Tags
being a good human being, drunk blogging, I always ask the tough questions, people scare me, this is why we can't have nice things, war is stupid
I suppose I should weigh in on the whole Israel/Palestine/Gaza fiasco. I mean it’s happening, I can’t do shit about it, but it’s clear to me that it is an example of everything that is wrong with mankind. I do not, on the whole, pay attention to the news outlets – it’s alarmist, it’s propaganda, it’s sensationalism. It’s work to weed the shit from the fact and honestly there’s so much bad stuff that it weighs on my mental health. It makes me so very tired. But. But. People are picketing and protesting downtown about this, and so I did my due diligence. I did some reading.
I mean I do not claim to understand all the underlying issues and history – Arabs, Jews, holy/ancestral land etc etc etc. NONE of that is any reason to resort to the level of indiscriminate violence and death that is happening there. (You want to talk about the theft of ancestral land you should be looking at us over here in Canada and the absolute shit us European descent assholes did to our First Nations – but that’s another story, and one we’re attempting to heal. Without bombs, I might add.) The bottom line is that hate is winning. People have been living there in relative peace for years. Relative, of course. When race and religion and deep-seated prejudice is alive, still prevalent, there are bound to be conflicts. Disagreements. Whatever. But this. This is shit. Shit. I can’t think of a more eloquent word.
War is not the answer to anything. The altruistic part of me would love to believe that humans are capable of resolving differences, issues, whatever without resorting to bombs, enslavement, terror or just plain starvation to make a point. But I am forcibly reminded, again and again, just how good humans are at being shitty to one another.
I also do not pretend to know what the answer is. I’m tempted to suggest that NO ONE live there, and that it becomes a literal holy land; available only for pilgrimage – but that’s definitely oversimplifying. They all seem to have legitimate claims on the land – either by occupation or history. And even if they don’t – people of all sorts live there now and what are you supposed to do with that? Displace them and fuck ’em if they can’t take it? It’s murky as fuck and short of everyone all of a sudden deciding that war is stupid, reductive and hellish and suddenly laying down their arms and embracing everyone else as brothers, I have no answer.
It seems really, really hard for people to just let go of what they think other people should do. (This is the altruistic part of me again!) What other people do, or believe is really no one else’s business. Does it really matter if your neighbour is Jewish, or Arab, or Denobulan? Does it matter if they worship Zeus or the same Almighty you do? The answer, is no. It does not. What matters is if they are a good neighbour. We have demonstrated, time and gain – perhaps just as many times as we have demonstrated how shitty humans can be – that we can be compassionate and selfless.
Whatever the why, we’re seeing some pretty shitty human behaviours right now and it needs to stop.
Listening to: Zombie – The Cranberries
Reading: Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN omg make it stop
Drinking: Malbec/Merlot
Word Count: 5252
Headspace: ruins