

I disagree that it’s rare. In fact, peaceful coexistence is the norm and violent displacement is the anomaly. It only seems like that’s not the case because peace is delicate and unmentionable (what’s there to say in history books about nothing happening?) while violence is sudden and has permanent consequences. A peace lasting centuries can be ended by a single violent event, and that single event will be written about in greater detail than the centuries of peace that preceded it. Our perception of human nature is also skewed by the fact that we’re currently living in a global order dominated by violent settler-colonial factions who have created a system of extraction based fundamentally on theft.











Just picking a random region of the world and looking at Wikipedia’s list of conflicts in Asia, you can try counting the years in the gaps between conflicts and comparing them to the duration of the conflicts themselves. I would bet good money that the average duration of periods of peace in any given region is greater than the average duration of conflicts, and that cumulatively years spent peacefully coexisting far exceed the years spent in conflict.
Notice also that the bias towards violence being mentionable and peace being less so is evident in the fact that I had to do this by finding a list of conflicts rather than a list of peaceful periods.