I live in the U.S. and although it shouldn't shock me anymore, I just don't know what will wake the silent majority from the greatest propaganda machine the world has ever known.
I feel the same living in Canada. This isn’t on the radar of the vast majority of people. It’s unbelievable but not forgiveable. For me, people will from this point forward always be in two groups. But, that doesn’t help the Palestinian people. We need everyone to wake up and demand that our governments take a real stand against this genocide now.
“Gaza is not merely a humanitarian crisis but a moral test for humanity” that the settler colonial West continues to fail as it spends $78B to build concentration camps from El Salvador to Guantanamo while actively extermination one in West Asia with 2.3M humans to expand their Iraq Libya, now Gaza inhumanity in the West Bank Lebanon and Syria.
That is a beautifully rendered verbal picture of our desolate biosphere.
History is replete with examples of humans exploiting, and hating the weakest of their kind, motivated by the exhilarating lift of power, and the fear of being accorded the same fate by others. Ego-driven hate, and fear are often the mechanisms by which religion speaks to multiple societies. Those societies, in turn, have flocks involved in the creation of rules and laws and norms that become collective or tribal emblems of their identities.
What often gets lost or overlooked is how that path from cave dweller to citizen is fraught with untold episodes of individual survival depending on group identity. Millions of weak, insecure individuals that manage to live another day because of the power accorded to their group, become completely conditioned to believe that their group affords their only, and definitely their best chance for prosperity. Similarly groups, as in nations and tribes and states, are significantly empowered by the conditioning of their members to demonstratively assert their fealty.
This human experience has been recognized and impacted by education. Religions are all convinced of their own inherent value, and none of them eagerly bend to the winds of change. So knowledge and science are effectively at odds with religion, to the extent that individual survival is an aspiration that can be achieved outside of a particular group when that group is seen to be working against the individual’s interest.
The might of nations was nurtured by religion and science. Albert Einstein regretted that the knowledge to create nuclear weapons was unmatched by the knowledge to prevent their use. The moral strength to exercise restraint when mighty power is available, is the stuff of religious tracts and individual experience, but rarely, if ever, have tribes or groups or nations been seen to pass up the opportunity to unilaterally enhance their killing capacities.
I believe that a large majority of human beings since the dawning of the Industrial Age, have been caught in a dilemma that pits their individual survival against the constraints of their tribes. People, particularly people with little inducement to imagine or think outside of their habitual references, suppress the immorality of their tribe when it doesn’t overtly threaten their survival or comfort. Until very recently, the knowledge of what powerful states have done to feed a bloodlust, or indulge the appetite for more power, has not been graphically recognized by the vast numbers who reside in those states. Individual access to the horrific crimes of states, in real time, no less, is a potent practice in its infancy.
Nations have the capacity to end humanity, but humans don’t have the time, and platforms and means to fight the agenda of nations predisposed to wielding immense power recklessly and irresponsibly. Internet connectivity may come to be humanity’s greatest hope in that endeavor.
Wow, you appear to have been reading before I finished writing. I submit comments from my phone, and sometimes the submit arrow is too close to where the cursor is intended to alter the text. Substack has recently added an edit option, whereas previously I found myself writing a comment that extended to multiple paragraphs that I had to delete because I had unintentionally sent it as I was trying to place the cursor too close to the submit arrow.
I live in the U.S. and although it shouldn't shock me anymore, I just don't know what will wake the silent majority from the greatest propaganda machine the world has ever known.
I feel the same living in Canada. This isn’t on the radar of the vast majority of people. It’s unbelievable but not forgiveable. For me, people will from this point forward always be in two groups. But, that doesn’t help the Palestinian people. We need everyone to wake up and demand that our governments take a real stand against this genocide now.
“Gaza is not merely a humanitarian crisis but a moral test for humanity” that the settler colonial West continues to fail as it spends $78B to build concentration camps from El Salvador to Guantanamo while actively extermination one in West Asia with 2.3M humans to expand their Iraq Libya, now Gaza inhumanity in the West Bank Lebanon and Syria.
That is a beautifully rendered verbal picture of our desolate biosphere.
History is replete with examples of humans exploiting, and hating the weakest of their kind, motivated by the exhilarating lift of power, and the fear of being accorded the same fate by others. Ego-driven hate, and fear are often the mechanisms by which religion speaks to multiple societies. Those societies, in turn, have flocks involved in the creation of rules and laws and norms that become collective or tribal emblems of their identities.
What often gets lost or overlooked is how that path from cave dweller to citizen is fraught with untold episodes of individual survival depending on group identity. Millions of weak, insecure individuals that manage to live another day because of the power accorded to their group, become completely conditioned to believe that their group affords their only, and definitely their best chance for prosperity. Similarly groups, as in nations and tribes and states, are significantly empowered by the conditioning of their members to demonstratively assert their fealty.
This human experience has been recognized and impacted by education. Religions are all convinced of their own inherent value, and none of them eagerly bend to the winds of change. So knowledge and science are effectively at odds with religion, to the extent that individual survival is an aspiration that can be achieved outside of a particular group when that group is seen to be working against the individual’s interest.
The might of nations was nurtured by religion and science. Albert Einstein regretted that the knowledge to create nuclear weapons was unmatched by the knowledge to prevent their use. The moral strength to exercise restraint when mighty power is available, is the stuff of religious tracts and individual experience, but rarely, if ever, have tribes or groups or nations been seen to pass up the opportunity to unilaterally enhance their killing capacities.
I believe that a large majority of human beings since the dawning of the Industrial Age, have been caught in a dilemma that pits their individual survival against the constraints of their tribes. People, particularly people with little inducement to imagine or think outside of their habitual references, suppress the immorality of their tribe when it doesn’t overtly threaten their survival or comfort. Until very recently, the knowledge of what powerful states have done to feed a bloodlust, or indulge the appetite for more power, has not been graphically recognized by the vast numbers who reside in those states. Individual access to the horrific crimes of states, in real time, no less, is a potent practice in its infancy.
Nations have the capacity to end humanity, but humans don’t have the time, and platforms and means to fight the agenda of nations predisposed to wielding immense power recklessly and irresponsibly. Internet connectivity may come to be humanity’s greatest hope in that endeavor.
I think your comments misses a part at the end...?
Wow, you appear to have been reading before I finished writing. I submit comments from my phone, and sometimes the submit arrow is too close to where the cursor is intended to alter the text. Substack has recently added an edit option, whereas previously I found myself writing a comment that extended to multiple paragraphs that I had to delete because I had unintentionally sent it as I was trying to place the cursor too close to the submit arrow.