Uncivil War
Isn't it rather absurd to speak of "civil war"? What, after all, is one disparate group battling another for ascendency but incivility to the highest degree? We really do need another label for the kind of civil breakdown in society which pits one community of thought, one religious sect, one philosophy or ethos, one set of ethics or morals, one ethnic or social-cultural group against another to the extent that they take up arms with the intent of killing each other. Isn't that a truly original sin?There is religious/philosophical thought that in the Almighty's consideration of the fitness of humans exercising free will and in obedience to His will, to deliberately set out to murder another human is the ultimate sin. That one who kills another, it is as though they set out to kill a multitude. The sin is a grave one within the religious context and without, in a strictly ethical/moral/civil context. To extinguish someone's life is not a reversible act of commission. It represents a gravely final and unforgivingly anti-social behaviour.
To kill is to deny our common ancestry and humanity. Wars are the ultimate expression of our inability to transcend our base emotions, to cerebrally transcend the worst we are capable of. Human animals have the capacity and wherewithal to extend themselves in understanding of others, but we rarely exercise that capacity to its full potential. We never learn from the sad history we ourselves create. We are doomed by our very lack of true humanity, our lapses into critically anti-social, anti-life proclivities to embrace war as a solution to incivility-inspired problems.
From ancient times to the present men appear to have selected opportunities to demonstrate their prowess in physical combat. Where once men faced one another in hand-to-hand combat and had the opportunity to see through their fears born of ignorance and draw back from the abyss, it's no longer possible. We are capable now of destroying one another in horrifying numbers, wiping out entire cities at the launch of a single nuclear-tipped missile.
Religious prophets and irreligious philosophers have written of mankind's most critical enemies, identifying the worst among them as oneself. Armageddon as a principle of the end of days was thought to be a colossal event that would be visited upon mankind by a disapproving deity. But belief in a universal deity is a human construct; a ruse, a delusional or poetic allusion to the ascent of man as monster.
It is we who will destroy ourselves.
Labels: Realities
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, January 28, 2007
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