2012-03-03
Explanation
This comic features a conversation between a young girl and her father about war. The girl asks, "Dad, why do people fight wars?" Her father explains, "Well, usually there are two sides and they have different ideas. Then the people fight over the ideas until one side can'''t fight any more." The girl responds thoughtfully, "Well, that doesn'''t seem fair. Ideas live forever. People can die." She then asks the piercing follow-up question: "Shouldn'''t the ideas be fighting over the people?"
The humor and profundity of this comic come from the child'''s innocent but logically sharp observation. She has essentially inverted the typical framing of war: instead of people being expendable servants of ideas and ideologies, she suggests that ideas should be competing to serve and protect people. Her father'''s stunned response -- "That'''s called peace" -- acknowledges that what his daughter has naively described is actually a sophisticated philosophical reframing of how civilization ought to work. When ideas compete for people (through persuasion, debate, and democratic discourse) rather than people killing each other over ideas, you get peace.
The votey shows the father saying "Oh snap!" -- a humorous deflation of the profound moment, as if even he is impressed by how thoroughly his daughter just schooled him on the nature of conflict and peace.