Few forces are more intense than tribal memory and grievance, the blood's need for vindication. The past wants revenge, like Hamlet's father's ghost. Peace settlements in South Africa and the Middle East will bury the bloody shirt, shut down the past as an imperative. Leaders must bring followers along. Leaders must exercise the visionary's gift.
Peace is a way of reimagining the world.
Often the peace must actually be made before people will embrace the idea. Blessed are the peacemakers, and few in number. This sends out a global message of hope. Jean Cocteau remarked in his memoirs that stupidity is always amazing to behold, no matter how often one has encountered it. If war represents at bottom a kind of moral stupidity, the Men of the Year were making their way out of that violent region and toward a better part of the mind.