Peace

War is an expression of high collective socioeconomic stress. Under such conditions peace will not be achieved by diplomacy. Stress is an ancient and primal survival mechanism in the animal kingdom of which the human species is a member.


The neuroendocrine stress arousal mechanism equips the individual to fight or flee a threat in the interest of self-preservation. In the evolutionary jungle fast reflexive action had higher survival value than the slower thoughtful information processing. Millions of years of evolution perfected switching off thought processing to improve the speedy reflexive action under stress in order to better serve self-preservation.


While this mechanism was effective in the evolutionary jungle, it is counter productive for modern humans. Yet we are stuck with this evolutionary inheritance. This explains why humans again and again regress to the primitive and reflexive responses of anger, fear and conflict when under high stress.  


We cannot change this evolutionary heritage. To secure peace, we must prevent the rise of collective stress and we can do this only by securing quality of life. Securing quality of life on a globalized over-populated planet is a challenge that conventional concepts and institutions are not equipped to handle. The Holigent Solution,through its local to global proposal has the potential to secure quality of life thus building an infrastructure for permanent peace.


It is essential as well to understand the stress, conflict and hope correlations in the work of securing peace. The Holigent Solution will also serve as a multiplying factor in generating and projecting hope.  We know that hope is a powerful mitigator of collective stress and anxiety.  We also know that when collective social and economic stress is mitigated and collective energy is focused on a constructive project, social disorder and war can be avoided.  

In an environment of hopelessness the correlation between stress and peace is such that as stress levels surpass the physiological optimum and elevate to chronic high levels, rational problem-solving ability diminishes while the intensity of conflicts take a sharp upturn. All along, prospects for peace diminish. As collective stress increases, peace prospects die and civil disorder, riots, or war follow.

When the collective reservoir of hope is high, hope displaces despair and people set their sights on a more positive future. This preserves the rational thought process, which helps conflict resolution and reduces collective stress and anxiety. Consequently, prospects for peace are restored as conflicts and war are avoided. The hope factor generated by the Holigent Solution may significantly amplify, beyond project scale, long-term positive impacts.


In the work of building an infrastructure for permanent peace we must pay close attention to at least two significant developments. One is the transfer of wealth from west to east, the greatest consequence of which is the vacuum of social, political and economic order forming in the wake of that process.

Western civilization rooted in the concept of democracy and turbo-charged by the industrial revolution is reaching its old age. The United States with diminished wealth will not be able to effectively fill the role of liberator and guarantor of peace as it did in the 20th century.

China is the principal beneficiary of the eastward migration of wealth; however, its political model has no credibility. India, the other major beneficiary of wealth migration is a large, chaotic and corruption riddled democracy. It is not likely that the emerging economic powers of the East will fill the developing vacuum of global order.

The expanding Muslim influence will not fill but occupy a large part of the vacuum by migration and demography. The marginal but high-impact terrorist groups will have a further destabilizing effect on global order.

The other significant development is the realization that the global economy, in a world of depleting resources, is a zero-sum game in which a win-win outcome is not an option.

The high friction created by the eastward migration of wealth and the competition for diminishing resources will at some point overwhelm all good intentions and diplomatic efforts and the preservation of peace will not be possible.

Overcoming this challenge demands a qualitative solution outside existing concepts and institutions. Developing the Holigent Solution to global scale will generate hope, reduce collective stress and channel human energy to constructive solutions.