Is The Pen Mightier than the Sword?

Sometimes, or a lot of times, it feels as though that peaceful protests are ineffective. Or at least in the traditional sense. However it is an effective tool, especially when combined with the media for sensationalism.

Even in the US, one can debate how effective the peaceful protests of Martin Luther
King Junior was. Is the pen mightier than the sword? The pen can reach many audiences and can be seen by many and help shape the hearts and minds of others, wether it is to help broaden a person’s perspective, or sneak in the Propaganda messaging. And at times, it seems like the sword, the gun, or a stray bullet is the stronger tool sometimes, although it’s purpose is usually for destruction and maintenance of the status quo. Imagine how different the world would have been if Abraham Lincoln was not assassinated, or if Martin Luther King Junior we’re allowed to live out his years. We do not live in those realities, and history has been shaped by those instances. However, those people have left their ideals and goals and dreams of solving problems and creating a better future.

The police, both in the USA as well as Russia, unfortunately have a history of bullying the population and don’t help maintain the peace or help create something better. In the USA it was conflict with the Black Lives Matter and white people killing blacks, or during the Vietnam War protests, in Russia the Russia people protest the war and invasion of Ukraine (unfortunately 53% of the population are in support of the war due to the Russia media, censorship, and propaganda and suppression of the freedom of speech). They take down and carry off protesters carrying signs protesting the war and trying to pierce through the propaganda with the truth. This is not unique in Russia, this has happened in history again and again and in other parts of the world as well.

Is the pen mightier than the sword/gun? And what is stronger and more enduring, the truth or propaganda? And what is truth or propaganda? Nowadays, I feel like the truth nowadays is “what seems” to be the “more correct or moral” collections of words uttered in a sentence, a paragraph, a speech.

We hold our narratives so personally that at times we react to opposing thought and words that we choose to silence other voices and try increasing the volume of our own. I dunno if Russia is completely cut off from the free internet and the information of the outside world. The internet is such an incredible and wonderful place to meet others so far from where we are, and have a chance to meet other people, even if we are not able to communicate with words we can still communicate through music and through the visual media. Do not blame the Russian people, this is not the war of the Russian people but of one old seventy year old person who is killing off the future of his own country. And communication with them is becoming more and more limited, but just as the world is trying to stay in contact with Ukraine, it is something we should still try to do to stay in contact with the Russian people as well. What happens in one part of the world affects other countries and eventually affects our own. But there cannot be peace between nations if there cannot be peace with who you are, you need to find your own internal peace within yourself as well.