In spite of whatever we might be told, we might figure out or think, the indisputable reality of human nature shows that it is absurd and impossible for someone to accept, to consent and, if possible, not to react against violence with violence, and to avoid being harmed, injured, killed or, equally, threatened and so deprived of the ability to decide by himself.

Furthermore, it is absurd to claim for peace and at the same time to be employing violence and to complain about the damage we suffer, because in such certain sense we are doing it to ourselves.

Mòzi says that evil (violence) is what cannot be avoided (Great Illustration, Da Qu, 5)  and, indeed, to make peace we do not need to say or explain what is peace, which, by the way, has a different meaning according to different languages (سلام (salam), мир (mir), Friede, 和平 (heping), etc.), because we all know that friendship, concord, cooperation, equality etc., all that excludes violence is peace, so simple like that. To make peace we just need to demonstrate that it is possible, that it is within our reach. And yes, peace is now possible because in our time we can all make it together. We can publicly ask each one without exception if he or she is willing to not use violence when everyone else without exception is willing to do the same, and we will obtain public unanimity for sure; and this is because the only cause for violence is violence itself, and the condition of peace is universality.

“Without peace there can be no good”, Cervantes says. Good or evil are universal, harming others is really harming oneself, and good is real only if it is for everyone and all, since that is the condition that makes us humans, and comes as justice, not allowing some to be happy while others suffer. And this, we can say, is a cosmic principle. Partial love is not love, such love is that of robbers and thieves, they steal and kill others to benefit their own people, says Mozi. Partial love is not real love because it forces the loved ones to take sides, harming them. What kind of love could it be? (Mòzi, XI, Xiao Qu, Minor Illustration, 7)

The most influential thinkers of past centuries are outdated today. Confucius and Aristotle pointed out that the good or benefit could only be private (Herranz, Xu, 2023), but it is not because they denied the possibility of the good, but because they were in an unknown world with unknown people (something also seen by Mòzi in The Canon and Explanations B, 74 to 76), and if good cannot be universally shared, evil, privation is therefore generalized, universal.

Today, inclusive human decision-making that avoids and prevents harm and leads to the human community is feasible, possible. The problem we face is that, despite the talk of democracy, human rights, etc., without a force behind, conversation, dialogue is not allowed, even public management is to a large extent focused on war and, consequently, preventing public questioning. Even with plenty of references, historical experiences, and solid arguments of all kinds, we cannot get out of the vacuum that is created for the non-violence and we have not been able to make public the question of stopping and renouncing violence – this is why there is violence today.

Annex

A common mistake we humans fall into is not perceiving that violence has no other cause than violence itself, because our way of thinking is analogical, that is; we think by putting ourselves in the place of other people, or even in the place of an abstract person that lets us understand the purpose and use of objects and things. But the state is not a person, it is an object, an arm, an armed unit, its activity is violence, its life is war, as Sunzi says in the first line of the Art of War, while the activity of the people is much more diverse than that, and humans, like the rest of living beings, adapt to the environment the best they can.

And the consequence of this analogical thought is that we deceive ourselves looking for some meaning (human or humanizing) of violence and thus it has been attributed to private property that would be inherent to the human being for the same and simple condition by which we are divided into separate bodies. However, private property is contradictory to the human being, since we need to cooperate, otherwise we could not even survive, and it is obvious that it is in our interest that everyone does well, and everyone produces a lot of everything. However, it is only the different arms or armed units that cannot cooperate in order not to help the other weapon to progress (unless against a third party), as we see in the day-to-day news, and it is the arm, according to that same condition, that generates private property and exploits and uses resources without any limit (see the most recent figures for the defense of various countries around the world). In fact, private property is really an obstacle and a limitation for the progress of all and it goes against our general and common convenience.

Another thing is that someone steals or rapes me (which would be a police matter), but even here we would already be talking about violence that generates violence. What we are talking about now is the suspension and renouncing of violence by all, which we have to ask each other, since that is making peace, which is fixed with inclusive decision-making.