Credit: Reid Murray | Managing Editor for Design and Lucy Lawler | Managing Editor for Content
The Philosophical Corner is a monthly column dedicated to the exposure and discussion of philosophy.
Idealism can be understood as the fusion of reality with the ideals we create in our minds.
It involves perceiving the world through all five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch — yet prioritizing your own perception of reality over its material truth. Those who claim to pursue peace may often fall into this mindset, only to find themselves disillusioned when reality confronts them.
Peace can be defined as a state of tranquility and harmony, free from hostility and disturbance. When reading this definition, especially if one is enduring a chaotic time, peace seems — as it should be — to be the ultimate goal. To be clear, I am not referring to the brief moments of peace we experience, but rather a type of absolute peace that has longevity and significance.
In Buddhism, absolute peace — referred to as nirvana — is the highest possible state of being. Yet, understanding that the Buddha depriving himself of food and water while meditating for weeks is far from rational, one may claim that to achieve peace, one must embrace irrationality.
An original theory I have constructed will hopefully explain this postulate.
I believe everyone’s soul is composed of both peace and chaos, with chaos comprising the vast majority of it. It’s not just about finding peace; people are driven by their need for comfort and their urge to avoid pain, and that’s what shapes their purpose in life.
When dissecting the seemingly straightforward and linear ambitions of humanity, it is clear that these focused purposes are riddled with contradiction, ethical dilemma and erratic emotion, and yet this is to be expected, as we live in a world based on chaos.
The Stoics, the philosophical school of Ancient Greece and Rome that advocated living in harmony with nature to attain peace — much like seaweed floating on the ocean’s surface — seemed to overlook the inherent chaos and meaninglessness that nature embodies.
This metaphorical seaweed would be torn and ravaged almost instantaneously when confronted with a chaotic wave.
To be sufficiently altered by life’s unpredictability without being torn, one needs a malleable form of chaos that drives all their decision-making, for if they relied upon peace, they would not even survive the first test.
To handle the chaos of being unfairly hurt, one needs an inner strength to react properly. For example, intense anger can only be fully released through physical or verbal outbursts, and expressing that anger often feels calming. Once we recognize our own chaos, we hold on to it like a child clinging to their mother during a storm.
Absolute peace has to be objective for one reason: The ending result would be universally consistent. For example, though we do not know the aftermath of death, we have characterized it with negation as simply not existing, and, similarly, attaining peace can only result in one thing we cannot know nor even imagine.
Yet, unlike death, which can occur in countless ways, peace cannot be achieved in the same manner. Peace is attained singly — by removing every variable that one cannot control.
For example, no matter his heart, a man’s absolute peace cannot come from his family, for his children are unpredictable and he only truly knows himself. Desires, material or otherwise, only exist due to our inherent chaos, and if one were to forcefully subside from this chaos to achieve peace, all desire and motivation would subsequently vanish.
Simply put, to truly live a peaceful life, you can’t stay in chaos. Dealing with chaos requires chaos in return, which goes against living peacefully. Inconceivably so, one would need to live within an amorphous orb with nothing to sense and with all desire and personality extricated in order to achieve absolute peace.
As a result, man is left with only two seemingly contradictory sticks against a bear: one being our claimed chaos, and the other being our superficial want for peace.
These two ideas aren’t as contradictory as they seem because the peace we truly seek is temporary. We only have brief moments to tap into our inner peace in response to the fleeting moments of calm in life.
To accept peace is to deny life and our nature, as absolute peace cannot exist with chaos, and there is nothing to live for without chaos.
