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These are regular editorials
produced alongside the corresponding issues on Nonviolent
News.
We are now coming up to four years since the
current Iraq war started. What is clear is that the world
is a less safe place since the ‘war on terror’
started. Bush and Blair may try to con us into thinking that,
despite ‘setbacks’, we are safer following the
Iraq war than before. But this is a damned lie, or at least
a lie that has damned many. A recent US study compares the
numbers killed by Islamic jihadist attacks in different parts
of the world pre- and post-Iraq war (since ‘9/11’),
and found that, irrespective of location, the world has become
a less safe place concerning this source of attacks. Should
we be surprised? No. Bush and Blair badly misread the signs
before the war just as they have gone on misreading the signs
since.
The danger of an attack on Iran, only partly
because of its developing nuclear programme, is a real and
dire one, though we can take some comfort that some senior
US generals might resign if this was to come to pass, and
Bush knows that this would be an unprecedented snub and disastrous
politically. There is also speculation that perhaps a turn
of the tide has come in the Bush administration itself in
how it seeks to relate to countries it strongly disagrees
with. But none of this is a guarantee that the Bush administration
will not continue with its crazy war plans.
What the world needs is not more war or attacks.
What the world needs is clean drinking water, an urgent assault
on the causes of global warming, a move to fairer trade for
products from poor countries, and security which grows from
social, economic and political progress for all, not ‘security’
which grows from a gun barrel. Those who ‘bought’
the war on Iraq from Bush and Blair were sold a pig in a poke
(or, as they say in German, a cat in a sack – perhaps
we could use a different English language metaphor that, concerning
the reasons for going to war, ‘the cat is out of the
sack’). That war turned out to be something far, far
different to what its proponents thought. Further war is not
only going to compound the existing problems but further poison
international human relations. The greatest threat to global
security is undoubtedly global warming, both for its own dire
consequences and for the inevitable conflicts which will emerge
as climate change refugees, and countries badly affected,
come into conflict with others; the greatest current disaster
is world poverty. Let us fight against global poverty and
global warming; this struggle would provide rewards in terms
of human security and well being which the ‘war on terror’
could only dream about.
Eco-Awareness Eco-Awareness
Larry Speight brings us his monthly column
The Meaning of Existence
Some newspapers recently printed a photograph
taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of an exploding star,
giving us a unique insight into the fate of our home, planet
Earth. The Earth is an old planet, it is well into its senior
years, and as James Lovelock informs us (2006) the sun, on
which it depends for light and energy reached its ideal warmth
for life on Earth two billion years ago. A billion years from
now the sun will be too hot for life on Earth and the planet
will die in a massive explosion in which its atoms will be
scattered across the universe forming the basis of new stars,
and possibly living creatures, uncountable billions of years
from then.
This knowledge of the fate of the Earth is a
cause of reflection on the meaning of human life. The story
of our planet, of the grand cycle of life – death -
life, tells us that nothing is permanent, that nothing remains
unchanged, and transience is an integral part of existence.
That everything that is beautiful and wonderful, unpleasant
and painful will become as dust. A common response to this
realization is despair, which effectively can make living
an agony if not impossible. For many the antidote to despair
is the belief that of all the creatures that have ever existed
humans alone don’t die but rather live forever, live
longer than the Earth, longer than the sun, longer that the
cosmos itself. Further, that every human intention and deed
will survive, as an impression in the mind of God, for which
there will be a reckoning. This is surely a fairy tale stranger
by far than those we tell our children.
What enables the belief in human immortality
to survive is that it is encoded in culture, which is imbued
in each new generation from the moment of birth, thus becoming
invisible to the eye through which we look at the world. Other
beliefs without substance are also passed uncritically from
generation to generation. In some cultures it is the inferiority
of women relative to men. This no doubt accounts for the fact
that in the Catholic Church, regardless of the theological
arguments, women are not allowed to become priests, and in
Islamic Arab countries women are forbidden to be alone with
males who are not close family members.
The question is, can life have meaning
when there is the realisation that there is no eternity of
any sort, when in the end everything, books, paintings, digital
recordings and stone monuments will be less than atoms in
the vastness of space, and when we have no deceased Mum or
Dad, or dear departed friend acting as our Guardian Angel,
when our love and pain and effort receive no divine recognition?
I think that in spite of finalities life has meaning. It is
in every breath we take, in appreciating the moment, beauty,
humour, comfort, discovery, avoiding pain, and in love, including
love of nonhuman beings. It is because of love that we care,
which extends to wanting to mitigate global warming, protect
biodiversity, and put an end to injustices of all kinds. In
our culture to effectively love means unlearning a lot of
what we have been taught, which is a challenge, but one that
is meaningful and has a purpose that transcends us.
