Intellectual Restraint and Courageous Grammar

Some writers and academics identify certain inherent ills in our culture very early on, and their work hits the nail on the head decades before those problems really come to fruition. It is not the sadly overused 1984 that is thundering towards us here, but another, humbler work, and one that has unfairly—though at least not undeservedly—slipped into academic obscurity. What follows is a description of peace envy, a theory that was startlingly fresh and inapplicable in its day and which has lost none of those traits as we revisit it here. Though perhaps it is not as fresh.

Peace Envy

The theory of peace envy was first expressed by Simone de Bojangles in her exhaustive—some say tiresome—book Is it Me, or Does the World not Have to be in the Shit? Of course, when the book came out in 1995 ‘shit’ was a term of endearment and not the cuss word it is now. Throughout the western world from 1977 to about March 1999 it was not uncommon for friends (albeit of the older generation) to greet each other with: ‘Hullo, my shit! How are you diddling?’ Shit was also used more specifically to describe international relations in the post-Cold War/pre-Diana’s death period, where it was an acronym for: Shoot, However Irrelevant the Target. In this context de Bojangles’ book was an apposite—perhaps even suppository—work. Her theories were unprecedented and unqualified, and remain just as relevant today as they were then.

Peace envy refers to a situation where an aggressive industrialised nation becomes jealous of other nations’ peaceful existence in the world. It does not (as many erroneous wikis would have people believe) refer to countries at war that are jealous of countries at peace. The envious nation will be one that is affluent, powerful and—most importantly—terrified of becoming neither.

This nation’s political discourse and defence planning will have enjoyed many successful decades of bravely confronting international threats and foul play, warning its populace of the dangers of leaving such threats unchecked while warning the threats themselves that there would be retaliation prior to any attack. The nation will have been vigilant towards any rogue states (places populated with people resembling Keith Allen in a rascally television role). It will also have been skilled at identifying those countries that suffer high levels of undemocrathora governoromentii, a waterborne disease that affects the brain and trade tariffs.

When such a nation experiences peace envy it will abandon this tradition of defence and disclaimers, aspiring instead to the insular, smug virtuousness of countries that take no pre-emptive stance in international relations. The nation will become self-conscious whenever other countries discuss their standing in the world without any poised rhetoric of vigilance, deterrents or discredited governments. Staring at its own long, swinging sabre the envious nation will suddenly become ashamed of it, realising what the appendage is capable of doing to suggestible young countries. The nation will resent its inability to avoid giving ultimatums or engage in any debate sitting down, and will covet the peaceful nation’s ease at sitting at a table and talking without feeling like a sissy, and without anal caresses from a military advisor.

Those are de Bojangles’ words more or less, and I hope you are the wiser for them. Simone de Bojangles had an astounding mind, and she has left behind a legacy of intellectual restraint and courageous grammar. She worked tirelessly in all her endeavours, regularly working long hours (her watch was slow) and always searching for the one thing she’d overlooked and finding lots of others. To determine the place of her reassuringly solitary voice in the field of international relations is impossible; the impact her books had may never be fully comprehensible.

This morning I saw that ‘peace envy’ has been used in forums to describe the uproar over Barack Obama’s receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. I can only hope that the misuse of the term is unintentional, as employing such a complex and contrived academic concept so inaccurately must make Simone de Bojangles plume in her urn. She died tragically in 2001, reportedly from injuries sustained from falling from the top of Anthony Head, although it turned out to be Beachy Head. It is highly doubtful that falling from the top of Anthony Head’s head would be anywhere near as lethal.

The allusion to Simone de Beauvoir was intended to be humorous simply because of her unsuitability to being juxtaposed with the subject matter, nothing else. De Bojangles’ characterization is about as far removed from de Beauvoir’s character as a Hollywood biopic.