I don’t wish to sound rude or derisive but Where love rules peace is possible is just a noble sounding sentiment thoroughly useless when it comes to implementation. Peace does not depend on love but compromise where willingness to reach an agreement more often than not, depends on fear especially where mutual interests abound. Love does not foreshadow compromise, except possibly in personal matters. Compromise has always been fundamental to peace, a process by which to reach an acceptable conclusion for all parties; nothing whatever to do with love. Groups who negotiate to reach a consensus don’t usually love each other. They do so to avoid an outcome unfavorable and possibly dangerous to both.
Love, overall, has too many deep-rooted defects informing it to be of any use. It’s a word which especially these days means nothing…if it ever really meant anything. Within the human psyche it resembles a giant soap bubble that can burst anytime.
“We must love one another or die.”—W. H.Auden
Compromise is owing to conflicting ideologies or mindsets, if you will. There can be no compromise in addressing the devastation of ecosystems of which we are integral parts and to which we owe our very existence. Nature does not compromise. Only we can do that. Post modern ethical relativism puts the burden of healing the world on the minds that, because they see themselves as isolate entities in conflict, cannot or will not take on the task. Only stark natural disasters appear able to bring folks together for the common good or for any hope of working together to insure future life on this planet.
We either have a purpose or cease to exist, its the main problem.
Indeed as long as humans do not as a rule have a purpose for the world, the planet, its lifeforms, the system it is part of, our species is a cloud of dark ghosts hovering over the abyss.
Auden is an excellent poet but if that were true we would have died out a long time ago. We will not ever love one another as demonstrated by the entire history of the human race. Also for certain, nature never gave it the least priority.
True! There can be no compromise against a power with the means to exterminate all life.
That too is true, though unfortunately, like the Roadrunner, we invariably fail to brake before the edge of the cliff. The only direction after that is down. In the meantime there are still too many corporate interests willing to walk over corpses for a profit now. They appear to compromise only to procrastinate.
What compromise for peace after a war has not engendered a new war? In many instances some compromises are just kicking the can of destruction on down the road.
The Auden quote is from a poem he wrote on the eve of the second world war. (“Sept., 1939”) The warming of the seas among other things is a harbinger of impending disaster. While Auden was writing about a world in conflict, his poem fits our condition of destruction of ecosystems. In what sense is compromise not a settling for less than was wanted? Especially since the stakes are so high?
The end of any conflict may be the start of a new one, but the EU was grounded with the intention of stopping endless wars within Europe. Except for a new nationalism, that peace has kept for sixty years. It has always been about compromise and a surrendering of a certain amount of sovereignty that has been the issue with those opposed to it. The pompous will never die out, as we see in GB at present, but the project EU has been successful for many states.
That has long been known but only recently started circulating among the masses when it was made clear, not by what anyone said but by demonstration, that it’s no-longer a theory.
I read it a long time ago but reread it again since you mention it. Auden despised the poem almost as soon as it was written, especially its most famous line, the one you quoted. He thought it ludicrous and dishonest. Nevertheless, the poem remains popular with the masses mostly due to a line of duplicitous sentimentality. Even though there are some very good lines in it, I agree with Auden on its overall merit. He wrote much better ones. Again I’d say that fear not love is the main motivator in the human psyche…the one that forces compromise among ourselves or a total retreat realizing the war is lost if we war against nature.
I’m not sure in what context the question is asked. Compromises are made among people and nations. All sides start out asking for more but expecting to receive less to achieve equilibrium that’s mutually beneficial or at least acceptable for the time being. Compromises with nature, as you pointed out, is not possible. A natural process forced to mutate cannot be bargained with.
It saddens me to learn that Auden chose to despise his poem. I read it in the 1960s back when hope, peace and love were considered possible for everyone. But those days are gone. The dream is dead? We will all soon be if we do not learn at least to respect each other as all being in the sinking boat. Is respect the only compromise we can make?
Respect is not so much a compromise as a relatively difficult act to perform. A perfect moron cannot extend respect, and a genius of the heart can do it really well. And among humans unless one is such a genius it will have to come from both sides, otherwise it is just too hards to sustain it, not to give in. And all this said, what kind of human action do we respect and where is the limit? Where does infringing on peoples right to self-expression become disrespectful? All these issues have clouded our judgement and obscured the fact that to respect is to be rewarded with great pride and intimate wisdom of that which one respects. Respect is awesome. Come to think, awe is great, pure respect.
We all respect the lightning. Therefore Heraklitos says “lightningbolt steers all things”.
Those days were never really here in the first place.
It’s nice to dream but dreams never accomplish anything.
Respect is always a good thing to have especially when trying to expedite a compromise. Poetic sentiments on the other hand, are not in the least able to manage or cure any of our current problems. Idealism mainly connotes our hopes not realities that beg for a solution.
That is true.
If you don’t mind an analytical path, this opens two rather heady maybe boring maybe fertile questions.
Does fear automatically grant respect?
Is fear the only guarantor of respect?
In any case, if respect is a form of valuing - if - then valuing can be composed for a good deal out of fear.
As far as I can make out, the sixties were influenced by protest movements and sentiments that grew after two world wars ending with the A-Bomb and then other conflicts including Vietnam. Being in a military environment at the time, I didn’t catch on until late. It became clear to me then, that humanity had gone through hell at the beginning of the century. A hell that, from my place in time, I couldn’t of imagined, had there not been the movies that often made the killing fields into a heroes story. There were people who saw no other way ahead than sending young men to their deaths. It was very clear to everybody then, except when soldiers lay in agony in the trenches, but they were heroes and their agony forgotten.
A strange thing happened when the peace movements became widespread. The crime rate went up, especially deaths relating to crime. The taut fabric of society, loosened by the young, started tearing and whatever imagination of peace had developed was shattered by the the deaths of protestors, of Martin Luther King, of the Kennedy’s and numerous others. In Europe, we started hoping for a different world. It was protected by the military but provided peace in countries that had regularly been at war. There was compromise made on all sides, but it held.
In the new century, things started tearing again. People had forgotten about the hell of the twentieth century. Young people became preoccupied with superficial things and thereby failed to realise that the peace in which they live must still be worked for. We have to align ourselves with the good and make an effort. But I get the feeling that peace is to many like the water that comes out of the tap, and electricity that come from the plug in the wall. Making dreams real needs an ongoing effort, without which, peace cannot survive.
Good questions for which I have no ready answer. I just believe that there are some issues, such as the destruction of ecosystems that do not submit to compromise.
Good thoughts about the 60s. At the time I was ultraconservative. It took the deaths of the Kennedys, MLK, and college students to “awaken me from my dogmatic slumber”, as did studies of Blake.
The U.S. is now retreating into nationalism and isolationism ,both of which are very popular with the majority, which our last election proved was neoconservative. But we dismiss our allies at our own peril. “No man is an island”. No country is either.