Our cycle of violence enters our third millennia. Probably our fourth, really. Like a virus the body never quite eliminates or inoculates, and we as a species relapse over and over and over with depressing regularity, regardless of how intellectually advanced or technologically modern we consider ourselves.
On the micro - individual - level we've come a long ways. We don't lance our arms when we're sick to relieve ourselves of bad blood. We don't call viruses evil spirits.
But on the macro - societal - level, we don't seem to have evolved at all. We still blood-let with blunt force thinking this will relive the body of dangerous germs. We still view outbreaks through the foggy lens of mysterious forces or spirits (Holy Wars) instead of recognizing when a tainted and neglected environment could have no other outcome than to breed dangerous bacteria that too many lacked the effective emotional antibodies to ward off.
And so, as we've been doing for, oh, four some odd thousands of years now, we ignore decrepit breeding grounds our neglect and indifference (at best) allowed to flourish in the hopes that the NEXT bloodletting, THIS time, will be the one that will rid us of the disease once and for all.
It won't. Like ice cream on tonsillitis, it feels good, but...
If humanity is to have any hope, if we're to avoid the modern day equivalent of a Black Plague outbreak (terrorist with a nuke) we're going to have to broaden our understanding of bacteria and viruses to be much greater than just those which affect the individuals internal body, but those that affect the minds of masses.
Our planet is a single village, and we are all of a single family. We can't keep dumping our waste where we eat and sleep while we ignore the ill and unwanted on the village fringes.
We can't continue to praise God and our kings, publicly pound our chests with one arm and privately pat our selves on the back with the other, all the while giving tacit approval that we can blood-let our way back to health.
It's a new millennium, and we need a new paradigm.
I might be a lone voice on a lonely path, but my sympathies and condolences extend not just to those innocents killed this time, but to those innocents suffering through conditions beyond their control that lead people to follow opportunistic leaders who preach that murder/suicide/revenge/retribution is a rational and justified response to anything.
And my sympathies extend to those who still live in these unconscionable conditions and still resist the call to hate and fear, and who will now suffer all the worse for a fate that had already created a hell on Earth for them, for it will be their children who will carry the disease for the next turn of the cycle.
It's a small, lonely, first step, but hate the disease, not the carriers, because only then can the true causes be identified and rectified, and only then will healing and health have a chance.
Here's hoping it doesn't take too much of this millennium to figure it out.
Peace.
