Peace

So teenage girls have found a new fashion statement, or rather a retro one. I have bought into this as well, but let me just add, long before the masses. What I am talking about is the peace sign. It symbolized a lot, and to those who appreciate the meaning, not just the aesthetic know this. The peace sign has been around forever, and was quite popular around the time the idea of peace was. With America fighting overseas, many people need away to protest war, and any good organization has a symbol. So the peace sing could feed the need of those looking for a way to say peace without using that long word.

When the war ended, the notion of peace still remained, at least for a bit. But if morphed with the times. After the war, the big new movement was the whole environment thing. The peace sign fit into that as well, peace for the earth, you know. Then it shaped yet again into the animal rights thing. Pretty soon the peace sign was all over the place, and why not? Its one the most versatile words in the English dictionary. Which makes you think. How fucked up is this world that we can have a sign for peace for so many uses. Some will always be hippies at heart, but the sign eventually faded away, and was classified as old school, maybe even a little lame, I know I am guilty for saying that.

We have a war now, you may have noticed. We have a genocide. We have global warming. We have dying species. And here the peace sign is, here to give vision to a word, and ideal, a belief. But wait. How many of the people you see wearing that sign wear it for one of those reasons. there’s no ideology behind that sign anymore. Its all just for fashion. yeah, look at me, I’m aware of the evils and injustices of the world, cause see I have a peace sign. 

I hated those people for a while. But then i realized something. Because one person defines a word one way, does that same definition have to hold true for everyone. I’m not talking about specific definitions like photosynthesis, there’s not much room for movement in that one, but ones with objective views, such as peace, love, etc. These are words with personal views, and the definitions do not have to match. So no, I don’t hate them for wearing the peace sign, as long as they have at least on idea of one type of peace to back it up with. 

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

-Ben Franklin