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211A Humanities Colloquy

Lloyd Kneeland Jr

PSY 100A: Foundational Elements of Psychology

Warner Pacific University

November 19, 2021

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Reflection on War and Peace

In this paper, the writer will be discussing their personal understanding and beliefs on the

topic of war and peace, how what they have learned in this course has influenced their

understanding and perspective on the topic.

War & Peace

To begin this, I would like to start off with how this course has helped provoke my

thought patterns in a way that I believe to be beneficial to my critical thinking process. I greatly

enjoy it when a topic is able to challenge my way of thinking. I would also like to point out that I

came into this course with no clue as to what the just war theory was or that it even existed.

Before this course, I had never really put any thought into the process of how a nation determines

if it should go to war or not.

My basic thoughts about why wars are fought have been surrounded by theories of

conspiracies. Such as monetary gain, power, and greed. Although this may have been the

reasoning for wars in the earlier years of the world, I do not believe that this is the driving factor

for most nations today in the world that I live in. I believe that the wars that my nation has taken

part in have been for human rights and freedom.

As I have studied and learned about what peace is and how to determine what peace is, I

have come to learn that peace is not one-sided and that what one individual believes to be peace

might not match up to what another believes. I believe there are many reasons for this, and I can

not begin to try and explain what peace means to another, for I am not them and have not lived

their life and have been raised in a totally different environment them much of the world.
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I have learned that no matter how wrong another's actions are, what the cause for their

actions is for, or how others perceive their actions. The actions which that person undertakes are

taking in the belief that what they are doing is right and that their actions, if followed through

and achieved, will bring not only peace to them but to the majority of the world. In this

perspective, how am I to judge that person’s moral beliefs?

Well, as does most, I well judge others' moral actions in accordance with my own. This is

how I make my decision and choose to act. I believe that all people have a right to be free, to not

be oppressed, to be equal, to choose how they want to live. But I do have one aspect to my belief

system that is contradictory, and that is, others should be able to live how they choose. The

contradiction is that I believe they can live how they choose as long as it does not harm others.

So, in reality, this is not allowing an individual to be able to live as they choose because some

people like to make decisions that are harmful and affect others negatively.

In the end, all I can honestly say is that I am always willing to go to war for what I

believe in because, like all people in this world of ours, I believe that my idea of what peace

looks like is one that can be justified in the eyes of most the world. Therefore if I am in a

position that I am able to advocate for the protection of people that are unjustly being harmed,

after all, other actions have been taken and tried not once but multiple times, I am willing to

stand ready to advocate for military intervention as a last resort to help those that are in need.