Rememberance
abracad, · Categories: in the news, spiritualityToday, Remembrance Sunday, has seen England and other countries remember their fallen soldiers of two wars and other mass conflicts. This coming Tuesday will see further commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended the "great" war in 1918.
As a kid my father explained the importance of remembering, highlighting the human cost of war and explaining that by remembering the fallen we hopefully ensure it never happens again. Fortunately I have never has direct experience of war in either my countries of citizenship or residence. But sadly I am only too aware that despite the peace I have enjoyed conflicts continue to rage around the globe.
The earth plane consists of billions of individuals pursuing just as many unique pathways. Regrettably some "conflicts of interest" are inevitable with some suffering negative consequences from the actions of others. Man-made laws, with a modicum of the innate self-preservation instinct, mitigate this tendency of nature to some degree.
Wars, however, involve masses of people engaging in overt hostility and aggression to masses of others. Those caught in the mass hysteria hate and seek to destroy those they have neither met nor dealt with in any manner.
Wars are a consequence of the benefits gained from joining to form societies. Societies invariably need leadership, but leaders are but human and are thus inevitably flawed. Many leaders benignly do their best for the good of those they lead. But more than a few take the opportunity to exploit the group mind and fire up the dormant savagery of their charges to engage in acts of horror on a grand scale. Once one society adopts such a stance its neighbors must choose either to follow suit, or to oppose its choice by themselves making similar choices.
This week has seen the election of Barack Obama as U.S. President. Obama is the first African American President, but far more significantly has pledged to end the U.S. war on Iraq that has cost humanity so dear. Let us pray in our own ways that Obama is successful in leaving the world a more peaceful place than he finds it.
But we all know that even a cessation of hostilities in Iraq, even the various groups in that troubled region learning to peacefully co-exist, will not be an end to armed human conflict.
From the latter stages of WWII on mankind has possessed the knowledge to destroy itself, the genie is out the bottle. During the cold war the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) probably saved the world that we see today. The Gorbachev-Reagan era at least removed the possibility of the destruction happening solely from a fit of pique. But knowledge can't be undone, and the risk (though not the certainty) remains that humanity shall some day destroy itself.
Please take a moment or two to remember the fallen of war. But not just the soldiers. Not just those from your own nation. Remember too the civilians, remember those of different flags. And, hard though it might be, remember those from countries that were once "enemies" of yours. For their fallen were not evil monsters, but simply ordinary folk like you seeking to peacefully go about their daily affairs, who just happened to get sucked into the madness of the moment. Rememberance will not make the world perfect. But it is a step towards that ideal.
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