Why Do Wars Happen? One Side Can Always Stop. Only Both Can Make Peace.

In the back seat, Max pokes Leo.

Leo pokes back, harder. Max pokes again. From the front, Mom asks, "Who started it?" Both of them say, "He did."

On Christmas Eve 1914, along stretches of the Western Front, British and German soldiers stopped shooting. They sang across the lines. That night and on Christmas Day, they climbed out of their trenches, met in no man's land, swapped cigarettes and food, and in places buried their dead together.¹ It wasn't everywhere, and it didn't last. Place by place, the shooting started again.

Put the two scenes side by side and a question comes out. If men in the middle of a war could stop for a night, why couldn't they stop? And behind it sits the bigger one: why do wars happen at all, and can they end?

Reality has one moral code, and it runs on the same record as the rest of physics. It speaks to both questions, and what it says is exact. It derives no particular war's history, so it says nothing about who started a war, or why, or when it ends. It says what a war is made of, why nothing in the record prevents one, why no situation ever requires one, and what it takes to end one.

The short answer

A war is a mass of pushes. The moral code forbids every one of them and stops none.

A bond is the record's entry for a relationship between two people. It's kept in two copies, one in each person's own books, and nobody writes in anyone else's books. So an act may move a bond only when both of its ends write on it. A push is an act that moves a bond anyway: it changes someone's bond without that person writing the change, and leaves their book false.

The code is a verdict on acts, not a wall around them. A push is possible: nothing in the record takes it off anyone's menu (the menu is the set of acts people have the means to do). On cost alone a push can come out ahead, and no law fixes which act comes next. That's why wars can happen at all. The code forbids them and doesn't prevent them.

Wars can end. No situation the record allows ever requires a push, so every person can always stop their own, and so every side can. But stopping isn't peace. Peace is a repair on every strained bond, and a repair takes both ends of the bond writing it. Retaliation, victory, an outside power and a wall each leave the strain on the record.

Here's the whole answer in six steps. The rest of this post takes them one at a time and shows how we know each one.

1. A war is a mass of pushes, and nobody writes another's side. An act may move a bond only when both of its ends write on it. A government's order isn't a write on the bond between a soldier and the stranger across the field.
2. The code forbids every push and stops none. A push is possible, and on cost alone it can come out ahead. Consent comes before cost, so no price makes a push allowed.
3. No war is ever required. Doing nothing is always possible, so every person can always stop. Where an act both ends write lowers the cost, the code requires it.
4. Answering a push with a push relieves nothing and adds a wrong. A strike on another bond leaves the first bond where it was, and taking back by force is a push too. Each end carries a strained bond's full cost, so nobody wins one.
5. Peace is a repair, and a repair takes both ends. A treaty is a later yes and covers what it covers. Outsiders can help and can't write it. A wall keeps the cost.
6. The record keeps every act, and nothing makes peace happen. Peace exists, and a repair is always on the menu for both sides to write. Where a way down is on the menu, the code's least-cost steps, which it calls love's steps, reach love's state, the cheapest spread of the strain. No law fixes which act comes next, so no war is fated to end and none is fated to go on.

Why this matters: it says what a war is made of, and what it isn't. A war isn't a force of nature, a fate, or the act of one thing called a nation. Every act in it is one a person chose, and it has an address: the bond it changes. It says where stopping always starts: with your own acts, on a menu that always includes doing nothing. It says what ending takes: both ends of every strained bond. And it closes the exits people use: "they started it", "we'll finish it", "someone else will fix it", "we'll wall it off".

Here's the route. I'll stop after each step to say where we are and why the next step comes next.

What this post stands on

Four starting claims, each with its reason. Why Does Evil Exist? and What Is Justice, and What Is Fair? build the same ground at more length, so I keep to what a war needs.

Nothing that happens is ever erased. Every event leaves a complete trace, and the past still exists. The reason starts in known physics: the basic laws never destroy information. In quantum mechanics that's unitarity. The present fixes the past exactly, and running the laws backward recovers every earlier state. That's why physicists treat the black hole information problem as a real problem: losing information would break the laws.² Our work gives the record a reason of its own: it only grows. Each new entry is added with every earlier entry kept, and writing a new entry never alters an earlier one.³ What You Are builds the record from the ground up.

