County works as a representative lectured to the mental health workers a call for “zero youth crime.” Why not 100 nobel youth laureates a year as well? Too sarcastic? Not sarcastic enough?

Social media is a great place to practice being an administrator in Los Angeles County. Just repeat after me, “no civilians should die, no terrorism should occur, violence is evil.”