Peace is also information… kind of

    In continuation with the post about violence, I figured I should talk about the opposite. There was some sort of information a government or ruling body could get from their population being peaceful. The thing is that, as more as I thought about it, it was not really the peace itself, but the absence of violence that was important.

    The absence of violence means that the population is content. When your policies are adequate and not revolutionary people won't complain too much. Humans seem to be hardwired against change, looking for familiarity and order on a world (and universe) that seems bent on creating as much chaos as possible. The problem is that we tend to view a peaceful state, one without demonstrations, strikes and the like as desirable. It is not.

    The majority of the population, taken as a whole will always prefer the status quo, provided that it fulfills their basic needs. The problem is that "status quo" in the case of a country or society really stands for slow decay. The society needs to adapt to an ever changing environment. This makes rules and laws which were salient when they were enacted obsolete or downright ridiculous at another point in time. As I said in a previous post, this dynamic society is also what makes leaders lose their appeal once their task, whatever that may be, has been accomplished.

    Complete chaos, although it might be attuned to the universe, is also unwanted. We are genetically engineered to live in order and a chaotic society would be uncomfortable for most individuals. This is why war-torn environment are so hard on the people living within them. The goal is to get a society that is not completely chaotic, but has some of that uncertainty factor within it, for that uncertainty is a "symptom" of a society adapting to its environment.