Wars can be reduced and stopped if we recreate politics away from an elite-centred philosophy where 1 percent of the population who neither relate nor wish to understand the sensitivities of the remaining 99 percent set the vision, values, and the agenda. In this article we investigate how the average citizen can stop being easily convinced to fight wars for elites in the name of ‘national interests.’

Changes are required so the political architecture reflects society not certain classes. We must prioritise investment in peace over bleeding in war. Getting to a war posturing must be an outcome of national debate, not the elites’ purchasing power.

The public must set themselves high standards that they constantly refer to before being convinced by the elite to send their sons and daughters to war. Wars created by the elite for their own interests must not be our wars. We must not be fooled into believing that interests of the political elite reflect national interests because they seldom do. The political elite deliberately undermine facts and ‘truths’ to justify triggering internal and/ or international conflict to settle personal scores or impose their version of national interest.

Making war declarations is easy when you are not held accountable for the decisions and when you have convinced others not to expect you to fight; when other people’s sons and daughters are expected to fight while yours enjoy access to elite educational institutions and the luxury of safety in the most secure places in the world.

War culture will become an exception rather than the norm if citizens convince themselves that they are not war tools, and that the elite who declare wars must not stop at that but lead from the front; they must join the fighting battalions accompanied by their spouses, allies, and their sons and daughters of fighting age.

Not many wars bear national interests, they are a function of egoistic projection of power, greed, and malice. Most disputes that result in wars can be resolved amicably without a shot being fired if we invest in peace over war. Wars of the elite in South Sudan, the DR Congo, etc., do not benefit the average person. How is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine essential to the livelihood of an average Russian?

The socioeconomic and political narratives of the elite are informed by their interests and never draw from the sensitivities of the average person; in their world the security of their economic interests eclipses human safety.

Forget facts for a moment, the average person must start telling stories of his political world his way, start projecting his interests, protect himself and his children from the craven desires of the wealthy elite. The narratives delivered in a series of stories told by the wealthy elites reflect their interests not facts; so, we cannot always fight them with facts or ‘truths’ but by our stories that draw from the depth of our sensitivities.

Deconstruct the commodification of the average person by the elite. We need to invest in convincing the average person that his safety needs are more important than the wants of the elite. Like the elites, we are deserving of life, safety, security and a place at the decision-making table.

People must stop fighting wars whose triggers and benefits are clouded in secrecy, and policy foundations conflict with their sensitivities. We will willingly express patriotism and aggressively defend our nation from external and domestic predators. However, we need patience for peaceful solutions.

The elite must not be allowed to buyout the average person from decision-making processes. Let us enforce strict moral codes in determining how society declares wars. All mechanism must be deployed to restrict the elite access to vulnerable young men and women to use as tools of war.

We must guard against political elites’ attempts to concoct crises to misuse emergency powers and bypass moral codes and laws which they perceive to be inconvenient interference of the average person to their self-centred goals and wars of self-ingratiation.

A continuous and comprehensive public involvement in local socio-political processes, big and small, is required to affect the tone of the public discourse. We need to simplify public interactions with leadership. We want to look at progressive problem-solving mechanisms whose foundation is the preservation of life and human rights and proactive reduction of war.

The public must start speaking truth to power. The average person must pick up the mic, be the storyteller, control the vision, values and national agenda from narrow self-interests of the elite to broader society interests. We have ceded substantial power and credibility to the elites who have grabbed the opportunity to create their own preferred version of reality. The legacy media has been instrumental in the sustenance and expansion of the alternate narrative where greed and gluttony are normalised, illegitimate wars justified.