WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the necessity of creating a society where peaceful solutions are more valuable and beneficial than engaging in conflict.
Margaret Mead's quote highlights the critical need for societal structures that prioritize and reward peace over war. It calls for innovative approaches to conflict resolution and the establishment of incentives that encourage cooperation and harmonious living rather than violence and strife, suggesting that a lasting peace can only be achieved when it becomes advantageous for individuals and communities to choose it over war.
In practice
During a peace summit, this quote can be used to emphasize the need for peaceful negotiations.
Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
EARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon.
American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.
The United States strongly seeks a lasting agreement for the discontinuance of nuclear weapons tests. We believe that this would be an important step toward reduction of international tensions and would open the way to further agreement on substantial measures of disarmament.
Ultimately, peace is just not about politics. It's about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don't exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation. And I know, because America, we, too, have had to work hard over the decades, slowly, gradually, sometimes painfully, in fits and starts, to keep perfecting our union.
I never thought that the child who was a famous symbol of war would one day be invited to become a symbol of peace.
Why has there never been a holiday where peace is celebrated all throughout the world?
Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.
There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.
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