Are we as
a nation still a righteous one? Are we the stalwart defender we purport
ourselves to be? Do we continue to be a fair and just nation? I wish I had a
better answer for you, but in all honesty...when I look out into the world, I
look at the actions of my countrymen, I look at the policy of our government,
of the population even, it's hard for me to say yes.
Why?
Because, we are too eager to employ the gun and less eager
to employ speech. Often, in history, nations destroy themselves from perpetual
war. To enable the continuance of war, you must be at war with a
principle, an ideal, or a concept. Principles, ideals, and concepts have
no flesh to rend, no body to destroy, and no way to snuff it from existence.
The ideal of the USA, is that everyone is equal, everyone
is treated fairly, and everyone has his or her day in court with a fair jury
and a fair judge to prosecute or exonerate guilt or innocence. In our
fair and just nation, everyone who works never goes hungry, never is homeless,
and never is without the necessities and maybe even a few fruits of life.
What prompted this line of thinking? Ender's Game.
The story is quite moving and disturbing at the same time. On the
one hand, we're fighting for survival. On the other hand, we're fighting
to end all wars, and on another hand we're willing to go to extremes to end the
future conflicts we don't see.
What was great about
Ender’s Game? It explores questions of
instinct and survival. While we may
believe we’ve evolved to states where we don’t kill indiscriminately for our
personal self-worth…we do. We just do it
in more organized manners. Instead of a
stone axe and wooden spear, we create armies of organized drones to destroy the
life we’ve told them are our enemy. If
we as a species truly have evolved, then evolution is a sham. True evolution is adapting to our growth as
human beings, and integrating each other into each other’s systems of
subsistence, culture, and learning to live together.
The Middle East are cultures
so alien to the western world as a whole, that we’re content to believe
anything and anyone who has an opinion about their atrocities. Well guess what…we’re no angels
ourselves. How many civilians have we killed? How many did we hold for 10+ years without explanation
or charges or trial just because the military says they saw them fighting? How many mouths of our own people did we rob
to go and kill someone? How many secret
agencies exist that consume resources strictly for the purposes of killing
subvertly? We don’t know, because we’ve
allowed this madness to continue for far too long.
Our nation is a
disease right now. We’re provocative,
violent, bigoted, and self-righteous. We’re
a nation of hypocrites who say one thing and do another. We have, as a nation, no interest in pursuing
peaceful coexistence because we’re so blinded by ethnocentrism that we can’t
seem to cooperate with anyone who isn’t like us, who doesn’t look like us, or
who doesn’t behave like us. We have
allowed deeply destructive elements to dominate our society. Greed, power, envy, domination, and control
have taken root and corrupted our national fabric. It is deeply disgusting to me, that we think
we have the moral fiber to tell other nations how to behave. The population, the government, and our
religious leaders all have failed to highlight how hypocritical our country is
in relation to the rest of the world. We
are NOT a righteous nation by any imagination.
People worship money like the Hebrews did with the Golden Calf. People think they are so entitled to
independence and liberty that they would sooner sacrifice their neighbor to a
burning inferno just because they think they have the moral license to do
so. We invoke names like Jesus,
Mohammed, The Buddha, and other great philosophical icons who truly were
evolved individuals. Individuals like
these and many others who have emulated them have taught tolerance, peace, and justice
to the world at large.
What can we do to
avert these continued atrocities and begin reforming our cultural
identity? We must STOP. Stop shooting stop destroying, stop bombing,
and stop imposing ourselves on the world.
War perpetuates more war. It is a
malignant disease which spreads across the world, permeating all borders,
infecting all humans, and leaving nothing but death and waste in its wake. It is the born son of fear and ignorance, the
birther of loss and despair. It is akin to pestilence and disease. It knows no end except to destroy all who
engage in it while also collaterally killing any around it. A famous line from a great movie “The only
way to win the game is to not play.” The
film this line came from is called “War Games” from the early to mid-80s
starring Matthew Broderick. It’s a movie
about the dangers of arms races, nuclear build up, the ethics and morals of
engaging in mass global war and what it seeks to leave behind in its wake. There are no winners in war, only losers, and
only death as the game tries over and over to win Global Thermonuclear War by
trying each round as a different player.
The result is the same…no winner.
Let us also consider
the morals and ethics of war. There are
no winners in war, only victors, but even victors are losers just like the
defeated enemy is. The victors’ loss is
the life, the equipment, and the resources spent to maintain the conflict. The loss of life is not a win, but a tragedy for
the world. The defeated’s loss is the
loss of life, the loss of resources, and the loss of equipment, not to mention
the loss of influence, and potentially the loss of rights. It’s not which side lost or won, it is which
side lost more than the other.
Further the morals
and ethics of war, what kind of war did we engage in? Did we defend our homes from invasion? Are we taking pre-emptive action against a potentially
hostile state or entity? Are we actively
invading another nation to create a buffer zone? Are we actively invading a nation for our own
benefit? Wars are judged on their moral
and ethical justifications when looked in hindsight. We should not judge past wars on their
morality or immorality, because I believe all wars are immoral…but we should at
least judge them based on the fruits that emerge from them and let that
determine whether a war was at least just or not.
Don’t misunderstand
me, I understand that sometimes we must go to war. I 100% believe that a war is just if you are
defending your home from an invading force.
And wars that are conducted where we minimalize loss of life and follow
rules that value human beings. But what
we fail to do is to consider all diplomacy before we go in guns blazing. We fail to calculate the human cost to us and
to them before we go in with rockets red glaring into supposed hostile
targets. Over and over again we fail to
learn our lessons about history. No
nation should engage in war without giving honest and critical debate about the
cost. The human cost is the most
important cost. With each war in each
generation, we create a new generation of veterans. A new generation of those who must suffer the
memory, trauma and loss every night, every waking moment, every quiet
reflective thought that goes through their mind isn’t not on some aspect of
their war experience. There isn’t a
soldier who I haven’t talked to that’s been to war that doesn’t have some
horrific story about their injury, the memory of a fellow soldier, the death of
one of their enemies, and finally the hardships they now are branded with for
the rest of their lives to deal with.
That is so much more a cost than the money. Money is replaceable. Human life is not. At what point do we end the violence, do we
end the conflict, do we stop making weapons and start making science and art
and literature? What point do we end this pointless and empty conflict over
ideology and religion and culture. Where
does it end? And that question’s answer
to me, makes me cry…cause I feel currently, that answer is unattainable.
Thirdly, motive is as important as action. When you act in our world, you should act for the purpose of the greater good of man, and not the greater good of you. Sometimes this is hard to do, no question there. And to bring a point that is so relevant to our lives: Sex. Sex is something that is vilified as dirty, w
Now, there are MANY aspects of Christianity that would disagree with my point of view profusely, and as one who grew up in a very evangelical fundamentalist home who has since rejected emphatically that view of the world and that view of Christianity, I will say that what is important to me is to read the words of Jesus as dictated in the Gospels (usually in red), reject what is unreasonable or outdated, and embrace the values expressed that enrich you as a human being. The stuff about the end times or the rapture poodoo....is nonsense and really should just discarded as unimportant really. The here and now is important. Based on my life-long study of scripture, and my personal experiences, and my comprehension of the spirit of the faith...these are the values I have determined are most important to me. So, when evaluating this question, it really comes down to you deciding what works for you. But the key element that is 100% most important is allowing people to do as they want to do, to not harass them, to not hate them or condemn them, to not judge them, and most definitely to NOT harm them in any form. If your religion calls on you to harm others...whether that be psychologically, physically, emotionally or spiritually...then your religion is garbage.
