For my personal project I chose to create a sketch collage reflecting on John Horgan’s The End of War. The title of this collage is The Will of Us All, as it is specifically a reflection on Horgan’s theory that the end of war or the act of nonviolence is a matter of willpower on the part of mankind. In particular, I kept in mind one of Horgan’s most powerful quotes – “Choices, freely made, are what make life meaningful” (Horgan 2014, pg. 187).

I have been practicing stream of consciousness sketching for many years as a way to help battle my anxiety disorder, and I often like to choose a central idea or quote to base my sketch off of. I would consider stream of consciousness sketching a meditative form of art, as the artist is not bound by expectations of a specific product but rather creates for the purpose of self-healing. My personal art almost always involves flowers, as I see them as symbolic of a unifying life force. In this collage, I found myself associating flowers with images of violence, such as soldiers or weapons. I also entwined these flowers with images of protest and resistance, such as a kneeling man or a meditator. The symbols of life and energy flow throughout violence and nonviolence, complacency with the system and resistance against it. Although many of the images in this collage are in great conflict, they are still unified by the life force of the flower – I interpret these flowers as the free will to which Horgan refers. As Horgan suggests, free will is the one tool that unifies all humans, and yet it is also what allows us to so easily divide.