That observation may have been true in the context of Bertolt Brecht's 1941 play, "Mother Courage and Her Children", but it's contrary to what goes on in an aircraft cockpit.
The pilot's part of my brain defines "peace" as ease of mind, freedom from anxiety. It's how you feel when everything's going smoothly - the aircraft feels and sounds like it's healthy and happy, we're on course and aware of our position, we know what lies ahead in the flight and are prepared for it, and we have adequate fuel to reach the intended destination.
Brecht saw war as the antithesis of peace. In the cockpit, the absence of peace suggests, at best, the presence of confusion. At worst, chaos reigns.
The pilot's basic organizational tool is the checklist. Modern checklists cover just about every conceivable action, function, and item of equipment associated with flying the aircraft, beginning with the preflight inspection and ending with securing the aircraft at the end of the flight. Using the checklists at least ensures an orderly approach to managing the flight.
Checklists do not, however, absolutely guarantee that you'll be organized. Take charts, for example. A peaceful flight is one in which you have all the correct charts. For a VFR flight into Class B airspace, that means having the appropriate (and current) terminal area chart at the ready. If it's a long cross-country requiring several charts, you should have organized the charts in their order of use before takeoff, and folded and stored them so you can easily grab the needed chart. That brings peace of mind.
Confusion results if the charts are strewn haphazardly around the cockpit, or are out of date and therefore unreliable. Chaos ensues when, after sorting through all the maps in the airplane, you discover that you don't have a chart for the controlled-access airspace you're about to enter. The equivalent for the IFR pilot is forgetting to bring terminal approach procedure charts for a destination airport that's hidden beneath a low cloud cover.
Organization also means using every available tool to accomplish a task safely and peacefully. Let's go back to the example of tackling Class B airspace. A terminal area chart is a must, but you still face a fair amount of planning and work to navigate the airspace, or circumnavigate it by flying around or under its controlled-access boundaries.
On a recent trip to the Washington D.C. area, I was faced with breaching the vast area of Class B airspace that covers Washington Dulles International, Ronald Reagan International (formerly Washington National), and Baltimore-Washington International airports. I was north of the airspace, and had to go south. Flying around it was an option, but a time-consuming one - it's 80 nautical miles wide. Besides, it was night, and the most efficient way around for me - west - meant flying over rising terrain.
Fortunately, airspace planners built a VFR corridor into the Class B morass. It runs north-south midway between Dulles and Reagan. Pilots don't need an ATC clearance to fly through the corridor, but they must adhere to specific altitudes to remain clear of the Class B areas, and also fly a specific course. Here's the rub: Neither VOR radials nor visual landmarks define the corridor. How, then, do you plan and fly the route? How do you organize?
The answer is on the reverse side of the Baltimore-Washington terminal area chart. Look closely and you'll see lat/long coordinates for the precise center of the north and south entrances to the corridor.
That made my job as pilot much easier, and more organized. Before takeoff I placed the terminal area chart on my lap and entered the coordinates for the corridor's north and south portals as user waypoints in the aircraft's GPS. Then I selected the north entrance point as my first checkpoint.
After takeoff I climbed to 2,000 feet MSL (the designated southbound altitude in the corridor), established a heading that would take me to the north entrance of the corridor, and turned over the hands-on flying chores to the autopilot. This allowed me to concentrate on monitoring the flight and, more important, scan for traffic in the busy airspace.
When the GPS display indicated we had reached the northern entrance to the corridor, I turned to fly direct to the midpoint of the exit on the south end.
My bag of organizational tools - the paper chart, the GPS, the autopilot, and my eyes - worked in concert to shoot the gap in the Baltimore-Washington Class B easily, safely, and peacefully.