HAVE WE COME A LONG WAY, BABY?
(Uncivilized civilization)
Gabriel A. Levicky
Picture this. It’s the 21st century or at least it is supposed to be. On the street of one of the most open and picturesque harbor cities in the world with a long history of offering a refuge to the persecuted and victims of various intolerances - a man calmly walks to another man and without saying anything - stabs him to death. Then in cold blood, he pins a note, a message on the back of his victim as if his deed was a heroic one and not one of crime and disgust. Mind you, he calls himself a religious man, a follower of the “last prophet”, a revenger representing god’s obscure will. He feels victorious, for has contributed with his bloody, despicable act and equally obscure personal insignificance (but with crowd solidarity support) to a call for jihad - a cleansing call - a warning to all kafirs, unbelievers that the punishment is on its way.
Precisely at this moment we all had been kidnapped by the dark forces of terror and blind fanaticism and instantly transported against our will to the world we were almost certain doesn’t exist anymore.
In our democratic well-wishing naivety, many have forgotten that our world is a composite of various forces conflicting and clashing with our nicely carved expectations and desires. There are “useful” fools out there who would swear such a violent act is a result of our previous and present individual and collective responsibility for the sad state of world’s affairs. We are being accused of something we have never done. The real culprits are defended to the last grains of hope. These apologists of crimes perpetrated by the intolerant fanatics, getting better in cutting one’s head, would like to erase centuries of humanity’s fight with those threatening, dark forces. The naïve supporters of these murderers and fanatics show their utmost disregard for victims’ of our horrible and bloody history. They also show their contempt for our well-meant struggle to uplift and inspire humanity, offering a better view of our infamous appetite and responsibility to cause death and destruction. For many of them (supporters, adversaries), spilling innocent blood is a payback, a deserved revenge, a vengeance, a kind of necessary entrance to guilt-ridden Purgatory.
Here I have to posit reflective questions: What portion of responsibility did countless innocent souls had when those unchallenged dark forces mercilessly slaughtered them? Were my parents and their generation of human sheep lined up to their death in the middle of the 20th century, responsible for alleged mistreatment of these people with a 16th century mentality? Why were my grandparents prematurely turned into ashes, stripped of their dignity and humanness? Were they responsible for some sick interpretation of obscure religious texts from the 9th century? Do answers to these questions really exist?
Therefore, arguments on behalf of those killers and mental freaks are void of any meaning. Humanity is acting like a confused split personality character. One day we are drunk with hate and rage only to sadly stare next day semi-sober at the presented bill, bloody statistics of wars, conflicts, asking ourselves: What? Have we really done that? We shall never do it again!
Never again?
How pathetic are these post-fact admittances and crocodile tears, for we will do it again just as we were doing it since the time immemorial. The global killings did not stop since the first stone thrown by newly emerged Homo sapiens killed another living being.
We are not conditioned only by our environment - as many prefer to think. We do encounter many ‘mysterious, unexplainable’ forces against which we are quite frequently helpless and desperate. Obviously, these forces mold us as well. However, we do build on our hope and desires for a better life in coexistence with the others. This is our first and foremost covenant, for we know otherwise we will perish regardless of any eagerly expected intervention ‘from up above’.
So how do we deal with those who celebrate death in order to find the meaning of life? Do we appease them and share their tears? Or perhaps we even swear, we are sorry for whatever we didn’t do?
One thing is sure we have to face them with absolute resolute. Moreover, if they seek glory through death, we ought to help them.
Good riddance.
Otherwise, these knife yielding mongrels and maniacs with their 10th century imagination will infest our cities and countries. We would be afraid to speak and act openly on whatever issue. This defeats the purpose and meaning of our democracy and threatens to turn us into the obedient and frightened ants.
Take for example the Chinese atrocities in Tibet and their Hitler-like preparation for the so called Olympic Games.
Again – we may never learn, certainly not from those who prefer to hide behind the lofty, meaningless phrases such as “sport is not politics (really?); all mankind is one (whatever that means); the games are about fitness and competition,” etc.
Nothing is mentioned about the imbedded violence in sport, its brutality, its gladiator-like nature, its desire to smash, squash and destroy an opponent. These are suitable attributes of any sort of totalitarian and brutal regime such as Nazi Germany’s National Socialism, the Soviet socialism or the Bolshevik’s primitive idiocy, based on fear and mistrust, the Arab Wahhabist’s misanthropic, self-centered fundamentalism, and China’s Big Brother’s communism, which in reality amounts to a volatile mixture of barbarism and sadism threatening our civilization. Of course, we love to do business with them. It’s a huge market, almost as large as the graves they let us dig for ourselves.
And so today - on the streets of the cities of our hard-fought and hard-earned Western Civilization values, we attempt to beat to the pulp the protesters against killing and Chinese contemporary colonial oppression in Tibet - in order to protect the actual killers and their puppeteers in the name of the perverse concepts, called sport and business. Because we opt not to recognize the suffering and aspirations of conquered and humiliated people, we are now forced to accept “an explanation” from various cynical relativists that in its very nature sounds more like a declaration of arrogance and brute power struggle illuminated by this burning Olympic torch route.
Do we really care so much about these games and their annoying noise which resonates louder than the desperate sighing of tortured people? Imagine what would have happened if the world in 1936 had firmly told that crazed, posturing leader in Berlin – enough and stopped him right away in his destructive tracks? Perhaps we would have been able to see and live in a different world, a world that doesn’t need physical competition but rather encouraged healthy mistrust of bombastic proclamations, a world that doesn’t need to paint a rosy future while victims scream and suffer. This screaming and suffering is our real UN anthem – whether it is in Africa, Latin America, Cuba, North Korea, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia and many other nations, including this one.
Do you hear it? That distant torture-never-stops drum beating?
For we should not appease the guilty masters of these crimes but rather do everything to bring them to justice and make sure we all understand why.
The other option is listening to the mad sound of knives sharpening and to the ridiculous echo of the torch carrying controversy. Most of all, allowing ourselves to hear the screams of the real, helpless victims without doing anything about it.
Really, have we come a long way?
