What is Peacecore, and what is its state today?

When I was writing my Olympics post, I noticed a particular strain of Utopianism present among the founders of the modern Olympic movement, especially Pierre de Coubertin. I decided to team up with a fellow Inkhaven resident, Mahmoud, to explore deeper.

We identified this Utopian aesthetic and philosophy – typified by the UN, the Olympics, and others – and decided to name it “Peacecore”. My post will discuss the essence of Peacecore and some major examples of it in the world today, while Mahmoud’s post covers Peacecore’s origins and why it’s declined in the past few decades.

Peacecore’s ideals

Peacecore comes out of a specific set of beliefs. If we want to state them as positively as we can, like how proponents of Peacecore would, they’d sound something like this:

***

We as a world can wield incredible power collectively. We have a duty to use this power to benefit humanity as a whole. This can be by defeating the Nazis or building a space station or installing hydroelectric dams in developing countries or eradicating smallpox. We should dream big, and work towards those dreams together.

When we rise to meet these challenges, we are all contributing our unique skills and perspectives and histories toward this common good. Diversity gives us strength, but that strength is best used for everyone.

Peacecore believes that we can build a more perfect world. That the society of this world is one filled with harmony and diversity. That the people of this world can achieve grand aims. That among these aims is the replacement of war with peaceful competition in art, science, industry, or athleticism. And that this world can best be brought about by the collective action of all the nations of our world today.

Peacecore versus other movements

Fundamentally, Peacecore’s beliefs are very similar to those of what Scott Alexander refers to as “vitalism” – a philosophy that prioritizes strength, power, and rising to great challenges. The main difference is that this power comes from the cooperation of many different people from many different groups, rather than individual leaders.

Peacecore can also be compared and contrasted to James C. Scott’s idea of “High Modernism,” an idea which he names and criticizes in his book Seeing Like a State.¹ Scott’s vision of High Modernism is using standard, rationalized techniques of architecture, management, and life in general to supplant chaotic and hard to track systems set up by individual people and places. In so doing, Scott argues, states gain more power over their subjects, and those subjects pay the cost.

Peacecore still includes space for individual and national identity, but those identities must be secondary to or in service of global, humanity-wide ideals. In principle, this makes Peacecore slightly softer and more cooperative than High Modernism. Peacecore’s best successes, like eradicating smallpox, relied heavily on fusing scientific knowledge with local experience, something that High Modernism would reject. But Peacecore’s failures, like forced sterilizations as population control measures, look a lot like High Modernism’s failures.

Peacecore as art

Peacecore art is full of grandeur. Think big monuments to liberty or peace in well crafted marble plazas, or symphonies incorporating themes from folk songs from many nations. Oh, and lots of flags.

Picture the UN headquarters in New York City: Giant rectangular international style building. White concrete curves. Flags of member states arranged in a line.

Or, picture an Olympics opening ceremony: Giant monumental torch. White concrete curves. Flags of participating nations arranged alphabetically.

Or think of the flag or logo of any international organization. They seem to have a few common obsessions. For colors, they seem to favor white (potentially representing peace and purity) and bold, bright colors. Circles are everywhere, too, perhaps representing the globe or equality (as in King Arthur’s round table). Bonus points if you can incorporate flags in your flag. Here’s a selection of examples:

     

For an earlier example, imagine what a 19^th century version of the UN building might look like. Picture it in your head. Now, take a look at the Crystal Palace, from the first World’s Fair in London, 1851:

Literature can have Peacecore as an aesthetic, too. Arthur C. Clarke especially uses this vibe. 2001: A Space Odyssey envisioned an international space station as a waypoint on a journey to the Moon, long before we built one in real life.

Peacecore examples

– The UN and subagencies –

The UN is the most central example. It was born out of optimism, aiming appropriately enough to unite the nations of the world – specifically in not wanting to be destroyed by nuclear fire. And whether or not the UN can take credit for this, we definitely have not yet been destroyed by nuclear fire.

The structure of the UN follows the Peacecore ideals, too. The security council brings together the most powerful nations of the world (at the time of its founding, at least) and requires their consensus, while the general assembly ensures that every nation gets input. The UN’s authority is usually symbolic, but it serves as a way to get nations to cooperate even on a very basic level, and provides a forum for countries to air their grievances short of declaring war.

