Magnificent Peace

I spent this afternoon playing a game called Twilight Imperium, whose tagline is Pax Magnifica Bellum Gloriosum, which (according to Google Translate) means something like "Magnificent peace, glorious war." It's the kind of insanely-complicated board games where there are hundreds of game pieces and dozens of mechanics, and the objective of the game is to gather resources, trade and fight with other players for their resources, and use your resources to accomplish objectives which ear you victory points. The first person to 10 victory points wins.

I had no idea what I was doing. While the other players were building up massive space armadas and fighting epic battles for control of the capitol planet, I was sitting off in my corner of the galaxy, accomplishing small objectives here and there, but mostly gathering a lot of "trade goods." According to the lore of the game, the faction I was playing was composed mostly of merchants, so I minded my own business, figuratively and literally, figuring that, no matter who won control of the galaxy, my financial empire would probably be alright. I knew I wouldn't win the game since both of the other players had much bigger armies than I did, but I felt like I was doing alright.

But as the other players spent most of their resources fighting over the capitol, my "small objectives" started to add up. Toward the end of the game, I had more victory points than either of the other players. Then we flipped over the final objective I needed, and it turned out that I had all the Trade Goods I needed to accomplish it. Despite their massive space armies, there was nothing the other players could have done to stop me from earning the last two victory points I needed to win the game.

I share all this mostly to say that, while the game of life is sometimes won or lost in "glorious war," it is also sometimes won in "magnificent peace." I don't think I attacked any other ships that whole game. I bought some ship, mostly to just have something to do with all my resources, but I only ever used them to colonize uninhabited planets. I was a peaceful merchants' guild, and I won, mostly by accident, just by not getting caught up in the "glorious war."

In life, there is lots of contention and plenty of opportunities to join it. Many people get caught up in fighting for good causes, and they accomplish many good things. It is possible to "win" that way. But it is also possible to accomplish much good without being adversarial and getting caught up in strife and conflict. I play games with combat in it, and I sometimes enjoy the combat in those games, but the only conflict I ever want to get into in real life is the war for souls, and even then, I'll mostly only be playing defense. There is glory to be achieved in that war, but I only want to do as much fighting as is absolutely necessary to maintain a magnificent peace.