I think people just want peace. There's no peace in this modern world.
They have nothing to fight for either. Their lives are reduced to pleasure and comfort.
You have to make up your mind. The second sentiment doesn't align with the first sentiment.
People think they want peace, but they don't want peace. Peace is what your second sentiment is. Ease, pleasure, comfort, strifeless, mundane. If there was no peace, they would have something to fight for.
The sad part is, peace shows the true colours of society. Most people are cattle, good for little more than taking orders and doing what the leaders tell them to. When not under command, their sanity wanes, they become directionless and useless. The only thing they are good for is being a cog in the machine and when they don't percieve that machine as working towards a future that is better for them, but only those that hold the machine, they become depressed and irate. That is why so many fall victim to militant groups, on all sides of the political spectrum. They look for a new leader to bow down to, a new god, a new holy word to obey with all the littme mental capacity they have, simply because that thing promised them that doing so would improve their life.
Most people are forever a cog in the machine. That's how they are built genetically. In the modern era we have all the tools, the boundlessly free knowledge, the safety net to break free and pursue goals that benefit us, yet these people still bow dosn to the system and beg it for their next set of orders.
When we are in strife, we are each a brilliant star aiming for a greater good, but when the strife ends and peace comes, the 1,000,000 grunts of the army are left with little more than their wounds and memories of their dead friends and family.