Unauthentic peace

Whether or not a just peace prevails in a society, peace may be experienced as lacking in authenticity and meaning. This may be due to the absence of any development process, or one in which such development only takes the form of adaptive improvements to living standards and their technological support. Under such conditions, the society as a whole and people individually are not challenged in any fundamentally meaningful way. Whilst the society may survive for a long period in this mode, it is essentially stagnant and predictable. It is typical of this kind of peace that it is experienced as boring and frustrating by the young and the adventurous, especially after they have explored the available self-improvement and leisure opportunities. An unauthentic peace is characterized by processes which avoid confronting people with experiences which continually force them to reassess both themselves and their society in ways which lead to new insights and fundamental restructuring. Under an unauthentic peace the old order remains essentially unquestioned, few significant risks are taken, and there is little collective learning of significance. Such a risk-free peace is essentially self-replicating rather than self-transforming. It is probable that under such conditions a society effectively invokes conflict and war in order to be exposed to realities which lead to further individual and collective transformation.