The Shadows Behind War

“War does not spring full-blown from an inhuman hardscape of unshakable reality; nor can it be stopped by the one weapon stronger than the enemy’s. War, unfortunately, springs from the heart of man, and is evident in everyday moments of judgmental indifference, competitive cruelty, vindictive payback and the ungenerous casual interactions that mark our days. Building on this, we move into group agreements and actions, and soon we have governance structures, led by those vetted through processes of fear and tribal rage, that lead us to kill for that to which we have pledged our allegiance. The question of going to war was decided long before the first shot was fired or the first provocation was interpreted. We are set up for it. A gun in the first act always goes off in the third is now distorted by a frightening development: the three-act play has become obsolete, and the armed provocateur is restless and erratic as he begins to realize the second act is all he’s going to get. So we have explosions of rage and inexplicable violent horror that we cannot understand by conventional means; cause and effect needs a whole new vocabulary to approach an understanding of what we face. We jail, punish, strike back, reinforce security, stoke fear, build weapons we stockpile as deterrents, pray to a ruthless god ……… and, alas, the next attack turns us into creatures even more feral than before. There are many profiles of extreme danger in the third millennium: the murderous avenger cloaked in the silk of reason and law is our latest incarnation of apocalyptic fury. But don’t write off our own role in the cataclysmic outcome: today’s idle cruelty and self-absorbed neglect is a seed that may become tomorrow’s assassination, or invasion. We have a geopolitical history that can not be undone, a legacy of adversarial relationships, and a mean streak tied to expected standards of human behavior. We have made war inevitable. Can it be reversed? Yes, but the man or woman who can do it has not emerged yet. Or we haven’t recognized them and they’re still riding the bus, trying to make their way home.”