Published] July 25, 2022
[Updated] May 20, 2026
When I was in elementary school, I was playing on the road with friends when several students from a school for the deaf walked by, communicating in sign language. One of my friends began teasing the student at the front. An older student quietly approached from behind and kicked my friend hard in the backside.
When I was in junior high school, an elderly Korean woman, said to have suffered discrimination, passed by. The sorrowful yet dignified look in her eyes as she walked straight ahead still remains vividly in my mind, even more than half a century later.
As I advanced through high school and university, I witnessed and learned about even more injustices: racial discrimination, territorial disputes, abductions, terrorism, violence, biker gangs, organized crime, and more. Above all of these stood the act of mass killing known as “war.” Why do human beings wage war? Why are we unable to stop it?
These questions never left my mind for even a moment, and they caused me endless anguish throughout my student years. Eventually, expressing my thoughts on the concept of “war” in words became my life’s work.
Sadly, we still have not found a way to solve this problem. Politics, law, education, and religion all seem unable to provide an answer.
Should we not stop where we are for a moment, establish a minimum set of rules, and stand together on a new starting line toward a world without conflict—beginning life and history anew? I cannot help but feel that such a choice would be worthwhile. If we truly decide to do it, it seems like something very simple and possible.
The force applied by a finger about to pull a trigger, and the gentle force required to move that finger away from it—which is truly easier? And what joy, and what genuine happiness, would follow from making the right choice?
At that time, even those who have been “left behind” on humanity’s journey toward what is supposed to be a sustainable world would surely forgive the many mistakes we have made since the dawn of humankind.
— pera
[Blogger’s Note]
I first began seriously working on my life’s work of expressing my feelings about the goal of “renouncing war” in words in 2022. I struggled with learning how to use WordPress, a website and blog creation platform completely new to me, and after four years, the project has finally begun to take shape.
The blog is still unfinished, and I am proceeding especially carefully with SDG0-4, “The Path to the Renunciation of War.” As I write, I imagine—or remember the faces of—the eight billion people of the world, as well as those considered to be the world’s leaders, speaking to them directly through these words.
— pera
