Walk on slowly; don't look behind you
Aug. 8th, 2006 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbThe air tonight smells like autumn.
The year turns, and the world turns, and the world changes. Rarely, or so it seems, for the better. There is civil war in Iraq and murderous bombing in the Lebanon, and that is only the news loud enough and shocking enough for me to have heard it. And I am a little older, and more tired, and less hopeful. About anything.
September the eleventh is a symbol that has changed the world. For all of us. Though it's not terrorism I fear, but the governments who have made the decision that it should be feared, and become more frightening themselves in the process.
When one allows fear, or hate, or strong emotion, to dominate one's reason - when one allows oneself to be directed or manipulated by others because of strong emotion - one gives up a great deal of power over oneself. And the less one realises that one has surrendered power, the more power one surrenders.
What happened in 2001 was not a new thing in the world, but old things, with a new symbol to wear for its face. Fear. Anger. Hate. Stupidity. Greed.
War and suffering and death. There's nothing new in any of that. But fear has poisoned the atmosphere of this first decade of a new century - a new millennium - so many different fears, for so many different causes, and all of us now, I think, are so horribly aware of how much the world can seem to change on us in the space of an hour.
I was at Mass when the towers were falling. The last Mass I ever took communion at, though the two things do not share a cause. A school Mass, praying for peace, not knowing how much the world had already changed in that hour.
Not knowing that the meanings of 'war' and 'peace' had already started to change.
The irony of that gets me, sometimes.
I don't know why I'm even thinking about this now. Perhaps because in the last few weeks, I haven't been able to escape the knowledge that people who aren't so different to me are having their lives ripped apart, destroyed, ended. Every day. People are maimed, murdered, blown apart, killed. Have their families killed around them and survive that, and I'm not sure whether that's not worse than dying.
And I have the luxury of being able to sit in the sunlight and not think about them.
Oh, sure, I'm poorly off compared to my middle class neighbours. My life might be less comfortable, less certain, than theirs. I don't know what to do with my life, and I don't know if I'll get the chances I want to complete a university degree and find out. But all my immediate family are still living, and most likely to die of natural causes. I don't have to be afraid, walking down the town, that I'll get caught in a crossfire. I don't have to worry about being blown up when I go out to buy food. I don't have to worry about being able to buy food.
And it's hyperbole, so far, to want to add not yet.
So tell me, if you can, where does it end? Where does the war stop, and the peace begin? When do we stop killing people because they have the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or in the way when someone wanted a scapegoat, or was angry, or afraid?
I say 'we' because in this my countrymen and -women are not innocent. Nobody is. The history of the human species consists of round after round of bloodshed.
Very little of it achieves anything, except more bloodshed.
For fuck's sake, we should know that by now. So why are we still doing it?
Hasn't there been enough?
The year turns, and the world turns, and the world changes. Rarely, or so it seems, for the better. There is civil war in Iraq and murderous bombing in the Lebanon, and that is only the news loud enough and shocking enough for me to have heard it. And I am a little older, and more tired, and less hopeful. About anything.
September the eleventh is a symbol that has changed the world. For all of us. Though it's not terrorism I fear, but the governments who have made the decision that it should be feared, and become more frightening themselves in the process.
When one allows fear, or hate, or strong emotion, to dominate one's reason - when one allows oneself to be directed or manipulated by others because of strong emotion - one gives up a great deal of power over oneself. And the less one realises that one has surrendered power, the more power one surrenders.
What happened in 2001 was not a new thing in the world, but old things, with a new symbol to wear for its face. Fear. Anger. Hate. Stupidity. Greed.
War and suffering and death. There's nothing new in any of that. But fear has poisoned the atmosphere of this first decade of a new century - a new millennium - so many different fears, for so many different causes, and all of us now, I think, are so horribly aware of how much the world can seem to change on us in the space of an hour.
I was at Mass when the towers were falling. The last Mass I ever took communion at, though the two things do not share a cause. A school Mass, praying for peace, not knowing how much the world had already changed in that hour.
Not knowing that the meanings of 'war' and 'peace' had already started to change.
The irony of that gets me, sometimes.
I don't know why I'm even thinking about this now. Perhaps because in the last few weeks, I haven't been able to escape the knowledge that people who aren't so different to me are having their lives ripped apart, destroyed, ended. Every day. People are maimed, murdered, blown apart, killed. Have their families killed around them and survive that, and I'm not sure whether that's not worse than dying.
And I have the luxury of being able to sit in the sunlight and not think about them.
Oh, sure, I'm poorly off compared to my middle class neighbours. My life might be less comfortable, less certain, than theirs. I don't know what to do with my life, and I don't know if I'll get the chances I want to complete a university degree and find out. But all my immediate family are still living, and most likely to die of natural causes. I don't have to be afraid, walking down the town, that I'll get caught in a crossfire. I don't have to worry about being blown up when I go out to buy food. I don't have to worry about being able to buy food.
And it's hyperbole, so far, to want to add not yet.
So tell me, if you can, where does it end? Where does the war stop, and the peace begin? When do we stop killing people because they have the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or in the way when someone wanted a scapegoat, or was angry, or afraid?
I say 'we' because in this my countrymen and -women are not innocent. Nobody is. The history of the human species consists of round after round of bloodshed.
Very little of it achieves anything, except more bloodshed.
For fuck's sake, we should know that by now. So why are we still doing it?
Hasn't there been enough?
