Those considering "human nature" or "civilisation" (opposed ideas, if not ideals) might note how paper thin good human behaviour can be. The current war between Russia and Georgia seems to point to the obvious: where international law is concerned, power is the ultimate rule.Eyewear notes, that, despite our best efforts to concoct uplifting sporting, artistic, and religious events and artifacts to the contrary, most of human action is governed by a desire for control, and a fear of those stronger than us - at least on the world stage. How else to explain the way in which nations of the world are perpetually governed by those content to utilise all force necessary, to compel agreement?
It is a depressing thought, but the 00s are beginning to look a lot like the 30s - a decade of bad economies, and aggressively militaristic leaders the "West" is unable, or unwilling, to take on directly. The current war in the Caucasus may end soon - or it could boil over. Dick Cheney has sounded bellicose, and Georgia is, after all, a key American ally - its borders are a line in the sand. All these leaders, thugs by another name, throwing boulders at each other in paleolithic twilight - one wants to say, when will we grow up? It may not work like that.
Whether genetic, or learned, or somewhere in between, human culture's two-faced visage, Mozart and the death camps, is putting intolerable pressure on the future of human existence: natural resources have become depleted, and nation states aren't getting any less eager to throw their weight around. What wars does the 21st century have to look forward to? Who is going to stop them?
Obama (who will likely be defeated in this more warlike moment) is as bellicose as his rival. Wars are coming, and the priests split hairs over gay marriage, and the poets tussle over form and content. Civilisation better get thicker, fast. Or it'll be shredded. The animal beneath may be an osprey with a triggered claw.
Comments
Thank god for the internet's what i say. At least now the normal people can speak up and cop on we are all the same, and that wars are started by people who do not fight them, but use normal ordinary people of US the audience falling for the visual fairy tales the wrongly names NEWS corporations pump out in hi-def widescreen, and delivered by trustable masks of pretty and well spoken people who look like the models in the glossy rags and ad-spaces drowning us in disinformation. Whipping us up.
But since 9/11, and the gradual exposing of just how phony the Terror Threat to our Western millionaire career politicians parishes was before they created the Fear for real, we are no longer falling for the official script from the class tasked with advancing our interests, which are?
Shop TV, Gordon Ramsey, DIY, Corrie, Enders and anything but having to think about what's the real reasons, who benefits from conflict, and all cooked up on rolling news-cast, all of us actors with access to saying. NO!
The Georgians have been *a key American ally* for five minutes. It is half a world away, why would America need be in a place on Russia's border. And they struck first, with the ordinance sold to them by commercial businesses whose beneficiaries are rich global citizens, who i imagine, couldn't care less who they sell to, just like any arms manufacturers.
Another ploy by our leaders to act the bollix, all macho, just coz they never got to be Bono, so instead, get their kicks feeling important by waffling what's important in their world..sorry, our world, the mass who never got to answer back and now we are, places like this TS, are only for the good, as the neo-cons advocating war and who just pick up the profits far away from the front line, and whose children never got drafted as ...why?
So they just act the hero, whip up the rhetoric, feel good about the idea, their solution to getting things done, making money. What's the best way for maximum profit?
Sell weapons to two sides, run black ops, make sure the harvest in Afghanistan doesn't drop.
When *we* went in there on the phony intelligence which no paints the brave crusaders in a very sinister light, the first thing that happened, is the harvest got back to normal, and it was business back to normal, and it was absolutely vital we went there to search for the bat cave Foc, CNN, the parrots on the news cast parroted to us, script from the top, we gotta go, Binny's there, the biggest threat to our way of life since, since what?
Two B' movie actors enacted the plot the minds behind Kristol and Kagan's 97 neo-con war script, The New American Century, in which they advocate a new imperialsm,
we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for the U.S. military:
• defend the American homeland;
• fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
• perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
• transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs”;
All achieved. And now the eye should try and pin-point the puppet masters behind presidents and prime minsters, forget the rolling fictions and ask, whose running who?
The is Fear and sense we need be always mindful, on the look out for terries, and the ultimate con, all the legislation, built on 100% wrong foundations and the millionaires who brought this about, who have never faced physical danger in their entire life, cosseted and living very comfortable lives, their bankrolling bosses unseen, we policing each other, a society moulded by mass hypnosis and the rhetoric of fighting politicians whose only theater of operations is a think tank. Well i do a lorra that, any chance of stating the obvious, that it is the common people with no beefs who end up dying, not the chief bullshitters hiding the truth of what they are up to, and safe underground if things get too unpleasant, if the unthinkable happens, that they have to sacrifice US for them, so they can rebuild safely, no the terro has gone and things aren't so beastly, civilised, nice, chatty, well at least they are safe, yah, yah...nah
The most logical way, is to get world leaders to go face to face and settle it one on one. If the King and Kaiser had slugged it out, millions of us mugs wouldn't have had to be crushed and forgotten by the new breed keeping the home fire memories safe.
Dave, Dave, nor the opposite money heads no longer leading the working classes will be fighting, just sending the chaps in over high tea, a window of opportunity, all the clever people whose ideas get to be experiments, so they can feel good about themself, prove to the world, they were right what they said, such a place needs its innocents murdering and spun as Brave decision from men in suits supping champers as the common men kill for no good reason, apart from what the telly told em.
Think, Speak, connect and be human
love and peace
One day we may even cease speaking of "national" poetries (the concept of nation is very artificial in itself, quite anti-poetic in my opinion, and indeed terrifying!) and see the borders for what they are - a line in the sand, as you rightly said.
The oppressed minorities of the world (who together probably make up the majority) are clamouring to be listened to, and the contemporary poet cannot simply "do a Larkin" and remain sidelined. Despite the contemporary accusation of poetry being an unpractical practice which does not feed, shelter nor clean up bloodstains, we should continue to have hope in the fact that poetry essentially works on consciousness, and can thus be a vital means to increase people's awareness and lead them on the road to action.
Does the human being truly deserve the double adjective in his classification as homo sapiens sapiens ? This is a question I cannot bring myself to answer.
Thanks for the quotation of Oscar Wilde - do you think he was being ironic?
Regards
Antoine Cassar
http://muzajk.info