Life of Meaning:
It often takes a lifetime to connect some dots. Recently I watched an interview on TV with a young man in his 20's. His past is interesting. He was like a 10 yr old boy living in, I think, Somalia when a band of genocidists invaded his little village and killed his whole family. Sadly, nothing unusual so far, just an increasingly common occurrence across a troubled globe. For differing reasons the global human family groups are developing less voluntary respect and tolerance, each for the other, the varying forms of hate increasingly seeped in perversity. In order to get food to eat this Somalian boy had to join up with those who killed his whole family. Ok, survival is survival. But surprisingly, he not only joined them but he developed into an accomplished torturer and murderer in his own right. The people he tortured and killed as a member of an army of mostly kids, were those of his own ethnic or tribal origin. He didn't just kill, he delighted in killing as slowly and painfully as possible. At some point he was 'rescued' but the UN group that rescued him found him anything but glad to be rescued. He credits a few patient and determined persons for enabling him to recover lost feelings for others. Today he seems a remarkably candid, bright, young man with a gift of verbal communication.
I remember, years ago, being astounded to find Patty Hearst had become an active and supportive member of the organization which kidnapped her. I guess the term we all use rather innocently enough for these cases is brainwashing. Yet few of us can clearly define the term brainwashing. I suppose, if you stretch the point enough, then religion, politics, culture, diet, sports, and even love become some sort of brainwashing processes.
War itself has always struck me, as a bystander, as kind of a peculiar venture. Everyone involved in a war seems deeply affected by it. All say it is hell, and to some, things they experienced were so deeply embedded in their soul that they refuse to ever talk about their experiences. Others, also saying war is hell, never miss an opportunity to talk about it and carry the experience around with a badge of honor, the most meaningful experience of their whole life. Those who have been in a previous war seem, in general, to support any new war. This puzzles me. If war is Hell then why so eager for another one? No group is more supportive of military adventurism than Veterans Organizations.
You see inner city kids eagerly participating in gang activities which they know will either get them killed or put in jail, and yet even those who try to save them are in for the rude awakening that most of these young thugs don't want to be saved. Even with prostitutes, we can talk all we want, and accurately, about how they are being used and abused, but a high percentage show no interest in being saved or rescued and if you try to stop them from their trade they are furious.
Then there are accomplished politicians and CEO's who have achieved all the power and money they could possibly need and yet engage in all sorts of corrupt and devious methods to try and get more power or money or both.
Perhaps the underlying phenomenon here is the need for all of us to have some sort of meaning to our lives. I think the greatest fear for most people is to be irrelevant, to have no real meaning to their lives, to be left isolated with no reason for existing. That becomes unbearable. A kid in the ghetto or a rich kid can both find, for differing reasons, a kind of cocoon of meaninglessness to their lives. Of course this cocoon can sometimes surround most anyone of any kind of status in life. I think zealots for any cause, including religious zealots of the right, become zealots because whatever they are zealots about is the driving force for giving a meaning to their existence. This explains all of the examples early in this musing. What gives meaning to your life may not be right, may not be good for you in the long run, may be hurtful or damaging to others, may be detrimental to society as a whole, or a portion of society, and yet that which gives meaning to your own life, is difficult to let go. The Somalian kid with no family at least in a child's army he had 'family' and it was his only source of meaning to his life; Patty Hearst went from being, for all practical purposes, a rich nobody to being a rebel somebody; particular soldiers may find themselves at last being somebody involved in something important and whether the war is just or not becomes irrelevant. These soldiers are not only now somebody but in many cases are able to get a decent salary which they otherwise would not likely be able to find elsewhere. Unless there is a draft to get soldiers, most soldiers are not going to be against any war in which they end up involved. One of the greatest difficulties of ending the Iraq War compared to the Vietnam War is the absence of any draft. No draft, no riots in the streets. No increased taxation, no real citizen protest to end the war. No sacrifice for most citizens and no real anger about such a war. Add to this an opposing army of volunteer terrorists from the ever increasing pool of educated have-nots and this madness is rapidly approaching a point of no return. 'Educated' you say? Yes, educated in the sense that modern media accessibility worldwide enables the dumbest have-nots to realize how little they really have compared to what their enemies have. It is quite difficult anywhere on the globe these days for any have-nots to suffer any illusions of their being other than a have-not. Added to all this is the circumstance where in many places across the globe it is no longer possible to live off the land---there are too many people for this to be possible.
