It Takes Two
It takes only one to make war, and two to make peace.
A one-sided war is still a war, but peace requires an offer of trust and the acceptance of the offer. One must hold the other worthy of trust, and the other must step into worthiness. They must accept the invitation.
The situation is never too far gone. Peace is always possible.
As enmity deepens and the fight becomes habit, and memory of love fades, peace requires more and more of a miracle.
I intended my last essay (about the inevitable car crash, about giving up the pleas to hit the brakes and turn the wheel) as a warning disguised as a prediction. It is not actually inevitable. It is just that we are at a place now where pleas are insufficient. We need miracles, miracles of forgiveness and understanding and reconciliation, and release of what we thought we knew.
I’m not going to make a case for that. One thing I was saying in my last essay is that I’m done making cases. Lord knows I tried long and hard to make the case for peace, going back a decade. Those were my pleas to turn the wheel— This is How War Begins, Building a Peace Narrative, Making the Universe Great Again, The Field of Peace, Friends don’t Let Friends Destroy Themselves, and lots more. But now we are at a point where those who call for peace are branded by each side as an agent of the other.
That also is the point where miracles are necessary. What is a miracle? It is a happening that is impossible from within a current story, but possible from a new one. Therefore, not only does it seem impossible, but by happening anyway it invites us to question what else we have assumed that may not be true. That is the state of unknowing, the release of old beliefs and what we thought we knew, that prepares the soil for the miraculous in the first place.
Do I know how to make miracles happen? Certainly not. But all of us know how to ask for them, and how to prepare ourselves to recognize and receive them. I don’t have to say how. You already know how. You know what I’m talking about.
Here is one I’ve recognized and received: Outside of politicized discourse, people are getting friendlier, kinder, and more empathetic. Have you noticed? I was just on a trip. People at hotel counters, airport convenience stores, TSA checkpoints, and restaurants are getting kinder. They are helpful and responsive to humor. I feel it quickening. It is a miracle. It is happening! Do you recognize it? Do you receive it?
It’s much like a peace offering. An offer of trust. It takes two, the giver and the receiver, and then the receiver becomes a giver in turn, each stepping deeper into trust. That is our relation to the Giver of miracles. We receive them in equal measure to our willingness to trust.
I’m tempted to “make a case” that what I’m seeing is real, and that it has global significance, that some causal principle will translate it into political and ecological healing. I’ve got some bad habits. Even right now, I’m verging on making a case for no longer making a case. I think I sometimes explain things not so much to convince the reader, but to convince myself. I’m gonna stop doing that for a while. I’ve purchased an electric shock collar, and I’ve trained AI to deliver me a painful jolt every time I start making a case for something. It happened twice already writing this post.
So, I won’t make the case that there is a way through our present straits. I won’t make the case that peace is yet possible. I will only point out that you know that it is. The mind may doubt it, but the heart knows it is possible and that none of our strivings have been in vain.
Thank you, Charles. I get to be out in the ocean every day and her vastness returns me to peace again and again. When I return to peace, when I settle back into its infinite vast presence, I realize it never stopped or went anywhere. It is always here, permeating everyone and everything. It is only that i, in my very human journey into fear, separation or anger, have directed my gaze at other than peace and hidden her from my sight, from my awareness.
Thank you, Charles. Your voice always brings clarity and strength to the conversation, and I deeply appreciate it.
If I may share my perspective — real peace on this planet seems impossible so long as we remain under the thumb of a ruling class made up of billionaire abusers and warmongers. Whether they wear the badge of Republican or Democrat, Zionist or Hamas, American, Chinese, Russian, or Indian — they share one common tactic: they divide and conquer. They do this by fueling fear, God-ignorant religious tribalism, and nationalist hatred — manipulating well-meaning people into seeing others as “the enemy,” as “terrorist sympathizers,” as “evil outsiders,” as threats to one’s nation, faith, or identity.
