I should specify that I major in Conflict, Peace, and Social Justice at the Mount so my interest and knowledge of the subject do not manifest immaterially. Seasoned readers of mine will know I bring up my childhood in Richmond often because it had a strong influence on the way I view war, history, and violence. At the risk of boring those readers, I will mention it again. Perhaps Gettysburg natives will also share this same viewpoint.

I’m not sure what the outside perspective of Richmond, Virginia consists of, but I imagine it may involve the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, removal of statues, Civil Rights protests, and potentially some recent gubernatorial scandals. If it doesn’t, and you’re a curious mind, I recommend delving into the history and significance of the city. The Civil War has been given a lot of press in recent years for the unjust and racist values it involved, and this should continue. However, we are not taught in our history classes just how devastating this war was as a war itself. More Americans died in the Civil War than in World War I and World War II combined. I would like you to read that statement again. So, when we talk about Armistice Day, or now Veterans Day, on November 11th, my first thought is not of the War to End All Wars or European battlefields. I think of the more than 2% of the nation’s population that died in those four years in our own backyard.

I won’t engage in a debate on what brought the nation to war, but we know it involved money, power, state identity, and racism. We all want money, at least enough to live comfortably upon. We all want a degree of power, enough to prevent being taken advantage of or manipulated. We identify, to a degree, with the localities that formed us. We can never fully understand the lived experiences of other people regardless of what their differences are. Yet, I would imagine most of us would not be willing to kill our neighbors to protect these ideals. Moreover, I imagine we wouldn’t be willing to die for them.

So why do we? My experience in working in teams and project planning has shown me how hard it can be to get a group of people all moving in the same direction. I cannot get five people to agree on something; the Civil War got more than 600,000 people to agree that these ideals were worth dying for. Is it any wonder that we still feel the effects of this today? War, and what drives humans to it, is a powerful force which turns deadly, destructive, and demolishes everything in its path. I don’t wonder why Richmond still harbors the tensions of the Civil War; I just wonder when it will end.

But war isn’t always battlefield combat. Even during peace time, we’ve always been at war: on terror, on drugs, on poverty, and on crime. I realize that these are structurally different than stereotypical wars, as in the first half of the twentieth century. However, I have never lived in a world where we were not at war.

I refuse to believe that having this term engrained into our society has no impact on us. It has the utmost impact on us. To be at war means that there is an enemy. To have an enemy means there is someone in opposition to our ideals, an "other" category. An "other" category creates the mindset that this fundamental opposition represents inferiority or superiority. These could be based on money, power, state identity, racism, and other ideals. Do cycles end the same way they began? No, they continue unceasingly.

Consolidating social issues into militaristic battles is not the sole method of mediation. It puts it into terms of failure and success, winning and losing, with a clear end in sight. When you help someone, you have not failed. Saving people from militant destruction, subhuman living conditions, life threatening addictions, and criminal violence is never a failure. There are always losses with war; I would like to think of social efforts in terms of gains. How many lives can we save instead of losing? How much can we build up instead of breaking down? What more can we give instead of taking away? This is the "war" effort I would like to ascribe to.

I still believe that serving in the military is one of the noblest professions in existence. Veterans deserve our respect and appreciation for all that they sacrifice and stand to protect. This admiration should not be allocated only to the Big Three: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Veterans Day. Thanking our veterans and soldiers should never end. There is no shame in dying for what you believe in, but martyrdom should not come with further destruction, desolation, and violence. These dead, in all wars past and present, should not have died in vain, with further battles being waged in the same wars they fought.

I dream of a world without terror, drugs, crime, and poverty. I would like a world for all of us free from oppression, violence, and greed. But most of all, I want to live in a world without war.