Today ' s words
Essay:
By: Santiago Plata Pinzón. 10-B
What is peace? According to the RAE, among its many definitions, peace is a relationship of harmony between people, without confrontation or conflict. This definition may seem simple and, indeed, we could consider it consistent with the general understanding of the word, especially, when considering the efforts that are currently being made toward achieving it. Wherever we turn our mind into, we encounter this concept; it would even make sense to say that it is the goal that all human beings have before them: reaching that finish line where we may find the harmony that gives meaning to existence itself.
Nevertheless, there are times when peace imposes itself as a dogma. It becomes unquestionable, and for that very reason, people rarely take the time to analyze what it truly means. Does peace only refer to the absence of conflict as a guarantee that peace exists? Everywhere, the word echoes: peace here and peace there, as if repeating it tirelessly would bring us closer to achieving it, using it as a sanctuary from which we perhaps unconsciously ignore everything that makes us uncomfortable.
To use one of our nation’ s wonderfully colloquial expressions, if we allowed ourselves to simply“ swallow it whole” and accepted the previous definition as absolute truth, we would understand that, if confrontations ceased, a society could declare itself to be at peace. Yet Colombia’ s reality has presented us with a very different scenario. History tells us of moments when it was not necessary to
hear the sound of a gunshot to witness inequality, suffering, and abandonment. Violence does not always make itself known through the same loud and visible means; sometimes, it appears in much subtler forms: a child who has to stop studying because they must work, a displaced family that will never again see what they once called home, or an abandoned community that receives attention only when it is already too late to intervene. This is the painful everyday reality of countless people who inhabit this territory. To define— or redefine— peace as merely the absence of conflict is shameful. Are we really so cynical as to believe that, even when these situations persist, we are at peace simply because there are no two sides attempting to kill one another? To accept this is to contribute to the continuation and intensification of these circumstances, leaving all those who need to be seen and acknowledged to the mercy of indifference.
It is precisely within this contradiction that the philosopher Enrique Dussel goes deeper. If what we understand as peace allows people to continue being affected by social institutions simply as a consequence of their existence, then we are not referring to a state in which the social order is truly in harmony. These limitations make it urgent to reconsider what peace means. From this perspective, Dussel proposes a new interpretation, one that entails abolishing structures that create victims and that deny or prevent the full development of human life under conditions of domination and oppression.
In order to speak of the construction of peace, we must first recognize every member of society and avoid falling into a perception confined to positions of comfort that ignore what happens beyond our own limited contexts. If we fail to act in this way, we become accomplices to the suffering of those who have been rendered invisible. Although their circumstances may seem unrelated to us, we have an ethical responsibility to fight for the dignity of others, and that struggle also means fighting for ourselves. So that when the time comes for us to be the ones seeking recognition, someone will be there, holding a light to guide the way toward that long-awaited peace.
Not the kind of peace perceived when hostilities cease, but the kind that is revealed through the recognition and vindication of the Other.
11