A relationship is a comparison, and a comparison has a cost. The smallest thing that can happen is one thing told apart from another, a single yes or no. You're doing it right now: reading this tells one letter from another. Telling two things apart takes information about both, so the unit of the record is a comparison of two amounts. I call the record's entry for a relationship between two people a bond. Its number is one amount divided by the other. When the amounts match, the number is 1, and the bond is level. A bond that's off level is strained, and its strain is how far off it is.

Every number except 1 has a cost, and the cost has one exact formula. For a bond at x:

J(x) = (x + 1/x) / 2 − 1

Add the number to its flip (1 divided by it), halve the sum, and subtract 1. A bond at 2 costs 1/4. A bond at 4 costs 9/8: 4 plus 1/4 is 17/4, half of that is 17/8, and 17/8 minus 1 is 9/8. Level costs 0, and nothing costs less. The formula isn't a choice. A cost has to be zero when the two amounts match, grow as they differ, and come out the same whichever amount is put first, so a bond at 2 and a bond at 1/2 cost the same. Add the rule for how the costs of combined comparisons add, and one calibration (how sharply the cost rises near level), and exactly one formula is left.⁴

Each bond is kept twice, once at each end, on that end's own books. Each of the two people at a bond's ends keeps their own record of it and writes only in their own books. To write on a bond is to enter a change in your own books. A record is true when it gives the bond's actual number. What a person carries is the cost of the bonds they are an end of, each counted in full: a bond at 4 costs 9/8, and both of its ends carry 9/8. The record's own total counts the bond once.

The code is four clauses and one judgment, as our preprint The Moral Code states it.⁵ An act changes bonds, and the people who do it write the change in their own books. An act is admissible when:

1. it acts only on bonds that exist now;
2. every record of every bond is true after it;
3. it moves a bond only when both of its ends write on it;
4. it ends a bond only when one of that bond's own ends ends it.

The clauses aren't chosen. They're what a record kept twice admits: an end that doesn't write keeps its old record of a bond, and that record stays true only if the bond doesn't move. Of the admissible acts, the code permits exactly those that leave the least total cost on the complete record, which counts every moment still to come (each moment where the cost is counted is a checkpoint). Every other act is forbidden. Doing nothing is always admissible, so something is always permitted. Why Does Evil Exist? gives the reasons for the least-cost form.

The third clause is consent, and it's a rule about acts, because acts are the only way a bond changes. Nothing moves a bond between acts: a bond changes only through what someone sends, and sending is an act. Consent is a hard condition, not a price. The code is least cost over the acts that pass it.

Two cases show it. If only one end writes, nothing moves: a lone write in your own book leaves the bond where it was, and your own book is the one that goes false. If an act moves the bond anyway, without the other end's write, then the other end's book goes false. That second case is what this post is about. An act that does it is a push. The code's word for the false entry it leaves in someone else's own record is harm. Harm is possible, and forbidden. Why Do We Need Each Other? works through both cases with a kitchen.

The code judges acts and moves no one's hands. The forbidden act sits on the menu beside the permitted one.

Step 1: A war is a mass of pushes, and nobody writes another's side

A war is a mass of acts that change other people's bonds without those people writing the change. Nobody writes another's side, so no order, vote or government decision writes a soldier's side of a bond with the stranger across the field.

Start in the back seat. Before the first poke, the bond between Max and Leo is level: 1, cost 0. Max pokes Leo, and the bond reads 2. (The numbers are a drawing. What a poke changes in a real bond, and which two amounts it compares, isn't derived yet.) A bond at 2 costs 1/4, and both boys carry all of it.

Who wrote the change? Max did. It's in his book. Leo didn't write it. His book still says 1, the bond now reads 2, and so his book is false. A false entry in someone else's own record is harm, and an act that does it is a push. Max's poke is a push.

Leo pokes back. That moves the bond again, and Max didn't write that change either, so now Max's book is false. Leo's poke is a push too. The code forbids each one, and it forbids Leo's at the step he does it, whoever started. The record keeps the order: Max's name on the first poke, Leo's on the second. Mom's question has an answer on the record. The answer doesn't change what Leo's poke is.

A war is that, many times over, on bonds between people who've never met. The step under that reading isn't derived yet: which real acts (a shell, an occupation, a blockade, a conscription order) are which changes on which bonds. Until that map is made, every application in this post is a drawing, and the back seat is how I draw it.

