Awake

-Are you a God?
- they asked the Buddha.
- No.
- Are you an angel, then?
- No.
- A saint?
- No.
- Then what are you?
-
I am AWAKE.



Einstein

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure of
the universe"-Albert Einstein-


Om Mani Padme Hum

Matthew 25:40

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matthew 7 1-6


1. Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4. Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
6. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

War - Right or Wrong? Legal or Illegal? Moral or Immoral?

I was watching TCM and they showed a short from WWII staring Bette Davis. She was pushing War Bonds. This started me thinking. I've thought about this a lot over the years, and talked about it too.
When I was a kid war, serving in a war (serving your country), being wounded or killed in a war, was glorified. Glorified in TV, movies, books, glorified by our whole civilization, with the exception  of many of the men and women who'd actually been there, who didn't glorify it at all.  Of course, it's natural and neccesary to glorify your son or daughter, your husband or father, your relative or friend that fought for his or her country and possibly was injured or killed doing it. It's natural to call that heroic, what else would you say. 
When I was a kid we read about wars in history, Charlemaigne, the Romans, the Knights and their crusades, on and on, and again it was glorified, but to most of us they weren't real, they were just stories, not real men and women being killed. I know of relatives of mine that fought in the Spanish American War, my maternal grandfather fought in the First World War, my paternal uncle and several other relatives, my aunt who's my mothers sister,  fought in the Second World War, my father and uncle my mothers brother were in the Korean War.  They were real, but still stories in some sense. In my family, like most others, they joined and fought because they'd been taught over generations of history, stories, books, and later movies, radio and tv, that serving their country was a noble sacrifice, and to be wounded or killed was the ultimate nobility. True? Maybe if the wars were necessary and not the result of political maneuvering. 
Unfortunately most, if not all, wars, not just recent, but throughout history, are the result of political maneuvering, absolutely. Unnecessary and evil, but portrayed to the public, who will be the soldiers, the ones wounded and killed, as well as the survivors, together with parents, husbands, wives, children, relatives, that it was necessary and good. 
I wish I could tell you the real reasons for the wars throughout history, but I don't know, maybe nobody does really. I'm sure there are, or were, reasons.  Quarrels among the royals, revenge, invasions and advantage of one kind or another, all of these reasons and more. Good reasons probably for the kings, emporers, presidents, or politicians responsible for murder in the guise of patriotism, but maybe not so good for the millions of victims on all sides. And there are, were, victims. Millions, hundreds of millions of innocents, killed by a few, relatively, leaders. Kings, Emperors, Pharohs, Tsars, Shahs, Caliphs, Politicians of every stripe and nationality, mostly old men, some who themselves had fought in someone else's war and survived, sent the young men, and now women to fight for them.
Is there a purpose beyond the lies told us to get us to fight? Well, population control, how about that? If you think the world's overpopulated now, just think what it'd be like without the wars. I seriously doubt that the murderers had any motive as theoretically noble as population control. More likely the

Well I finished this post, but for some reason this is all that f---king blogger had saved. I thought it was done and hit publish post, and blogger said it couldn't, so I clicked the back arrow and this above is all there was, nothing of the rest that I'd written, and frankly, I couldn't do it again the same way, so I'm publishing this... Isn't blogger great?????

Lee Murray

No comments:

Post a Comment