On this day that honors those who sacrifice to fight, die and be maimed forever in war, on this day after yet another massacre of innocent youth in California, I am searching to connect the dots that lull our society in glorifying violence.
The indoctrination of the the modern individual has been shaped by a publicized history steeped in violence and warfare, the latter (war) being the institutionalized form of the glory and justification. Plainly put: history has been written in a male dominated society that reflects the OBVIOUS. So, too, however, just as we are innately violent, so too are we innately kind and generous.
Evolution has multiplied the potential for both. We have choices. The use of violence to protect us from harm has more morphed into aggression to assert power and domination. Through technology we have weapons of MASS destruction that did not exist before the Atomic Age. Automatic weapons, guns, wipe out scores of lives in seconds. We possess the means for annihilation that did not exist until about 60 years ago. Think about this.
Yet, our innate sense of reasoning has also evolved, though seemingly not in step with technological advances. Sociological governance allows us to live in (relative) peace daily without the NEED to slaughter one another.
Peace and collaboration seem so vulnerable in the face of anger and aggression. Yet, most rational humans want peace and a calm, comfortable life.
What if we spent more time evolving peaceful solutions, even among those we feel are out "to get us?"
To achieve this those of sound minds and hearts must give up a small dose of complacency. We need, like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, to unite around a platform that relegates the military industrial complex and it's legion artifacts of guns, might and aggression to the corner where we've relegated caveman behavior.
Our current political party system in its calcified partisanship. We must elevate the role of education for all. There are ample resources on this earth to develop and share.
II don't have the answers. But I am raising worthwhile questions. How many of you want more legions of the walking wounded among us? Soldiers returned whose MINDS and bodies are so scarred they cannot function in peaceful society.
Aggression breeds more aggression, I want for all children a world where they do not march off to war, nor live in fear of going into a convenience store on a Friday night and being gunned down. Is that an irrational wish? I know it's not.
http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/what-is-the-military-industrial-complex.asp
What do we fight for? Peace. Can we switch the focus of our education, our socialization, our science, our technology from industrial military economy to peaceful economic benefit? A journalist far smarter than I thinks so, and a while back has written a compelling book explaining how: “...capitalism seems increasingly dysfunctional and alienating, and fundamentally conflicts with humanity's noneconomic values. Greider says we have the luxury and responsibility now to repair this, to transform the essential purpose of our economic system from the relentless pursuit of ‘more' to the fulfillment of 'human needs.' Greider (Secrets of the Temple) breaks from the standard left-wing critique in one critical respect: he believes the system will be changed not by activist government but by a variety of small-scale reformers working to transform the economic system from within.”
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-86219-4