This is the oldest trick in the book — and it still works frighteningly well. It’s the billionaire class’s playbook: divide the 99%, pit us against one another, and sit back as we tear each other apart. They manufacture enemies, promote tribalism, and dehumanize entire populations through relentless propaganda. And tragically, their most devoted followers — often those hypnotized by religious or nationalist rhetoric — internalize this tribalist fear and hatred, becoming unwitting tools for billionaire domination over us.
I urge you to take a look at this post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/161HrAgrvf/. It shows just how far this inhumanity has gone. We’re seeing people thrown into what can only be described as concentration and extermination camps — camps in some cases even more brutal than Auschwitz. I don’t say that lightly. Members of my own family were murdered in those very death camps, and the propaganda used then (portraying Jews as dangerous enemies of the nation) is the same blueprint being used today by the right-wing billionaires.
The right-wing ruling class now scapegoats other groups: “savage terrorist Muslims,” “evil communist China,” or “criminal illegal immigrants.” The targets change, but the method is identical — dehumanize, divide, dominate. This is how they maintain control. It’s cynical, it’s calculated, and it works because people continue falling for it.
How can there be peace in a world where people are conditioned to fear and hate their fellow human beings, to strip us entirely of our humanity because of a religion or a nationality or immigration status? How can we talk about peace while the world is run by underdeveloped, ruthless men drunk on wealth and power, whose primary skill is teaching us to fear and hate each other?
Peace begins with awareness. We must see the ruling class for what it is — not just in abstract terms, but in a visceral way that cuts through their manipulative narratives.
And yes, this includes both parties. “Right-wing,” in this context, isn’t limited to Republicans — the right-wing capitalist Democratic establishment also plays this game. Both right-wing parties serve the same economic masters. Both weaponize identity, religion, and fear to divide us.
We also can’t fall into the trap of spiritual bypassing — focusing only on personal inner peace while ignoring the political and psychological war being waged on our collective consciousness. If we don’t actively confront and dismantle the propaganda that turns man against man, peace will remain a distant fantasy.
So how do we break the spell?
For me, it starts with understanding. Understanding how subtle — and often emotionally manipulative — the tactics of the billionaire class truly are. Their tools are fear, nationalist/religious division, and control — and they use media (both mainstream and social) to execute this agenda.
Here are two essays that brilliantly unpack these strategies:
• https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/oppressors-need-bogeyman-enemies– An incisive look at how the ruling class invents “monstrous enemies” to justify oppression and to manipulate the public into compliance and loyalty to them (the ruling class predators)
• https://johnspritzler.substack.com/p/i-found-it-the-misplaced-owners-manual A sharp, satirical piece that reads like a leaked instruction manual for the ultra-rich, showing just how insidious their divide-and-rule strategies really are.
In the end, it’s all about awareness. Once we clearly see their tribalist manipulations (including emotionally manipulating us into tribalist fear and hostility) for what they are then their jig is up, their power over us crumbles and peace becomes not only a possible but inevitabile.
We don’t have to keep playing this game. The billionaires and their political puppets only win and control us when we see each other as enemies (along religiois, national, ethnic, racial etc lines), instead of as fellow human beings, fellow God in drag — all of us struggling under the same manufactured crises and lies. When we resist the ruling class' emotional manipulation — the fearmongering, the scapegoating, the tribalism — we begin to take back our power.
Real peace isn’t just a dream — it’s a possibility, but only if we have the courage to look behind the curtain and recognize how we've been conditioned to fight each other instead of standing together. That starts with awareness, it deepens through solidarity, and it manifests through collective refusal to be divided any longer.
So IMHO the question isn’t “Can peace happen?” The question is: Are we willing to dismantle the emotional and psychological machinery that has kept us at war — with each other, and within ourselves — for so long?
Because once we truly see the manipulation for what it is, the spell is broken. And when that happens, their centuries-old game of domination and deceit starts to fall apart — and in that crumbling, a new world becomes possible.