MACRO or MICRO CONFLICT ?
A continuum exists in which a trajectory is visible in our daily lives and which paints a lurid picture of the daily descent of Mankind into the Abyss. Be it at the intimate and personal level or on the global scale, each way we look we see conflict and violence encroaching, even where we would expect the opposite to be the case.
We wait and watch during the next few hours with the intent of observing. There is a personal interest, due to this author being physically threatened, by a holder of priesthood, during the latest Lord’s Day. Often, how these things ‘pan out’ in subsequent days and hours is of more consequence than the initial ‘outburst’. But the fact these outbursts are plainly visible, concurrently, in our personal and private lives and extending outward and upward, in parallel on the State, National and International levels should cause us to heed these signs.
Truth has become victim to expediency.
Whether it be personal threats, pirate attacks on the high seas, brazen ‘evictions’ of Jews in Hebron, terrorist attacks in Mumbai or the convoluted implosion of the global financial systems, Mankind dances universally to a threnody seemingly ignored by both the masses and each individual person.
Like a slow-motion fight to the death, Humanity amputates its own limbs in the mirror of its suffering.
Zimbabwe demonstrates the extent to which conventional wisdom can fail. Truth decrees the corpses there shall never be counted. In fact, Mugabe presented an unacceptable option and hence the West withdrew its sustenance for his regime. Mugabe’s defiance compelled him like a driven beast to act out the maddened insanity of his ‘emancipation of the Boys’ land grab and the rights or wrongs of any of this were long ago beyond any kind of reason. The country of Zimbabwe is destroyed and Mugabe is the enemy of the Free World. Even if he was ever right it is already too late for any form of forgiveness.
But where in the World is the situation not identical?
British ‘expats’ living in Spain because it feels ‘more like home’ than England? They presently plead with Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians to come back – it seems the old Colonials inject a little of aboriginality in the Old Dart!! The country has become invaded and overrun by foreign nationals with alien cultures who demand the blood of their black cockerel on the National Health!
Somali pirates who use their innate human intelligence to infer from their suffering and deprivation that death or conquest is an equivalency for them. Not the moral equivalence of the West, which claims that they are right, but their own equivalency – since Death is as likely as riches, why not try for riches and fight to the death?
But the ambivalence of the West states quite plainly, they cannot be killed. So the life they attempt to escape, inevitable death, is replaced by a legal limbo – persona non-grata until they die attempting to escape back to Death or Life.
This will be no different to local outcomes where justification will be sought for the attack on the angel. That is not a trouble.
What is a trouble is the extent to which, on every hand, persons, organisations, states and nations attempt to deal with the very same thing. Conflict has been made inexpressibly more difficult to mediate by the constant press of heat, inflammation and hatred which is in the very air we breath.
Biblically, the angels have gone. They have gone forth with the vials of death, disease, plague – Trouble. But the angels are mere harbingers of the trouble that ensues.
Where communication, cooperation and collaboration should bring forth harmonious solutions to all human activity we see instead blind obstinacy and stubborn refusal to mutually relate.
Where forethought and planning automatically bring mutual benefits we see blunt or sometimes subtle usurpations give birth to conflict. Trouble.
Is this an appraisal of intra-office relationships? International relationships?
Sure! There is an economic downturn and people are being ‘laid off’ for purely pragmatic reasons. Who kicked the dog?
Who IS the dog?
We are not going to reach a point in Time when people are going to grasp the trajectory before their gaze and call a halt to all this hatred and destruction.
We will simply continue as we are until we succeed.
Within the next ten days (today is December 6th ) there will be no pause, no letting up. Rather there is going to be a perceptible escalation of violence, domestically, at home, in our street, in the community, abroad – in the sense of the pervading ‘context’ in which we live, our nation-states, internationally and even in the skies and the space above them.
Will you take time from shouting at your husband, or partner if you wish, to see out the window that your every motion is synchronised with the dance of the Planet? Is the Lady in your arms Kismet?
Will you glimpse the whirling dervish of some manly statesman’s cretinous words intended to ‘settle the debate’?
Will you catch sight of the Big Lie?
How much survival have you? Can you hold out for seventy two hours while the entire World ceases to operate? Can you last thirty days? Two years?
In San Francisco, when the earthquake came, riots and mobs took the streets and it was three days before law and order was restored. Would you have been ‘on the streets’ looking for a bottle of water to drink?
In Georgia, when the Russian adventure recurred, would you have been quietly locked away in your safe haven out of sight or ‘risking it’ on the street? Could you manage for a while? A couple of weeks?
Let’s face it – if some brute with a semi-automatic military firearm kicks down your door you are dead. If you are lucky, especially if you are a girl, you are dead soon.
You could arm yourself but if you are sloppy enough to nail the first one, his mates in the armoured personnel carrier parked on what remains of your front lawn will be peeved – at you.
So in addition to personal survival you really need a network. Sort of, if you survive the ‘first wave’, an agreed response where you and your neighbours can adopt some mutual response. Gather at your local church?
It’s remarkable how some of the old embedded responses come to the fore in times of need. Cultural mores? But – we have been sneering at those. They are not Politically Correct.
Which of your neighbours would be – Trouble? “I can see how this guy could be a problem” mmmm We each have some of these. History teaches us though that some we would overlook can be the best survivors in our street.
Think about these things. The thought patterns these words create in your mind are the ones you are going to need.
That row between your neighbour and his wife may mirror the destruction of some nation. North Korea? Keep an eye on his dog. If cannibalism isn’t your scene, yet, the dog might be good for a feed.
Try to cooperate with the people you love. You don’t have to LIKE them but it’s easier to understand them if you love them. And if they don’t cooperate – try not to kill them yet. It’s still against the Law. We still have Law.
But increasingly few are interested in it.
Rai