Something triggered me today that I now get...thanks to Don Beck, his generosity of spirit and training me in spiral dynamics.

I see this a lot:

Now, let me speak to this "meme."

Peace is a solution.  However, when you can begin to understand that peace is not the answer but an answer, then you are well on your way to understanding that you have to be sensitive to a host of needs/opportunities for improving our human way of being with each other.

As man progresses along the evolutionary journey to ______________ (you fill in the blank), we find that each plateau of mental models (vMEMEs) requires a different way of being.  Peace is one of them. 

As more and more people find that peace is not always the answer, we can perhaps begin to find out what people really need.  In some cases, conflict and in many cases destructive conflict (creative destruction--Schumpeter) will be the only thing that creates the birth of a new way of coping that replaces a previous way of dysfunctional coping.

I know many of you will be repulsed by this notion--as I first was--yet what is now clear to me that peace is not the answer.  The answer is different for each person, family, community, nation, world.  When we reach the point to where we begin to identify these different needs, then we are on our way.  However, it may not always be peaceful--unfortunately and I guess fortunately--paradoxically so.

What I mean is that we can't have the ability to cope at increasingly higher levels unless we fail to cope at lower levels.  If we did, we wouldn't have the need/desire to find other ways.  Many of those ways will be--beyond peace.