In the end violence is violence. Killing is killing. If a person is killed by someone pressing a button far out of their sight, or a person is killed by a suicide bomber, the killing is still a killing and a planned killing. It really is a stretch to formulate a notion that it is not right to kill if you blow yourself up in the process but it is ok to kill if you have the equipment to kill without involving yourself in any personal way. When we say life means nothing to these suicide bombers maybe it is more accurate to say there is so little meaningful existence to their lives, so little hope for any meaningfulness in their own lives, that killing those they hold responsible for their own meaninglessness, is the only avenue to their life which will give it any meaning. The Korean who killed those college students, himself wrapped in a life of meaninglessness, whatever the reason for his predicament, saw meaning only in his killing spree. He was not going to die an unknown nobody. He wanted to be somebody. A life of meaning then becomes achieved only by killing. If you can't build yourself up, then at least you can bring someone else down. KILLING BECOMES THE LIFE OF MEANING.
To the extent any of the above has merit, then how do we stop the rapidly expanding use of violence to bring meaning to people's lives? I suspect it all starts with overpopulation and the consequent squeeze on natural resources. The human race is biologically out of control, like locusts voraciously devouring planetary resources as if such resources were unlimited. Most may understand this in some sort of vague way, but it is buried in a protective wall of self denial. In political debates absolutely no major political candidate brings up the issue of reproductive responsibility. Not even a weak murmur. It is like we have boxed ourselves into the insane paradox where abortion rages as an issue while the connection between overpopulation and the resulting violence, homelessness, poverty, and disease leading to the death of millions per day is outside our blinders and protected by the braces on our brains. In some sort of weird religious like trance, like a deer blinded in the headlights of an oncoming car, we cling to the belief that somehow, if we are one of the haves, that things will work out for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds. In some sense of course, this is true. Life will go on, it always has, in one form or another---nature always bats last. It seems clear now that reproductive responsibility, given the nature of human behavior, is not going to be achieved by any rational planning. In the absence of any rational planning to control reproductive behavior, the violence across the globe will increase unabatedly, and exponentially, and expand to all parts of the globe. No location will be spared since the nature of the violence is such that it precludes reproductive responsibility as a solution. Rational long term planning cannot be achieved once the violence rises above a certain level.
The only debatable question, in the total absence of any debate on this issue of global reproductive responsibility, is how long before we reach the point of no return. It is scary, but perhaps we already have. Iraq, most of the Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia, and South America could well be a microcosm of the future. Of these, Iraq is probably past the point of no return. If the insane violence there is really the product of people with no chance of a meaningful individual existence outside of the violence perpetuated on perceived enemies, then the solution is beyond my comprehension. Rebuild Iraq? We can't even rebuild New Orleans and these were our own people. In 50 years no nation or group of nations has ever found a way to give the Palestinian people anything but squalid refugee camps. Why the hell, one could ask, should any one be required to give anyone anything, let them create a prosperity of their own. Sounds reasonable of course except they live on land with negligible resources and massive overpopulation. Thugs always rule under such circumstances, much as they rule in our own urban ghetto Drug War zones, although the 'thugness' is magnified in the Palestinian lands.
The internet and other kinds of immediate forms of global communication give the have-nots across the globe a means to effectively coordinate terroristic ideas, plans, and a means to acquire weapons or build them. The current nature of the War on Terrorism has no more chance of stopping terrorism than the 50 year War on Drugs in this country has stopped marijuana access and use. If ever the phrase violence begets violence has truth, these are two examples of it. With each surge by either side in the violence, the response rises tit for tat. No group in the history of the world has ever been exempt from this current kind of cruel and senseless violence under certain conditions. Underneath our thin veneer of civilized behavior apparently rests a subconscious rage of anger and cruelty. I often ask myself, "Could I really do these things to other people, could I really get that angry and express such cruel rage?" Subjectively I say no, objectively I can find no reason to exempt myself. I am going to be very human here and just stop thinking about such a thing.
None of the violence and killing is happening in my little world, under my nose, in my face---I can't personally stop it anyway---I am retired---I already know I don't like those killing 'us' and anyway, why do so many across the globe object to our being in their face, to our military bases all over their countries, to our use of their virtual slave labor to produce goods for us at bargain prices, to our controlling and gobbling up their own natural resources, to our unilaterally deciding who is good and bad, what form of govt is best for all, period---and then, despite all our helpfulness, why do increasingly more of 'them' want to kill us? At some point our kindness will end, they better be careful or they will lose everything they have. Trouble is, freedom for them is just another word for nothing left to lose. We have kindly, for their own good, militarily invaded well over 50 countries in the last century EXCLUDING WW1 amd WW2. Can't they see how much better off they were after we invaded them? Let me see there has been Haiti, Lebanon, Vietnam, Korea, Honduras, Ecuador, Cuba, Panama---oh the hell with dwelling on all this. Certainly South Korea, Croatia, Bosnia, and my favorite--Granada---are better off. But then again, a handful out of over 50 is not a good batting average. Why on earth do so many of Lincoln's 'common people' across the globe think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rowe, Condescending Rice, Pat Roberston, Rush Limbaugh etc. are not really smothering them with loving fatherly 'tough love"? If we don't kill off all these millions of really angry hapless unblest wretches our national security is at stake.
