Blame and Peace

The Sun magazine has a section on the last page called "Sunbeams."  Here are two sunbeams from the November 2012 edition.

We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong.  We do that with the people who are closest to us, and we do it with political systems....It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better....Blaming is a way to protect our hearts, to try to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves.  Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.  (Pema Chödrön)
We have thought of peace as the passive and war as the active way of living.  The opposite is true.  War is not the most strenuous life.  It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences.  (Mary Parker Follett)

People are so good at describing the problems.