Good evening all! I hope everyone is well! As promised, I am back with some thoughts about Peace, Love and Understanding or the lack there of. I thought it would be good to break these down over three separate posts, each focusing on one word. Heading into this, I wasn’t really sure what I was looking to do. Did I want to state the obvious? Did I want to point out specific situations showing how war seems to be a constant state of affairs? It’s all pretty overwhelming. Just think about it. Everyone out there, regardless of age, has seen the world in some form of conflict or another since they have been on this planet. The USA doesn’t necessarily have to be involved, although I will say that we have been in way too many wars or “police actions” or “peacekeeping” actions than I care to remember. Whatever sanitized word you use, the end result is bodies no longer alive. Children no longer able to play, parents no longer able to care for those children. What is it all for? Land? Oil? Religion? Pride? Hate? Yes there is evil in this world and yes it should be stopped. within that, however, there has to be a cost that is assessed. A real human cost.
Some people might say that America should be leading the way in this endeavor since we are still considered the world’s police force. My argument against that is that we have our hand down in the cookie jar too deep. Our history is too filled with dirty deeds to be claiming righteousness. There are too many atrocities that we have overlooked because it doesn’t serve our self interest. Trust me, if Iraq’s main export was paper clips, they would have been left alone and Saddam would have been left running his regime.
Now I am not trying to throw the blame solely on the USA. There is plenty of blood to go around that will never be able to be washed off by many countries. The world is a cesspool when it comes to what it will fight for. People’s lives are in the balance and decisions are being made by people with no expectations of ever being hurt by these decisions. News footage of babies dead, people with limbs being blown off, “friendly fire” incidents all of these images can be seen at any time by just turning on the news. Why do we do all of this? Why are ideas or religious beliefs worth dying for? Isn’t life sacred? I mean I know I am talking in broad terms but these are terms that need to be talked about. Our leaders talk all about the specifics of strategics and the political reasons we are in an area. They can point on a map and give us body counts, but can’t tell us why innocents have to die so we can keep gas under $3.00 a gallon. Maybe I sound like a hippy out of time, but I believe the world can use more of that. We should be working towards Utopia. Our goals as a human race need to trump the petty and hateful policies that the world have developed.
This is a roundabout way to lead me back to my blog title today. Peace..The Final Frontier. Please bear with me with this next paragraph. It might sound silly, but I think there is a good idea here. In the world of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, the world had finally somehow managed to get past its squabbles and was working to the betterment of humankind. Poverty had been eradicated, science, art and enlightenment has reached the world. It was working together under the command of the Federation to reach new worlds. Logic and science and freedom were the key concepts. I understand this was a TV show and is make believe, but it is a vision of what could be if we could just let go. Let go of the hate, let go of the greed and all of the negative ideas that consume us. Peace should be the goal not just a dream that seems unattainable. There is nothing wrong with feeling this way. Why is it considered weakness not to want people to die? In the end we all end up the same. Why spend all of these precious days we have fighting and speeding along the inevitable? The war machine needs to be dismantled. We need more peace. We need more people to speak out for it. Let’s hope that the future will treat us better than the past and present has.
Live long and prosper my friends
Mid-Life Crisis Task Force 