Having a fondness for political lectures, I've noticed another troubling pattern in the rhetoric of Right-leaning speakers to the tune of "war is inevitable." In most cases, I would brush this aside as another scare tactic employed to shake up the base in their faction. Unfortunately, it has become endemic and the rhetoric is slowly crossing party lines. The question is, how can we as a species abide this?
There are lots of things that are inevitable: The collapse of a star, the expiration of our lives and hell, the expiration of milk. Birds fly, fish swim, and we try to kill as many of each other as one can in their lifetime? Really? The impermanent nature of being is one we become acquainted with early in our childhood, though at such an age we are unable to articulate our opinions on the subject concisely. We understand that there are things we simply have no control over unless technological, economic and social advances manage to overcome them. But in terms of war, an event reliant on the perogative of the aggressor to take effect, it is hard for me to see the parallel.
When a person says "war is inevitable," it sends a clear message that it is no one's fault. The language, even in legalese, implies that no one is culpable. From the voter who cast their ballot for the warhawk head of state to the head of state himself, anyone involved can be held responsible, could they not? The question of whether or not we are going to admit where we as a people come to take ownership in this.
National defense spending in the United States, regardless of figures and times after the Second World War, remains the highest of any one nation on this planet. This tremendous and ever-increasing sum seems to be spurred on by the perceived inevitablity of war, but why is no one stopping to take a look at the root of the problem? John F. Kennedy may have said "It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war" but is he not the same man who said "Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings"?
Humbly though I submit my opinion, I would dare to say that war is a man-made problem, a dreadful invention that at this point in our history as a species, can destroy the world at the turn of a key and recitation of code. Keys, codes, buttons: All of these things are made by us, for us or more accurately, in spite of us. I challenge anyone to deny this; I challenge you! Could not the world be a better place were we to deny ourselves the indulgence of this dark fantasy? Can our curiosity for how much destruction we ourselves can wreak on our own planet not be sated?
But what of this dread-fascination? This death-preoccupation? I have seen it in religion too, as I can't shake the feeling that though many on the religious front may be expecting an apocalypse. Unfortunately, since I don't believe in such things, this appears to me as a self-fulfilling one if the wrong person gets their hands on the right means. Even in some polytheistic religions from antiquity, there are deities exhalted as patrons of war. Ares, Tyr and Mars to name but a mere fraction of the tie-ins between religion and war.
No, I say no to all of it. No to the foolishness of waiting for war. What is there to wait for? If the desire to see bloodshed is in the heart of men with the means to do so, it will be done. What we as a species must do is surpass this. War is not "inevitable," it is the perogative of a mere consequential few.
No comments:
Post a Comment