Now the soldier and the stranger. A soldier fires across a field at a stranger. The bond between them has two ends, the soldier and the stranger, and each keeps their own book of it. The stranger wrote nothing. Now put a government behind the soldier: an order, a vote, a decision in a capital. That's a write, and it goes in the government's own books, on the bonds the government is an end of. The government isn't an end of the bond between the soldier and the stranger, so its write isn't a write on that bond. A nation isn't one end that consents for all its members, on either side of the field. Nobody signs for you.

Consent is per bond, too. Taking part in one act never consents to another act done at the same time. A fighter's own pushes don't write his side of the pushes aimed at him.

How we know. Each bond is kept twice. An end that doesn't write keeps its old record of the bond, and that record stays true only if the bond doesn't move. So an act may move a bond only when both of its ends write on it, and a government that isn't an end of a bond can't write on it. This is the clause applied, not a separate result: consent is per relation.⁵

One step under all of it isn't derived yet: why both ends must write. The both-ends clause holds exactly when each end's record holds one exact state of the bond, and that is still being derived.

Next, and why: if nobody can write another's side, what stops a push? Step 2 asks.

Step 2: The code forbids every push and stops none

The code forbids every push, whatever the books say and whatever the push would buy. It stops none, because it's a verdict on acts, not a wall. A push is possible, and on cost alone it can come out ahead.

Call an act possible when the people involved have the means to do it: the energy, the supplies, the strength. The possible acts make up the menu, and the code's verdict applies to the acts on it. A forbidden act is a possible act that isn't permitted. If it weren't possible, there would be nothing to forbid. Why Does Evil Exist? works out why the code is a verdict and not a wall. For a war, the result is what matters: nothing in the record takes a push off anyone's menu. And no law fixes which act comes next, so nothing in the record picks the permitted one either. Is Your Next Move Already Written? works that out.

How a push can pay comes down to arithmetic. Ann and Ben share a bond at 4, which costs 9/8. Cal and Dee share a level bond, which costs 0. Suppose one act on the menu passes some of the strain along: the Ann-Ben bond eases from 4 to 2, and the Cal-Dee bond is strained from 1 to 2. Before, the record held 9/8 + 0 = 9/8. After, it holds 1/4 + 1/4 = 1/2. The total fell by 5/8, and the total counts everyone.

If Cal and Dee write their side, that's a joint act, and the code permits it when it leaves the least cost. If they don't, their bond moved anyway, their books are false, and it's a push. A rule that compared totals alone would take that act over doing nothing, since 1/2 is less than 9/8. The code doesn't compare totals alone. A lower total for one side, or for everyone counted together, never makes a one-sided act allowed. Lowering a network's total can load someone who wrote nothing, and Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions works through the same thing on a ring of three people.

And no price on pushing can do the clauses' work. A bond's cost has no top: a bond at 16 costs 225/32, about 7, and a bond at 64 costs about 31. The more strained a bond is, the more there is to relieve, so whatever fixed charge you put on a push, some push saves more than the charge. That's why the code doesn't weigh pushes against savings. The clauses fix which acts are admissible, and only then does cost compare them. That's how a push can pay, and it's all the code says about it. Why any person or side picks a push isn't something it derives.

Seizures, levies, plunder and looting are pushes too. A taking moves an amount from the one who holds it to the one who takes it, and every transfer posts at both ends of the relationship between them. So a taking without the holder's write changes that relationship without their write. It's a push, forbidden like any other, whoever takes it.

How we know. The clauses aren't chosen. They're what a record kept twice admits. The judgment is defined on the menu, so something is permitted on every world and no act is both permitted and forbidden. That no finite charge on pushing works, because the relief a push can buy grows without bound, is in the preprint.⁵

Next, and why: if nothing stops a push, is anyone ever forced into one? Step 3 asks whether any situation can require a war.

Step 3: No war is ever required

Doing nothing is always possible and always admissible, so something is always permitted, and no permitted act is a push. Every person can always stop. And where an act both ends write lowers the cost, the code requires it.

Doing nothing strains no bond and ends none. It leaves the world exactly as it was, so it passes all four clauses, and it's possible on every world. That's why something is always permitted, and why the code has no dilemma. Every permitted act is admissible, and no push is admissible, so no situation the record allows requires a push.

"Stop" here means stopping your own pushes. It doesn't mean the other side stops. It means nobody is ever cornered into pushing: every person on every side can always take the act that strains nothing.

Your stopping doesn't wait on theirs, and theirs doesn't excuse yours. What others do on bonds your act doesn't touch changes nothing about the bonds it does touch, because nothing moves a bond between acts. So "they'll do it anyway" leaves your act exactly the act it is.

