Nihilistic madness?
Is the raining down of American-made bombs and missiles on Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, areas that are a major part of the very cradle of civilization, a nihilistic attack by an adolescent on the origins from which he has become estranged? How else can this madness be interpreted?
While, with hindsight, we could see World War I and World War II coming, do we have the foresight to see, in the uncompromising bellicosity of the conflagrations from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley, the specter of the Third? Not a chance! We will pile avenging atrocity on atrocity until, with satisfaction, we are able to declare, "Ours is a war for the salvation of civilization itself"; but, in reality, we will, paradoxically, have created and become hopelessly entangled in the self- righteous and self-comforting pretext for uncivilized, all-out war.
In the words of Bertrand Russell in August, 1914, "...all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride...
"And behind the diplomatists, dimly heard in the official documents, stand vast forces of national greed and national hatred -- atavistic instincts, harmful to mankind at its present level, but transmitted from savage and half-animal ancestors, concentrated and directed by governments and the press, fostered by the upper class as a distraction from social discontent, artificially nourished by the sinister influence of the makers of armaments, encouraged by a whole foul literature of "glory", and even by every text-book of history with which the minds of children are polluted."
From the bloodiest of centuries in history in which millions upon millions have died, have we learned nothing -- has humanity not advanced one jot?
FRANK RICHARDSON
Tangerang, Banten