remind me to smile

[darren_stranger]

Some musings on the state of the world and human nature.  Not really cheering or optomistic stuff, but there you have it.


On another journal, i was discussing an article i'd read describing the (quite literal) rape of the Congo and its natural resources by everyone from western multinationals to local guerillas and most of their immediate neighbours, which really seemed to exemplify what shits me about the human race at the moment.  What jumped out at me was the way Rwanda, still bleeding from the wounds of its own genocidal civil war, siezed on the pretext of hunting for the perpetrators of that genocide as an opportunity to plunder its neighbour for diamonds and other minerals, and the rush of everybody within sight to grab a piece of the pie for themselves.  It struck me how Rwanda's cynical opportunism was mirrored so closely by that currently at work in the United States of Halliburton's invasion of Iraq, and seeing the same logic at work in everyone from a small African nation to the world's biggest superpowers seemed to signify so much of what is wrong in the politics of our world.

i started thinking about how often that sort of cynical opportunism has been at work behind the scenes of history, from China's liberation of the Tibetan gold reserves, sorry, people from the oppression of feudal theocrats, the US's elevation to international power as a result of its war with Spain (which i undersand resulted at least partly from the accidental blowing up of a US warship in Cuba being conveniently blamed on Spain), Germany's annexation of Austria after the burning of the Reichstag and so on, ad nauseum.  It also started to shed a little light on possible reasons for those conflicts i never quite figured out the rationale for, like Vietnam invading Cambodia or why just one assassination launched so many invasions and deaths in World War One.  Looking back further, even such mystifyingly romantic stories as the justification for the Trojan War began to appear in a different light.  It's all about pretext.

It was that last comparison that made me realise something.  Years ago, after reading Homer's Oddysey, i was struck by the way it was perfectly okay for the noble, just Ossyseus and his fleet to drop in on some random foreign city to loot and pillage, kill the men and abduct the women, just because they happened to be passing on the way back from the Trojan war.  At the time i took it as an example of how far we've matured and civilised as a race that that sort of thing, and the slavery and other acts of barbarity depicted, would no longer be acceptable in today's world.  Realising that we haven't changed at all in those thousands of years, that we're still sailing off to kill and pillage and rape on whatever convenient pretext comes to hand, is as good a symbol as any of just how my opinion of humanity has turned around in the last few years.

i should stop thinking about politics so much.  It doesn't make me fired up and angry anymore, just depressed.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

It's a wonderful world
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-13171487,00.html

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

That was for reminding you of the 'pregnancy game', wasn't it?

:)

:|

:)

:|

:(

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

This stuff'll kill you, H. Ground me down for years. While this is no excuse to turn a blind eye, it is important to keep it all in perspective I find. At least as far as the small-scale stuff is concerned.

Governments and corporations however, ho boy.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

like Vietnam invading Cambodia

That was primarily to get rid of Pol Pot. I don't think it would have happened someone a little more just was in power.

It doesn't make me fired up and angry anymore, just depressed.

On the flip side, think however of the equally real and genuine social gains that have been achieved in the last one hundred years.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

"That was primarily to get rid of Pol Pot. I don't think it would have happened someone a little more just was in power."

i'd like to believe that, but my inner cynic is running rampant. Guess it must happen every now and then.

"On the flip side, think however of the equally real and genuine social gains that have been achieved in the last one hundred years."

i try to. i really want to get back to believing we're slowly but surely chipping away at the fucked-uppedness in the world.

Maybe it's a 'two steps forward, one step back' thing, and we're just in that regressive part of the cycle, making everything look like the dawn of a new Dark Ages.

Bring on the turn of the tide..