Article May 26, 1986 Issue

Revolutions in consciousness and the desire for peace

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Many individuals feel that they are peaceful but that the world exists under the constant threat and burden of others' violence.

I felt this way myself until recently. I thought of myself as a very peaceful person—never having committed an act of physical violence—and I'm sure that, if questioned, friends and acquaintances would have agreed. Somehow, I never bothered to reconcile this perception of myself with the evidence of a rather violent temper that flared up within the family on a fairly regular basis. Over the years I had learned to control the outbursts; but my thinking remained quite violent at these times. This seemed to be a family, and even a cultural, characteristic. Although I disliked it intensely, I accepted it as more or less inevitable.

Yet at the same time I abhorred violence in the world and, like so many others, longed for world peace. And, like so many others, I felt the frustration of thinking that little could be done to bring it about.

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