After watching John Pilger’s ‘The War You Don’t See’ I realise just how much of an image dominated species we are. War’s are horrible, everyone knows this, and yet until we are shown the images we never fully grasp how bad ‘horrible’ actually is. In one piece of footage, which I’d actually seen before but without the context given was previously not moved quite as much, a helicopter gunship circles a group of 8 civilians, two of which are Reuters journalists, the gunner is given permission to fire and does so, the bullets explode on impact and the camera pans as those running are gunned down, the camera zooms out and the street is filled with bodies, ‘nice’ says the gunner staring at the 8 bodies, that he has just mutilated, strewn across the street. This video was shot in Bagdad in 2007 and released by wikileaks in 2010. To quote Julian Assange ‘This tape for me, and the other people involved, made ‘nice’ a dirty word. We couldn’t see ‘nice’ anymore when a whole street covered in carnage is ‘nice’.
This tape and the quote shows just how stupid, morally corrupt or just plain fucked up in the head those who join the military are, but these people aren’t the exception, they are just like you or me. Just before this footage is shown Julian Assange explains that ‘this is not a sophisticated conspiracy controlled at the top. This is a vast movement of self-interest by thousands and thousands of players all working together and against each other’. The way I see it the problem is not that there are evil puppet masters in charge or that the Military-Industrial Complex has taken over the world, which both may be true, the real problem is human nature.
We are all selfish, greedy and irrational. Wherever humans are to be found suffering is not far away. Perpetual wars pervade Africa and the Middle East, oppression and poverty is rife throughout Asia. The world is fucked and we in the West continue to ignore it because we selfishly put our own interests before those of others. We wallow in our materialistic consumer societies and ignorantly fail to comprehend that our unsustainable lifestyles are built on the suffering of others.
It’s been over 60 years since the phrase ‘ghost in the machine’ was first introduced and since then there has been nothing but further suffering and destruction. The cold war may be over but the self-destructive ‘ghost’ is still very much present. Looking at the world as it is today I do not actually have any hope for humanity.
My reason for living is that I feel, and hope, that within my lifetime I’ll see the change that needs to happen next; the end of humanity. ‘The end of humanity’ might have a rather destructive and nihilistic tone to it, and although I do believe that destruction is one possibility, my hope is that humanity will end not with the destruction but rather the transgression of the species into something more advanced. Within our lifetimes the evolution of humanity beyond what it is now into something more rational does seem very much within the realms of possibility. Especially when you consider how much our knowledge of the world has grown in the past 50 years.
I know that my sphere of influence on this planet is very small, even perhaps negligible, so I mainly just try to sit back, relax, do whatever I can to make the world a better place and enjoy the ride.
The flowchart of zen (admittedly a rather apathetic and unproductive way of looking at the world, but still worth considering when everything seems too much.)
(Perhaps this is a more productive flowchart to look at when you're down)
Peace
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