Evans Experientialism Evans Experientialism | ||||
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1880-1936Is World Peace Possible? |
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Oswald Spengler First published in Cosmopolitan, January, 1936. |
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Is World Peace Possible? A cabled reply to an American poll The question whether world peace will ever
be possible can only be answered by someone
familiar with world history. To be familiar
with world history means, however, to know
human beings as they have been and always
will be. There is a vast difference, which
most people will never comprehend, between
viewing future history as it will be and
viewing it as one might like it to be. Peace
is a desire, war is a fact; and history has
never paid heed to human desires and ideals.
Life is a struggle involving plants, animals,
and humans. It is a struggle between individuals,
social classes, peoples, and nations, and
it can take the form of economic, social,
political, and military competition. It is
a struggle for the power to make one’s will
prevail, to exploit one’s advantage, or to
advance one’s opinion of what is just or
expedient. When other means fail, recourse
will be taken time and again to the ultimate
means: violence. An individual who uses violence
can be branded a criminal, a class can be
called revolutionary or traitorous, a people
bloodthirsty. But that does not alter the
facts. Modern world-communism calls its wars
"uprisings," imperialist nations
describe theirs as "pacification of
foreign peoples." And if the world existed
as a unified state, wars would likewise be
referred to as "uprisings." The
distinctions here are purely verbal.
Talk of world peace is heard today only among
the white peoples, and not among the much
more numerous colored races. This is a perilous
state of affairs. When individual thinkers
and idealists talk of peace, as they have
done since time immemorial, the effect is
always negligible. But when whole peoples
become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility.
Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic.
To adopt such a position is to abandon the
future, for the pacifist ideal is a static,
terminal condition that is contrary to the
basic facts of existence.
As long as man continues to evolve there
will be wars. Should the white peoples ever
become so tired of war that their governments
can no longer incite them to wage it, the
earth will inevitably fall a victim to the
colored men, just as the Roman Empire succumbed
to the Teutons. Pacifism means yielding power
to the inveterate nonpacifists. Among the
latter there will always be white men --
adventurers, conquerors, leader-types --
whose following increases with every success.
If a revolt against the whites were to occur
today in Asia, countless whites would join
the rebels simply because they are tired
of peaceful living.
Pacifism will remain an ideal, war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage war again, the colored will act differently and be rulers of the world. |
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