War - An Outdated Modality
Ahhhhh. All is good in the world. After 5 long years things are finally back to normal. It has been such a long time since I woke up and all the top headlines were about Israel and the Palestinians. Back then, typically it was a daily body count – how many Israelis or Palestinians died in fighting the day before. I stopped keeping score after a while. I got so sick and tired of it, I actually went on a news blackout. Let’s face it, it wasn’t news. It was a running total. Kinda like watching those billboards keeping track of the national deficit getting higher and higher by the nanosecond.
A few years back, things got a bit more interesting, but at its core, the news headlines were pretty much the same, only the nationalities shifted. Now we were tracking how many Americans and Iraqis were dying each day.
So, it is with much anticipation and joy that I see the world returning to normal and once again I can go to bed at night with the security of knowing all is good in the world.
Check out these headlines from Reuters today:
* G8 Prepares to tackle MidEast Crisis
* Hizbollah rockets his Haifa
* N. Korea rejects U.N. sanctions vote
* U.N. nuclear “referral” not constructive
* India puts off peace talks with Pakistan
Splendid! Just splendid.
God, it simply amazes me how stupid we can be as a species sometimes. We think we can, and do, control the world. How pathetic. We are merely specs of dust on the nearly infinite continuum of life on this planet. We’ve been here barely the blink of an eye, and yet that blink has stretched tens of thousands of years. You’d think in all that time, we might have learned something about how to solve our conflicts between each other. Unless, of course, we finally want to accept the assumption, perhaps fact, that the human species is a warring, angry, hostile life form here on this planet, destined to kill each other, and everything around us, until the end of our time here.
I’m no historian, but from my small, little, teeny, tiny, insignificant view of the world, it kinda feels like war is an outdated modality as a way to solve disputes and conflict. I mean, come on! How long does it take us to figure this out? And we claim to have the biggest brain on the planet. Pitiful. Simply pitiful.
I don’t know about you, but I am willing to consider, and concede, the fact that blasting the hell out of each other no longer works as a way to solve our disagreements and problems. Come on, people, wake up! It might be time for all of us, and our “brilliant” leaders to consider other ways to work through our issues. I don’t need to live for millennia to figure this one out. 30 or 40 years is enough of a sample size for me. And good lord, do we have enough examples yet? Pick just about any part of the world and you will find some conflict raging where the way to a solution is violence and killing.
Let’s be realistic about this. This modality known as war is not a cause . . . or a deterrent . . or a strategy. Once we initiate killing as a solution to a disagreement, the true underlying belief/hope/motivation in our heart and minds is that we will exterminate those that think differently than us. Bomb them into seeing things our way!
Wow. Tens of thousands of years on this planet and that is the extent of our evolution.
Brilliant! It makes me so proud to be a Homosapien.
Do I have some thoughts on the matter? Perhaps how to evolve past this pre-historic way of being? Sure! But there is no sense in putting those ideas forth until our species is aware and conscious and willing to admit who they are currently being, and then are wanting of a different way to live here on this planet.
Until that time though, well hey . . . war is a great method for population control, and maybe that is the bigger picture of how it fits into our existence here. And oh, the irony! In order to survive here on this planet, we need to kill each other!
Now THAT is truly brilliant!
Copyright 2006, RL, All rights reserved
posted by EvolutionUS | 8:01 AM
2 Comments:
Rich,
Congratulations on your blog! Way to go. It's perfect for you. I'm seriously considering doing one myself.
But that doesn't mean that I agree with you of course. In the interest of spirited discussion, I submit to you this, respectfully:
your piece on the outmodedness of war trivializes the existential struggle that Israel is engaged in. It's easy for us here to pronounce war obsolete, while over there they, the Israelis, are surrounded by states with genocidal ambitions. If you have a better way for them to survive, please let us know. But please do not delude yourself into thinking that the minds of those in Hezbollah or Hamas can be changed by reason, or showing them how nice and harmless we in the West are. Like a long string of aggressors before them, they are deeply and spiritually committed to their objective: Israel's destruction. Surely you can give them more to proceed upon than to pronounce war obsolete. The saying is true: if the Arabs laid down their arms, there would be no war; if Israel laid down their arms, there would be no Israel.
Congratulations again my friend. I look forward to reading you further.
Alas, war is not obsolete. War still works (see Hitler, Adoph).
You have only to read your first post again to realize that there are, in the course of human events, times when only the will and ability to take up arms and throw off the bonds of oppression will achieve a moral good. There are other times when only the willingness to defend, with arms if necessary, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happeniness, will achieve those inalienable rights.
Humans may heed their baser instincts far more often than they should. They may allow primitive emotions to cloud their judgment, they may allow ancient hatreds instead of logic and empathy to rule the day, but that leads to bad wars, it does not make war obsolete.
Your earnest (if sarcastic) wish to see an end to war is understandable, but if you really think war is obsolete I think you may be a bit blinded by Western culture. War will be obsolete when all people put a far higher value on life--all life--than they do now. That day, in most parts of the world, is far, far, away.
Post a Comment
<< Home