2C. What is peace?

Years ago, I heard a lecture by a professor who asked men and women to define peace. She found that their meanings for this idea were generally quite different. It got me thinking.
Is peace the presence of something? Or is the absence of something?
Is it something people have together or when they are alone?
Is peace different for each person? Different from one culture to another?
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Here is how International Alert, an activist peace group, talks about peace: 
            "Peace is just as much about communities living together, side by side, and resolving their differences without resorting to violence as it is about people signing a treaty or laying down their arms.
            "Our mission is to build a more peaceful world by:
1.  Working with people directly affected by conflict to find peaceful solutions
2.  Shaping policies and practices to support peace
3.  Collaborating with all those striving for peace to strengthen our collective voice and impact"
 
This group defines peace very comprehensively, including in it physical safety, social justice, and access to what humans need for wellbeing, such as food, water, education, and healthcare.


In a very different vein, here is how R.J. Rummel, a conflict resolution scholar, writes about peace:
            Peace has always been among humanity's highest values--for some, supreme. Consider: "Peace at any price."1 "The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war."2 "Peace is more important than all justice."3 "I prefer the most unjust peace to the justest war that was ever waged."4 "There never was a good war or a bad peace."5
            Yet, we agree little on what is peace. Perhaps the most popular (Western) view is as an absence of dissension, violence, or war, a meaning found in the New Testament and possibly an original meaning of the Greek word for peace, Irene. Pacifists have adopted this interpretation, for to them all violence is bad. This meaning is . . . the primary dictionary definition.
            Peace, however, is also seen as concord, or harmony and tranquility. It is viewed as peace of mind or serenity, especially in the East. It is defined as a state of law or civil government, a state of justice or goodness, a balance or equilibrium of Powers.
            Such meanings of peace function at different levels. Peace may be opposed to or an opposite of antagonistic conflict, violence, or war. It may refer to an internal state (of mind or of nations) or to external relations. Or it may be narrow in conception, referring to specific relations in a particular situation (like a peace treaty), or overarching, covering a whole society (as in a world peace). Peace may be a dichotomy (it exists or it does not) or continuous. . . . Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist will see peace differently, as will pacifist or internationalist. Socialist, fascist, and libertarian have different perspectives.

1. Alphonse de Lamartine, Meditations Poetiques (1820).  2. Desiderius Erasmus, Adagio.  3. Martin Luther, On Marriage (1530).  4. Cicero, Letters to Atticus.  5. Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Josiah Quincy (September 11, 1773).  6. Irenology = the scientific study of peace.