Thomas' 1991 Award-winning Peace Essay, Submitted to the 1991 Charles Walton Peace Essay Contest

Every country can agree not to go to war today; and continue to agree one day at a time. If this happened, we would get rid of war in one day. There would still be conflicts and problems, but these could be delt with calmly and without panic or violence. Starting a war never solved more problems than it created.

To help keep the peace, we would locate, identify, and develop centers for nonviolent solutions to world problems and conflicts. There are already hundreds if not thousands of these already formed so we wouldn't have to start from scratch. We would form them all into one worldwide network of nonviolence centers, and each would have the benefit of the knowledge of all the others.

"People don't care about injustice elsewhere, as long as it doesn't effect their own children," was a quote from a person discussing education on KQED. Though the speaker was referring to people's attitudes toward educating their children, the same statement could apply to people's attitude toward war casualties. We would educate our citizens about world wide problems, so that they wouldn't get swept away by leaders who know how to take advantage of the ignorant. We would give the schools with the most needs the most funding/help, so that all would be equally able to educate their students. We would educate our people in such a way that the ones who need the most help would get the priority, because ignorance effects everyone.

These kinds of schools would teach interaction and cooperation instead of competition. Competition singles students out, so that if you're not very good at something, you lose; but with cooperation, if you're not very good at something you need to be good at, you get more help until you leam it.

All children would receive an education, because, "it costs 4-5 times more to keep young men in prisons and jails than it does to keep them in colleges," says the aforementioned person on KQED. The children from these kinds of schools would probably grow up to be one of the most educated generations in history; and not just in one country, but all over the world!

I believe that all or most of our world's problems are interrelated: If you solve one, it makes the next easier to solve; and that makes the next easier to solve; and, when you get halfway, everything else is a breeze.

One of the major problems right now is that alot of bad things are being popularized by persons or groups in powerful positions in order to make a buck or to achieve shortsided goals. By popularizing such things, and making them seem OK, it messes us up as a people. For example: The President of the United States put on a big campaign to make going to war with Iraq seem OK; however, that made it seem that when there's something wrong somewhere in the world, you can just kill it. By educating all people that going to war is wrong in all cases, it would save lives, honor, and not mix up wrongs and rights. War is wrong. It is wrong all the time, and never, under any circumstances, is it right.

War, or "armed strife or conflict between nations, or states, or between different parties in the same nation," (1) has been around since practically the dawn of humanity. What is this driving force behind the blind fury needed to kill another of your kind? Whatever it is, it's very powerful. I believe that to survive, we all need some of that driving power; but we also need many other things like wisdom, serenity, courage, and caution. There's a very good saying that uses this idea: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

When that strong power or driving force is tempered by virtues such as serenity, courage, and wisdom, everything's fine; but when virtues get pushed away, and only that power remains, that's when, I think, things go astray. And what causes this blindness to wisdom and serenity? I think it's excessive ignorance, ego, and greed for wealth, power, prestige, and too many other things to name that blinds the incautious to wisdom and serenity.

I also believe that greed, ego, and ignorance thrive in the competitive "win, win, win" environment we have today. When work is done cooperatively, each person has an equal opportunity to develop his/her abilities to, at least, work; lead, and most importantly, to think. Greed stays at a minimum because everyone shares. Egos don't soar, because everyone takes turns leading each other; and ignorance is gone, because if anyone falls behind, they aren't just left behind; but are helped back to the level of everybody else.

All the peoples of the Earth need to educate themselves how to cooperate with each other. This needs to be taught all through school. As I said in the above paragraph, this will drastically improve the education of all people and enrich all peoples learning and living. There would be no major problems of greed, ignorance, and excessive ego to blind us to the virtues of wisdom, serenity, and courage. These virtues temper that driving power that can make it seem OK to kill. This, I think, would stop wars for as long as we educate our peoples and keep them educated.

All of this, I believe, if it could ever be achieved, would turn our world from a pot of conivers, who want to own everything, (while the honest own little or nothing,) into a glistening globe of the greatest civilization in the galaxy.

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(1) Doubleday Dictionary definition of war.