We experience fighting and violence day by day. There is the trooping of the colour and the services of remembrance, but that is not it. Activities of state around the world are done with soldiers, so that we absorb the message that without soldiers the state cannot survive. We have war heroes on large columns, victory arches, no lost war memorials, and each day it is drummed into us that only the military can keep us safe. But that it not it. We have pictures each week, perhaps each day, of areas of the world being bombed. Even if it is our forces doing the bombing, the subconscious message is, if you do not have armed forces, you are in danger. But that is not it. Behind it all is the great modern lie.

We do not know what the great lie is, but it is there close to the centre of your head and my head. You will see violence, every day in the news and in fiction. You are ten million times more likely to see a murder on television than you are in real life. It is the normal part of life, normal millions of times, indisputably there. You live with violence. It is around like the dog and needs feeding each day. Not real violence, or though it may be that too, but normal violence each day in your head. Choose your channel. Billy the Kid, Rambo. James Bond, the Iraq news, the Syrian News, the Nazis, WW1, WW2, Star Wars, Tom and Gerry, Cowboys and Indians, Star Wars, Dan Dare, War Games, Poirot, East-Enders, Dennis the Menace, Murder She Wrote, chess, Churchill, the Orient Express and thousand of others. Millions of kids steer through war games. Murders proliferate in Oxford and violence becomes normal, normal, normal. You are inured; six bloody letters say it all, injured without the j. It is preconscious, unconscious, subconscious. It closes down the mind’s shop before opening time. And those who do peace are weird, fixated, use arguments and go on marches. They are obviously abnormal. That rules the world. 

We do not see peace. Sometimes there will be a symbol of a dove or an idyllically smiling family, but there will be no news reports on peace – ceasefires yes, but not peace. There will be no peaceful couple relating with understanding on TV, because it is not dramatic. The media do not do peace, because there is no hook, no suspense, no thrills. TV does not do a peaceful day in Solihull. You do not watch people driving on the left, even though it solves a lot of conflict. You do not see understanding, empathy, shopping, education, walking, hospitals, DIY, waiting, caring and all the normal things we do as peace, because peace is so super normal it is invisible. It is the only way to live in families, estates, cities and flying on aeroplanes. It is the pre-requisite, the sine qua non, of markets, holidays, systems, networks, humour and hobbies. Actually, neither the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh has knocked anyone off the board for sixty years.  Peace means that we can like other people.

So, the great lie is out. Rather than violence being normal and peace a distant ideal, actually peace is as normal as Hallo and violence does not work. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” was a total complete failure. Ask the dead. Hitler was wrong. Wars, knife attacks, nuclear weapons, murders do not work; they are the aberrations of human living. Violence, the stuff we have in our heads as normal, fucks everything up. Of course, sorting it out is a bigger question, though not as big as it seems. But the difficult bit, which is actually the easy bit, is turning this switch in our heads, turning off the normal violence switch. It is merely a simple re-orientation. No murders in Oxford. No War Games. Oh, Germany, Malaysia and dozens of other countries were largely peaceful today. Soldiers were bored again. The tomato harvest worked. A bad temper is bad. How can I help him? Revenge is out. James Bond does not exist. Then, when millions of us turn the switch, this crisis ridden world can be addressed, and we can, in Jesus’ words, make peace. Peace is free, gives instant benefits, is normal, it works, it produces civilisation, not to mention, love, joy and hope and good buildings. So, let us each turn the switch on violence as normal, whatever it takes, and then see what happens.