Do Wars bring Peace?

The book took me some time to finish( almost the whole second half of the year).

And for a work of this magnitude you can hardly call it a novel as it many other things apart from being just a great piece of art showing us that you don’t always need brushes, axes, and anvils to be an artist because I classify this as “un chef d’oeuvre” . At least once in a lifetime if you have a chance read “war and peace” if not find a crash course or something.

So the book is sort of an historical fiction( one of my favourite genres)which is set in at the beginning of the 19th century when Napoleon become emperor and started moving towards the east subsuming the two wars against Russia. The book is quite big so I will not dwell so much on the story part but the motives that the stories in the books entails.

So immediately you start getting immersed in the story the more you see the general mood of the book of the various of aspects of a war at a grand scale and how different actors came into play.

The first remarkable things are the reasons for which men start wars( which is nothing but the killing of fellow men). At first the reasons seem comprehensive but later on you start seeing their futility and before you blink you are already seeing that there is a lot of vanity as those that really influence the course of reality can be so out of touch and their decisions arise out of speculation leading millions of people to kill one another. And the more you compare court life(both administrative and social society) and military life the valley that separates them deepens and widens.

The second thing you realise is as the general war is going on different characters are going through different wars at a micro level. Some are fighting for their inheritance, others are fighting against their own impulses, a son deciding whether he should marry to keep his promise or please her mother, some are trying to choose between love and family, others are fighting new reforms to protect tradition. The more you closely examine the life of many characters the more you realise that war is everywhere and in most cases everyone is striving against something in one way or another.

Characters rise and fall, others die along the way along with their convictions fighting till the very end sometimes for illogical reasons and you cannot help but wonder the recompense of such labour fighting the very things they stand for in some places.

The whole story is a like a reiteration of various wars the spirit of man goes through each one trying to find peace in one way or another justifying even the greatest of monstrosities in the guise of the greater greater good. What about the soldier who died in his very first battle, what about family properties burnt to the ground for the sake of revolution.

From the book and taking into account life events this book for me is just a reminder that wherever we might be from we are born into war from conception until the the grave. Some with greater shares of struggles but everyone has to contend with something in one way or another. Sometimes we want to avoid confrontation but in that decision lies surrender to avoid certain wars we deem unnecessary which can be in our favour as sometimes we end up using a lot of resources for mundane reasons.

The other thing is the effect of time over an event in the sense that despite the brooding over one decision or another and the magnitude we attach to it eventually it will pass and will become just a thing that happened not meaning it will lose its significance but it would not be as much of a tectonic shift as we thought it would be.

Virtues; love, patience, faithfulness are good but are supposed to be connected to something higher as you can not always depends on the goodwill of people let alone your own and no matter how much you might sacrifice yourself in the event where your activity will be evaluated by men some will even hate your for the very reason that they did not find any reason to hate you.

The other thing I loved is the author’s style of writing where before he starts projecting he first writes a very compelling narrative as close to reality as possible so that when he starts addressing the themes behind the examples are just at the back of your head.

Talking about the philosopher’s epilogue it goes without saying it is the best I have read this year. The author addresses subjects that am so much interested in; power, why events happen the way the way they do and our various misconceptions about freedom( if you interested in that you can read the second epilogue as they will no spoilers)

And finally like the tittle suggests it seems as long men retain their ideas of what constitutes power and freedom there will be no permanent end to human conflict as All this strife is a struggle that man can be at peace with himself whatever the cost even if it is war.

@Chungamu

I hope you had an excellent year. I did not finish my TBR list but I had a good time. Wishing you a prosperous 2024!