What about the one who's attacked? It's the first question anyone asks, so here's the code's answer. (In these lines a relationship and its bond are the same thing: the bond is the record's entry for the relationship.)

• Force that changes the attacker's relationships without the attacker's write is a push, and the code forbids it at the step it's done, whoever started. The attacker's act writes nothing for yours.
• Blocking is different. Keeping the attack from changing your bond changes no one's relationship, so no clause forbids it.
• The one attacked may end the bond. An act can end a bond when one of its own two people ends it, and the one attacked is one of the two.
• The wrong stays on the attacker's record. The record keeps who wrote what.

Which defensive act the code permits in a given case is a comparison of costs among the acts that pass the clauses. This post doesn't settle that for any war. What it settles is the shape of the menu: a block passes the clauses, a push back doesn't, and no situation requires a push.

Stopping is the least the code asks. The code requires you to help wherever an act both of you write lowers the cost; then doing nothing is forbidden. A repair of a strained bond is such an act. What Do We Owe Each Other? works through a case, and it needs no promise.

Two claims on one thing. Suppose two neighbors each claim the only well in a dry valley, and it can't be split. What Is Justice, and What Is Fair? works out one ticket for two kids. If the two claims are exact mirror images, giving the well to either one ties, and either way is permitted. A push to take it is forbidden, whoever's claim it is. And no push is required, because giving it to either neighbor is on the menu and passes the clauses.

That last step isn't derived yet: which of two claims that aren't mirror images governs, and how a claim gets its authority. That is the edge of what the code says here.

How we know. Omission, the act with no strain, returns the world exactly as it was and is possible on every world. On every finite menu that includes it, one of the admissible acts leaves the least cost, so something is permitted, and no act is both permitted and forbidden.⁵ The self-defense lines are the clauses at work: consent is per relation, and a write in one act doesn't carry over to another.

Next, and why: nobody has to push. Suppose someone does, and the one pushed pushes back. What does a push back do?

Step 4: Answering a push with a push relieves nothing and adds a wrong

A strike on another bond leaves the first bond where it was. Taking back by force is a push too. And each end of a strained bond carries all of its cost, so nobody wins one.

An answer lands on a different bond. Take four people again. Ann and Cal are on one side, Ben and Dee on the other. Ann pushes the Ann-Ben bond from 1 to 2. It costs 1/4. Ben's side answers: Dee pushes the Dee-Cal bond from 1 to 2. Another 1/4. The record now holds 1/4 + 1/4 = 1/2. The Ann-Ben bond is still at 2.

Two acts on separate bonds are judged exactly as the two acts are, and a relief or a harm on one bond never settles another. So the answer repaired nothing. It added a push, with Dee's name on it, on a bond Cal never wrote.

That covers punishment, too. At the step an act is done, a penalty that changes a wrongdoer's relationships without the wrongdoer's write breaks the clauses like any push. Retaliation, punishment and "teaching them a lesson" are done to someone, not with them. They're pushes, and none of them is justice. What a wrong calls for is repair, and a repair changes the relationship, so both ends write it. What Is Justice, and What Is Fair? works out what justice is.

Taking back by force is a push. The one who was pushed can't take the bond back alone, either. Say Ben takes the Ann-Ben bond from 2 back to 1. The numbers read level again, cost 0, exactly what they read before Ann's push. But Ben changed the bond without Ann's write. Her book still says 2, so her book is false. That's a push. A joint repair and a one-sided taking back can leave the same numbers. They have different authors, and the verdict reads authors. Back in the car, say Leo's poke had been exactly as hard as Max's. The bond would read 1 again, and the record would still hold two pokes.

That rests on the open step from Step 1. A rival reading takes an end's record as only a bound on what's due. Under that reading, one end alone relieves a shared bond toward level. The preprint names that as the open fork.⁵

Nobody wins a strained bond. A bond at 4 costs 9/8. Say Ann's side pushed it that far. Ann carries 9/8. Ben, who was pushed, carries 9/8 too. The record counts the bond once. Winning doesn't move the cost off the winner, because each end carries all of it. In the code's terms, nobody comes out ahead on a strained bond.

