War
If
objectivism means taking a step back to gauge the situation more
disconnectedly and perhaps more clearly, then for what we shall
attempt to look at, let’s start running back to the beginning of
time itself! For so deeply entrenched in war, is the humankind.
And now standing here, amongst prehistoric tribes, defending
their habitations and hunting territories against each other,
sacrificing their own species to appease the unknown forces of
nature, suspecting every sound and sight of the new world,
answering the natural instinct to survive and propagate, its
difficult, almost perplexing, to comprehend the present.
Even
after a quarter of a million years of human development, (if
that has supposedly happened), having witnessed the evolution of
thought, possession of the knowledge of the world around us and
the attainment of greater understanding of our species, inside
out, have we failed to devise a simple method of co-existence,
which does not involve this exalted butchery of fellow human
beings, in the name of any absurd idea, be it land, religion,
race, gold?
If
North Korean ideology deems its nuclear status as a legitimate
deterrent policy, then why must Iran fall behind in its
enrichment schedule? If the Big Brother of US all considers it
his duty to bring peace and prosperity to all corners of the
world, how does it matter, what methods are used in the ‘peace
process’? And if it is only natural to harbour xenophobia, then
all incidents of ethnic or racial strife, every secessionist
movement and each meditated attack on a strange looking human
being is justified, for after all it’s only human to fear
aliens.
One
may not have answers to these questions that would appease all,
but the questions in themselves defy the sensibilities of a
school boy who reads about the horrors of nuclear fallout, only
to understand that it’s a no-win situation, for either the
deterred or the deteree. He gazes at the cultural richness of a
foreign land on the Discovery channel and falls in love with its
people, only to be dropped there by a helicopter a few years
later, with the instructions to kill any native inhabitant in
sight. He spends sleepless days in the laboratory finding a cure
for cancer, only to realize that human life is expendable in
many situations.
Is
war the zenith of human development?
-Lekhak
Agyaat |