Specific agencies within the UN showcase Peacecore’s power more fully. The WHO eradicating smallpox is likely the single most Peacecore event in human history – a massive international collaboration to rid our species of its most terrifying pestilence. UNESCO, too: let’s explore the entire world’s heritage in a standardized, categorized way.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is illustrative, too. It served originally as a fig leaf for the USA’s nuclear ambitions (and to some extent the USSR’s), but it’s still managed to be an important part of a system that’s kept nuclear proliferation to a minimum.

– The Olympics –

The Olympics predate the UN by over half a century, founded in 1896. The modern Olympics were inspired by the Ancient Olympics uniting the city states of Ancient Greece. The concept fits well. The founders (such as Coubertin) emphasized athletic competition making war unnecessary. Giving medals to top athletes is reinforces the message of “dream big”. The Olympics rotates host cities around the world to spotlight different countries. Each nation enters individually in the opening ceremony (and note all the flags), but the athletes all enter together at the closing.

The Olympics are a good showcase for how Peacecore has evolved over time, from the late 19^th century to today. Early visions of amateur gentlemen athletes have been steadily replaced by full time elite competitors and national pride. Milestones on this transition include the end of arts medals after 1948, and the end of amateurism requirements in 1988.

– The International Space Station –

This is the newest of these three main examples, coming out of the fall of the USSR and budget cuts at NASA threatening two originally separate space station plans. Having a bunch of nations work together to create humanity’s largest long term outpost off the Earth’s surface is very much in the Peacecore vibe, and may have been enabled by the brief window of international optimism between the end of the Cold War and 9/11. It’s only somewhat thwarted by the fact that China was excluded, and had to make its own space station.

Now, as the ISS turns 25, its international vision of space is being replaced by a mix of private space companies and national competition. This reflects Peacecore’s general decline in recent years from its heyday during the various thaws in the Cold War. In terms of timing, the ISS seems be a late bright spot in a broader story of decline.

Partial examples

All these examples have some elements of Peacecore, but are not perfect examples. Let’s dive into these:

– ITER –

ITER is a prototype Fusion reactor under construction in France by an international consortium. Rather than Peacecore per se, ITER more represents “open science” which evolved out of Peacecore, and is more limited in scope. Mahmoud is discussing this further in his piece.

– Regional organizations (EU, African Union, CERN, ASEAN, etc.) –

Some are like the UN but smaller, while some have more actual power. Especially in regions that have seen recent conflict, these organizations provide a vision of what the UN could have become in a Peacecore world.

– The Peace Corps –

The wordplay namesake of Peacecore. Isn’t quite a great example since it’s an agency of the United States government. If it were open to young people from the entire world and run by an international commission, it would be a central example along with the three above.

– Wikipedia –

Creating a repository of all the world’s knowledge through a consensus-led bureaucracy is very Peacecore, but the internet has its own aesthetic and culture that influences Wikipedia even more. That said, they do have a white logo with a globe and glyphs from the worlds’ languages. Probably Wikipedia’s most Peacecore side would be the Wikipedias in small regional or minority languages.

– Effective Altruism –

Similar sense of idealism that humanity can collectively improve the world, but framed much less through the lens of nations cooperating and much more through the frame of individuals using their talents, power, or wealth for the benefit of the world and the future.

Peacecore is dying, but it may return

Mahmoud’s post is focused on Peacecore’s history, including its origins and early phases, and why it’s currently fading away and/or being replaced. (Did you know there was a World’s Fair in 2025, in Osaka? They’ve been held every 5 years since 2000, but does the world seem to care?)

Looking at the distribution of the three main examples, I wonder whether Peacecore will eventually make a comeback. The Olympics date to 1896, before the World War. The UN dates to 1945, at the end of WWII. The International Space Station was announced in 1993 and the first module launched in 1998, after the end of the Cold War. Each of these moments had a different reason to be optimistic about international cooperation. Some future development in world history could reasonably bring that idealism back, at least among the kind of people who work in diplomacy or monumental architecture. Peacecore may be dying, but its dream far from dead.

Coming Soon: Surreal Numbers