The development of the comprehension and verbal articulation of the concept of war
precedes the development of the concept of peace by several years. The implications
of these findings for the norms, values, and attitudes towards peaceful and
non-peaceful behaviour are discussed. It is argued that a "state of peace" is not
necessarily the baseline or "normal situation" and that war and a "state of war" are
not merely social inventions or the result of cultural deviations, but that war is
institutionalised in our culture. Peaceful and non-peaceful behaviours are products
of the interaction between human propensities (i.e. predispositions) and the
contents of the sociocultural structure, and the sociocultural structure itself is
the historical product of the interaction between the same propensities and the
environment. In any attempt to undermine the institution of war and to permit the
emergence of the institution of peace, these mutual interactions will need to be considered.
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