I have a confession to make.

I don’t believe in peace.

I don’t think that we are talking about anything when we use that word. I think that people who spend time talking about peace are like people who spend a lot of time talking about Quidditch. Either they know they are talking about something that only exists in books, or they are pretending that to run around with a lipstick-scar drawn on your forehead is just as good as actually zooming through the air.

To be clear, I’m not just saying something obviously false for dramatic effect — well, I might be, but you’ll have to decide that at the end of this article. I don’t think that, at this very moment, every person and nation is at war with every other. There is very obviously something that is not war, though in our lifetimes, it has become increasingly hard to tell when we are and aren’t at war (or if the United States of America has started some new war, usually against something intangible like illiteracy or terror). Often times this thing, this lack of war, is referred to as peace, but I think that is a pretty huge stretch. I’m a big fan of the term ceasefire. I think that most countries are in a state of ceasefire with most other countries. People like to call this peace most of the time, but I just don’t think we’ve earned that word yet.

Peace is something more. I think peace is a state in which individuals act uncoerced, in which levels of equality and prosperity ensure that nobody is stealing the proverbial loaf of bread to feed their family. In times of peace, a person can pursue his or her aspirations, education and career without coming into conflict with someone else. Peace is when everyone has the opportunity to live the life they wish to live. Peace is a little bit like Denmark, but even better.

I don’t think that any Palestinian would consider it peace if violence stopped in the area west of the Jordan River, but nothing else changed. I don’t think that anyone could really call a global network of miraculously bloodless human trafficking peace. I think that we all believe peace is something more.

The challenge that the peace activist has today is convincing people like me that what pacifists want is something we can actually have. In our larger community, we all sort of believe in the right things, but we don’t want to be bothered with how problematic our values might actually be. We just want to be able to say, or even think, that we believe in peace and justice. But the feasibility of such concepts is suspect.

So here is the gauntlet I’ve thrown down: prove to me that history really is progressive. Prove to me that every, or even any, place in the world can have peace and not just ceasefire.