Strain compounds, too. Here's the cost as a bond sits farther from level:

Check the last two. For 8: 8 plus 1/8 is 65/8, half of that is 65/16, and 65/16 minus 1 is 49/16. For 16: 16 plus 1/16 is 257/16, half of that is 257/32, and 257/32 minus 1 is 225/32. Compare each number with its double, and the cost at the double is more than twice the cost at the number: 1/4 to 9/8 is 4.5 times, 9/8 to 49/16 is about 2.7 times, 49/16 to 225/32 is about 2.3 times, and the factor settles toward 2. That holds for every number from 1 up.⁶ So a strained bond at twice the number costs both of its ends more than twice as much.

How we know. Each line is the code at work. Two acts on separate bonds are judged as the two acts are, and one person's relief of you never offsets another's harm to you.⁵ A penalty is an act that changes a wrongdoer's bond without that end's write, so it breaks clauses 2 and 3 like any push. Bringing a bond to balance changes it, so both of its ends write the repair. And the cost's symmetry, J(x) = J(1/x), is why a bond costs the same read from either end.

Next, and why: so what does end a war? What's left is the repair.

Step 5: Peace is a repair, and a repair takes both ends

Bringing a strained bond toward level changes it, so both of its ends write the repair. A treaty is a later yes: it's real and covers what it covers. Outsiders can help and can't write it. And a wall keeps the cost.

Both ends write. Say the pokes left the back-seat bond at 2. Max and Leo can mend it, and nobody else can. If both of them write the change that brings the bond back toward level, the bond moves and both books are true. That's two writes and one repair. A repair is a new line after the pokes. It doesn't edit them. Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape works through repair. The code's name for the least-cost act is love's act. Meet in the Middle works out what it does for two strained bonds.

I draw the Christmas truce as acts like that: a carol sung across the lines and answered, a hand held out and taken, a cigarette offered and accepted. In each, both ends write. That's a drawing, because which of the truce's real acts are which writes is the open map from Step 1. Drawn this way, the truce is a stop followed by joint acts.

A treaty is a later yes. A treaty or a surrender is a yes written by both ends at its moment. It's real, and it covers what it covers. It isn't a yes to the push that came before it: a later joint act doesn't retrospectively authorize an earlier one-sided demand, and the earlier gap stays in the record where it was.⁷ A Favor Isn't a Yes works through the same rule with a handshake on a bigger deal. And the record doesn't hold how a yes was given. A pressured yes and a free yes are the same kind of entry. The record holds who wrote what, and in what order: the push first, the treaty after.

Outsiders can help. They can't write it. Back in the car, Mom has three things she can do. She can say what she saw, because what's due is read from what happened. She can hand out snacks. She can put the cooler between the boys. None of those writes the repair of the bond between Max and Leo. A mediator can carry messages, a neighbor can host the talks, a witness can say what they saw. Each of those is an act on the helper's own bonds, and none of them writes the repair of a bond the helper isn't an end of. Assistance and authorship are different contributions. What Is Justice, and What Is Fair? has the whole case.

A wall keeps the cost. The cooler is a wall of the plainest kind. It keeps the next poke off the bond. It doesn't change the bond. Nothing moves a bond between acts, so the bond still reads 2 and costs 1/4, and the record still holds every poke under its author's name.

A cut-off, an exile or a partition is a different kind of wall: draw it as an ending of bonds. An end of a bond can end it, and nobody else can. An ending deletes no one. The ended bond stays on the record at the number it had when it ended. An ended bond keeps its cost: no allowed act touches it, and nothing moves a bond between acts. And ending a strained bond removes the only route to repairing it, so its cost stays above what a repair would have left, in every future. The ending is admissible, and the judgment prices it. A bond at 2 that is cut still reads 2 on the record, and still costs 1/4.

How we know. Bringing a relation to balance changes it, so both of its ends write the repair: love takes two. Nobody writes in another's books, so an outsider's write goes on the outsider's own bonds. An ending is clause 4, and the ended bond stays on the complete record.⁵ The later-yes statement is in the book manuscript.⁷

Next, and why: the repair takes two, and the code can't make either one write. So does anything say whether peace comes? Step 6 checks.

Step 6: The record keeps every act, and nothing makes peace happen

Every act of a war is written under its author's name, and every life it ends is written too. Peace exists, and a repair is always on the menu for both sides to write. Where a way down is on the menu, love's own steps reach love's state. No law fixes which act comes next, so no war is fated to end and none is fated to go on.

Kept. Nothing recorded is erased. Every push in a war is a line in the pusher's book under their name, and it's still there at every later checkpoint, and so is everything it did. Every person a war kills is written too. The past still exists.