It would be hard to argue killing them all would not do the trick. But that really is a large number of people to murder considering polls show more people in the world admire Bin Laden than George Bush. Somehow we have been sold a bill of goods that if we can kill a good number, the rest will desist. I, for one, am a bit skeptical. We have killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq, including I don't know how many 'top' lieutenants of Bin Laden, and yet so far violence has only begotten violence. Maybe if we can kill MILLIONS of these 'terrorists', things will calm down, just like when we jailed hundreds of thousands of our urban, suburban, and rural ghetto kids we got rid of dope peddlers and have a marijuana free society. Yeah, sure. I agree though that Killing CAN work. We reduced the American Indian population by well over 90% and put the remainder on reservations, and populated their lands with our own population. I agree, that worked quite well. If we did the same thing in Iraq, we could put our poor over there and let them get rich selling us oil. Sure sounds like win-win plan to me. But then, that still leaves an astounding number of hapless unblest wretches spread over the rest of the earth's continents. With modern methods of communication all these isolated unblest wretches are becoming one massive interconnected swarm of really angry hornets searching for us wherever we might be. No matter to me, I live on the 11th floor and on a clear day, as far my eyes can see, none of these wretched terrorists can been seen in the distant horizon heading for my place. Seeing is believing. I am safe. All praise to wise King George.
On a recent Public Television debate a Bush supporter put the need to continue the War in Iraq this way: if we let the 'terrorists' chase us out of Iraq then this emboldens the 'terrorists' who want us out of Afghanistan, or out of Turkey, or out of Saudi Arabia, out of certain Asian, South American, or African countries etc. I don't think I would argue with this logic. But I would question why are we the only country in the world who feels such a determined need to get so involved in the internal politics of other countries? Why are we essentially the only country demanding the right to put military bases across the globe, to prop up this foreign government or another, to virtually own the natural resources of other sovereign nations, etc? What has it gained us except an increasingly hostile and growing number of foreign grown terrorists who are finding ways to attack us in ways we are helpless to stop? None of these terrorist groups are trying to capture the United States. They want us to stop meddling in the politics of their own country. Frankly, I think we should stop. You know, be like some super sized Switzerland. It is not right to meddle so much in the politics of other countries, to treat them subtly as some form of colonies, to be arming certain political factions, etc. This does not mean we need to be wimps either, or leave ourselves vulnerable to economic blackmail. I would back off this meddling role which is leaving all of us vulnerable to terroristic attacks, and simply make it clear that they will be treated in the future as 'real' sovereign countries so long as they trade with us at international market prices. In other words I really don't care who runs or controls Iraq as long as whoever does sells us the oil at international market prices. This is a little risk policy. After all, what every one in the world unanimously wants is our money. Al Queda was originally formed to get American military bases out of Arabia. Most the of the World Trade Center bombers were Arabic. Let the Arabians decide who runs their country. I frankly don't care whether it is the Royal Family of Arabia or Bin Laden himself (although I really think he is dead). Let all this terroristic shit occur where it belongs---amongst these warring factions in distant foreign countries. We better begin paying a little attention to those in our own country who are falling further and further behind any basic economic standard of living. The gap between the affluent and the poor is growing more rapidly in this country than any other modern industrialized nation in the world. The trillions of dollars we are now spending on all these global military adventures should cease---both because it is the right thing to do and because a growing number of 'common' folk in our own country need help along with a growing global need to spend a lot of money to protect the environment and reduce green house gases. The costs here are tremendous but we ought to bite the bullet and address these issues.
A country which is securely strong does not need to fear world courts, negotiations, compromises, working collaboratively with others, and facing severe global problems directly with energetic determination to make the world a better place for all of humanity. The real global enemy today is not Bin Laden, the Muslim right, the Christian right, blacks, gays, hispanics, flag burners, pot smokers----the real global enemy is the use of violence to solve global conflict.
