28、The Responsibility for World Peace Lies in Elites

In society nowadays, there are numerous contradictions around the world. Instead of saying that they are conflicts of thought, they are more of conflicts of culture. The concept of thought is much narrow than that of culture. Thought may refer to one or several ideas, but culture is all-inclusive, which is manifested in every detail of our daily life, in our smile, gestures, and expressions, etc. Culture is a kind of systematic thought.

Culture and thought are actually both windy and dispensable. Whatever culture and thought we hold, we can still survive in the world. But what’s the significance of human survival? Just fighting for favour or seeking to prevail over others? No. In contrast, the purpose of fighting for favour or seeking to prevail over others is to live, or to live better. Different thoughts and cultures are only slightly different in aspects of living style and living quality. Some are backward and some are advanced. On the world’s scale, there are not two individuals whose thought and culture are completely the same, just as there are not two completely same leaves in the world. There is always a difference between two individuals in thought and cultural level, which is the root of the contradictions in the world. If the thought and culture of all people are exactly the same, people will be able to understand each other and communicate well with each other, and thus, no fights and wars will exist.

The fights between people are caused by their difference in culture and thought, which lead to the dispute and divergence in benefit distribution of everyday life. Once such kind of difference and divergence universally exist in two districts or two social classes, political storm and wars will be generated if it is intensified to a certain degree and raised to the political level. That will be the tragedy of all human beings and the tragedy of the whole world.

However, seeing from another different perspective, with the development of technology, popularisation of education, universal improvement of the quality of all people around the world as well as the development of internet, people are able to gradually reach a consensus in their divergence of culture and thought through reasonable comparison and normal appeal. I believe whatever colour we are, wherever we are and whatever language we speak, there is one thing for sure the fundamental subconsciousness and original impulse of people all around the world are the same, because this is the inherent system of people. In human original impulse, there are some fixed instincts some are ruthless and some are weak. When people do anything as they want without taboo, their ruthless nature will be shown. Numerous evils such as aggressions, plunders, slaughters and extinction of races in human society have explicitly demonstrated it. To be frank, if there was no balance of terror of nuclear weapons and if nuclear weapons were only mastered by one regime, we couldn’t imagine how many wars would happen and how many people would die. Even now, human still haven’t broken away from the shadow that nuclear weapons might destroy the earth. Actually, everyone in the world is living under the balance of terror, but some people are aware of it and some are not at all.

But on the other hand, there is also the instinct of weakness and being afraid of death. This may seem ridiculous to some people. But I think everyone is afraid of death, everyone wishes to spend their lives safely, peacefully and happily. It is just due to this kind of desire and impulse that humans are likely to truly move towards civilisation.

As an ancient Chinese saying goes, safety starts at home. To live a life safely and lightheartedly is really a kind of happiness, which is actually every normal and sane person on the earth wishes for deep inside their heart. A sane and normal person will not kill another person or be killed by others just for a piece of bread.

Culture and thought is just a kind of idea and information, which can be exchanged and spread in various ways, including peaceful and non-peaceful ways. Besides, to some extent, its exchange and spread always start from theories. In fact, any countries, any nation sand any sane people can conduct cultural and thinking exchanges with each other by certain means, and through the communication, they can understand each other, borrow from each other, trust each other, compromise with each other and help each other.

However, because of the separation of different regimes and languages, it leads to people’s misunderstandings, suspicion, hatred and oppression. In such misunderstandings, suspicion, hatred and oppression, conspirators just make use of the selfishness, greediness, extremes and narrowness in human nature to make waves and gain profits.

In reality, there are sober-minded elite in every nation and every country. If all of them can achieve accordant culture and idea in spiritual level, the world can realise the real peace.