Charged. The record also charges every departure. Two histories that agree except at one interval, where one costs more, differ by that excess at every later checkpoint, undiminished. Why Does Evil Exist? has the numbers.⁸ None of that sends a matching loss to an aggressor. There's no referee. The cost sits on both ends of each strained bond, and the post on karma works out why.

Peace exists, and it's always on the menu. Peace here is every strained bond repaired. A repair toward level draws no energy, so it's possible on every world, whatever either side has left.⁵ When both ends of a bond write it, it passes the clauses, and Step 3 showed the code requires it.

Love's state. Some moves shift strain without removing any. Take the bonds a war strained, and the people at their ends. Now suppose the only moves pass strain around among those bonds, making none and losing none. The arrangements those moves can reach make up a conserved class. Among all of them, exactly one has the least total cost. The code calls it love's state, and it exists and is unique on every conserved class.⁸ For two bonds it's the middle that Meet in the Middle works out: a bond at 4 and a bond at 1 meet at 2 and 2. Love's state keeps all of a class's strain and spreads it at the least cost. A repair toward level removes strain, so peace goes further.

Love's steps reach it. A run of love's steps inside the class, each the least-cost move at the state it finds, reaches love's state geometrically on every menu that offers a way down, the way a distance shrinks when each step covers at least a fixed fraction of what's left. Each step changes the bonds it moves, so both ends of each write it. A run inside the class that never reaches love's state accrues a charge above it that has no top, while on menus that offer a way down, love's own runs keep the charge bounded.⁸

The charge is accounting: it says what an act costs at every checkpoint, and by itself it doesn't say the act ought not be done. That last step isn't derived yet: from "the record charges this without bound" to "this ought not be done". "Undiminished" rests on a reading of time that is open too, that the record decides each bond's charge from that bond's own entry. Both are open in Why Does Evil Exist?, and this post uses them the same way.

Nothing makes it happen. Those are statements about what's on the menu and where love's steps lead, not a forecast of what anyone will do. Nothing makes a person take one. No law fixes which act comes next, so no war is fated to end and none is fated to go on.

So why could the soldiers stop for a night? Stopping was on the menu, as it always is. Why did the shooting start again? The code doesn't say. It says starting again was on the menu too, and that nothing in the record picks which comes next.

Next, and why: what's still open, then the whole trip in one breath.

What's still open

Here is each step this post uses that isn't derived yet. Section 10 of the Moral Code preprint names every one except the competing claims.⁵

• Which real acts of war are which writes. That a shell, an occupation, a blockade or a conscription order is which change on which bonds, and that the record's menu is the energy menu the code is worked out on. Every application in this post is a drawing until that map is made. It's the open step of Why Does Evil Exist? too.
• Why both ends must write. That each end's record holds one exact state of a bond. The both-ends clause, the no-push result and "taking back by force is a push" rest on it. Under a rival reading, in which an end's record is only a bound on what's due, one end alone relieves a shared bond toward level.
• Competing claims. Which of two incompatible claims on one thing governs when they aren't mirror images, and how a claim gets its authority.
• From charge to ought, and the reading of time. That the record's charge makes an act one that ought not be done, and that the record decides each bond's charge from its own entry. Both belong to Why Does Evil Exist? as much as to this post.

The whole trip, in one breath

A war is a mass of pushes: acts that change other people's bonds without those people writing the change. Nobody writes another's side, so no order, vote or government decision writes a soldier's side of a bond with a stranger across a field. The code forbids every push and stops none. A push stays on the menu beside every other act, and on cost alone it can come out ahead, which is why consent comes before cost. No situation requires a push, because doing nothing is always possible, so every person can stop. The one attacked can block and can end the bond, and a push back is still a push, whoever started. Answering a push with a push strikes another bond, so the first one stays where it was and the record holds a second wrong. Taking back by force is a push too, and each end of a strained bond carries all of its cost, so nobody wins one. Peace is a repair, and a repair takes both ends: a treaty is a later yes that covers what it covers, an outsider can help and can't write it, and a wall keeps the cost. The record keeps every act and every life a war ends. Peace exists, and a repair is always on the menu for both sides to write, because a repair toward level draws no energy. Love's state, the cheapest spread of a war's strain, exists and is unique, love's own steps reach it where a way down is on the menu, and no law makes anyone take them.

That's how reality is built: a record kept twice, where nobody can write another's side. A war is a pile of lines written on bonds without their other ends, and the code forbids every one. Stopping is always on the menu. A peace is the lines both ends write, and it takes two.