In order to preseve peace, you must be willing to fight!

I was re-watching the World of Warcraft: Legion cinematic trailer and found myself concentrating on King Varian's words. It seems almost paradoxical, but perhaps there is merit to his words; you cannot uphold peace if you are unwilling to deal with threats using violent means.

What do you think? Is peace a realistic aspiration without the will to fight external threats?

Here is the transcript of the cinematic:

[Varian Wrynn:]
My son, a terrible darkness has returned to our world. As before, it seeks to annihilate everything that we hold dear. I go to face it, knowing that I may not return.

“They’re coming! They’re coming back!”

All my life I have lived by the sword. I’ve seen kingdoms burn, and watched brave heroes die in vain. It’s been difficult for me to trust after losing so much. But from you I have learned patience, tolerance and faith.

“Open fire!”

[Varian Wrynn:]
Anduin, I now believe as you do, that peace is the noblest aspiration. But to preserve it, you must be willing to fight! FOR AZEROTH!

(Link)

a reply to: Dark Ghost

I think it is wise to understand the following. There is no such thing as a binary choice, when it comes to these matters. So, although, yes, if you want peace, it is best to prepare to do battle to protect it, the concept must never be all or nothing. There must always be balance.

Only the exact level of violence required, the reasonable force, the minimum of force, should be applied. When squadrons of aircraft overfly your cities and bomb them to bits, you make total war, because that is the minimum response to such a thing. Until then, sabotage, assassination, and low visibility operations causing a total of NO collateral damage what so ever, should be the tools used to carve out some manner of peace. When the threat you face is greater than the threat you pose, then your limitations become nil, and you may consider yourself free to go absolutely ape, destroy all that you can before you are overwhelmed. When the threat you pose is greater than the one you face, careful and deliberate, precise and stringently controlled assault is all that one may use.

In computer games however... Well... Everything that moves dies, other than me, but that is because things make me very angry, and sprites have no protection under the law.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

If we had a magic lamp and could make a wish for peace, I'm not sure if I'd make that wish. Nature isn't built for it; conflict and attrition are what propels evolution and even geological processes. Life and existence are, arguably, battlegrounds. Even the ideas that slosh around the various cultures of humanity are hard-fought and ever-changing. The beliefs of our ancestors were slaughtered by their descendants and, even now, there's a war between ideologies like Christianity, Islam and atheism - everywhere is war.

If war is inevitable, we must all be prepared to fight and kill lest we die ourselves. At the same time, peace is a noble aspiration that can be pursued even though we must know it's unattainable. Those 'external threats' you mention are always there and keep us all active. As controversial as it may sound these days, even we are an external threat to others on this planet.

It's ironic that peace is something we have to kill for.

a reply to: TrueBrit

That was an awesome response



ETA
My son plays that game religiously. Not sure if that's a good thing

a reply to: ThePublicEnemyNo1

World of Warcraft is the most innocent, and in my opinion pathetic piece of software ever developed for gaming purposes. I hate it, because there is no blood, because the character models look about as savage as a pile of damp rags, and because it revolves around micromanaging a whole host of nonsense, as well as team based raiding.

Computer gaming used to be great. It was an anti social, single player, sod off I am busy sort of hobby. For me, WoW is everything that is wrong with gaming these days. Cutesy character models, lack of feedback when swinging a weapon or dealing damage, interaction with others....that's not what I game for. Gaming is that time of day when all my high minded principles about rationality and balance go out of the window, and all I want is to sit down, just me and the computer, and tear the faces off of as much stuff as possible, in the shortest possible time.

WoW is the antithesis of everything I love about gaming!

vis pacem, para bellum
who wants peace, must prepare for war, an old latin adage.

The problem with this type of proverbial static thinking, is that it rapidly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The saying "man is a wolf to man" conveys the same meaning. It leads to fear and to act based on perceptions influenced by fear.

a reply to: TrueBrit

So wait! You mean to tell me that my son asked for a custom built PC desktop to play a lame ass game! Oh dear. Well, it was his birthday and he is kind of a crazy great student that got accepted to a ton of colleges and universities and we incredibly love him. He plays some other shooter type games also, just not sure we hich ones.

He's got the X box, PlayStation, WI U? A ton of my older consoles. All I play anymore is GTA5 online. I love that game