Peace. Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups. Throughout history leaders have used peacemaking and diplomacy to establish a certain type of behavioral restraint that has resulted in the establishment of regional peace or economic growth through various forms of agreements or peace treaties. Such behavioral restraint has often resulted in the reduction of conflicts, greater economic interactivity, and consequently substantial prosperity. Psychological peace is perhaps less well defined yet often a necessary precursor to establishing behavioral peace. Peaceful behavior sometimes results from a peaceful inner disposition. Some have expressed the belief that peace can be initiated with a certain quality of inner tranquility that does not depend upon the uncertainties of daily life for its existence. The acquisition of such a peaceful internal disposition for oneself and others can contribute to resolving of otherwise seemingly irreconcilable competing interests. The Anglo-French term Pes itself comes from the Latin pax, meaning peace, compact, agreement, treaty of peace, tranquility, absence of hostility, harmony. The English word came into use in various personal greetings from c.1300 as a translation of the Hebrew word shalom, which, according to Jewish theology, comes from a Hebrew verb meaning to be complete, whole. Although peace is the usual translation, however, it is an incomplete one, because shalom, which is also cognate with the Arabic salaam, has multiple other meanings in addition to peace, including justice, good health, safety, well-being, prosperity, equity, security, good fortune, and friendliness, as well as simply the greetings, hello and goodbye. At a personal level, peaceful behaviors are kind, considerate, respectful, just, and tolerant of others' beliefs and behaviors, tending to manifest goodwill. The term-peace originates most recently from the Anglo-French pes, and the Old French pais, meaning peace, reconciliation, silence, agreement. This latter understanding of peace can also pertain to an individual's introspective sense or concept of her/himself, as in being at peace in one's own mind, as found in European references from c.1200. The early English term is also used in the sense of quiet, reflecting calm, serene, and meditative approaches to family or group relationships that avoid quarreling and seek tranquility, an absence of disturbance or agitation. In many languages, the word for peace is also used as a greeting or a farewell, for example the Hawaiian word aloha, as well as the Arabic word salaam. In English the word peace is occasionally used as a farewell, especially for the dead, as in the phrase rest in peace. Wolfgang Dietrich in his research project which led to the book The Palgrave International Handbook of Peace Studies maps the different meanings of peace in different languages and from different regions across the world. Later, in his Interpretations of Peace in History and Culture, he groups the different meanings of peace into five peace families: Energetic/Harmony, Moral/Justice, Modern/Security, Postmodern/Truth, and Transrational, a synthesis of the positive sides of the four previous families and the society. In ancient times and more recently, peaceful alliances between different nations were codified through royal marriages. Two examples, Hermodike I c.800BC and Hermodike II c.600BC were Greek princesses from the house of Agamemnon who married kings from what is now Central Turkey. The union of Phrygia / Lydia with Aeolian Greeks resulted in regional peace, which facilitated the transfer of ground-breaking technological skills into Ancient Greece; respectively, the phonetic written script and the minting of coinage. Both inventions were rapidly adopted by surrounding nations through further trade and cooperation and have been of fundamental benefit to the progress of civilization. Since classical times, it has been noted that peace has sometimes been achieved by the victor over the vanquished by the imposition of ruthless measures.
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