I think we're talking about a beginning, a mindset. In a world that has always (?) thought in terms of war as a means of domination, peaceful change is not an easy concept.

My precepts:

1. Most people are normal people who mainly want the chance to birth their babies, pursue their own version of happiness and see the future as being a limitless expanse of opportunity and challenge.

2. Most people do not want to suffer loss nor deliver loss to others.

3. Most people do not want to hate anyone to the point of demonization of others; given a chance they see other people pretty much the same as themselves.

4. The occasional madman or megalomaniac will be given short shrift in a world that sees no viable future in attacking others.

**In reading the history of Nazism in the German culture, it becomes quite clear that the administration made a number of tentative moves from time to time to ascertain the mood of the German people and how much they would stand for and at what speed. If the German people ( read that as us in a similar situation) had spoken at those points of intervention, history would have developed differently.

5. Education and exposure to other cultures are important, overwhelmingly important. In modern times not many leaders who have traveled extensively have waged war.

6. A world that recognizes the common humanity of man and the right of every person to access to enough food, shelter and a safe environment will be a very different world from this one where we deem it sad but acceptable to view millions of children wasting away of hunger and disease in front of our easy chairs.

There are many, many other 'givens' one could list. I just don't see that, in a world of tremendous and ever-growing danger, we must continue to think in the same old, same old, kneejerk fashion we've been doing for millenia. Shouldn't time and experience count for something?