What If?

What if there was no peace?
What if there was no war?

What if these two words were simply words with letters grouped together?
Once judged and filtered by each individual belief system they took on a meaning based on perception.

What if there was no poverty?
What if there was no wealth?

What if these two words were simply words with letters grouped together?
Once judged and filtered by each individual belief system they took on a meaning based on perception.

What if the etymology of our language was based on the value system of those using those words? What if the meaning given to words is used to market their value to elicit certain perceptions to inspire a specific agenda and outcome?

Nietzsche in the “First Treatise” speaks of the origins of the values – good and evil. What is good for the aristocrat is deemed evil for the slave.

To a child playing a game of monopoly, YOUR poverty contributes to HIS wealth and that is perceived as just another part of the game making it fun and good.

To a President of a country who invests 600 billion dollars into a war in a far away land, war is simply another economic opportunity to build wealth for companies winning government supply contracts.

What if as Shakespeare said “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”? What if the tragedy and the comedy play out no matter what and it is only our perceptions that characterise them as values?

As we each experience our own personal monomyth, taking journeys between old and new worlds, detaching from the old forming attachments to the new, confronting and conquering challenges, processing multiple catharses, adapting and eventually finding our treasure, I wonder about the rites of passage and initiation which value the very words of peace and war?

For me, perhaps peace and war will only ever mean what I say they mean to me?