So much of these two have happened simply because of territorial disputes and wars based on greedy, opposing political and economic agendas. Much of the world’s unnecessary violence and suffering of peaceful innocents arises from the above. No, war and the collateral damage of displaced, exterminated peoples have long been too much with us. Something there is which is hugely blind in male war-mongering types. As Dylan Thomas wrote, “Hands have no tears to flow” (“The Hand That Signed the Paper”)–a distinct fundamental lack of empathy and compassion where inconvenient others are concerned. (“Outa my way.”)
For me, that remains as large a fundamental, inconvenient truth as Al Gore’s planet alert. Those who want power and control will do anything to get it as the Holocaust and Stalin’s dead millions proved. Of late, the rest of the world is largely helpless as Putin does his thing in the Ukraine. The nuclear weaponry arsenals are too many and stockpiled for more peaceful countries to take a serious moral stand as the Allied powers once did against Hitler in WW2. Dr. Strangelove that close all over again some 5 decades later.
“Man’s inhumanity to man/ Makes countless thousands mourn!” as Robbie Burns (1759-1796) once wrote. And so the so-called lessons of history and literature continue to be ignored by the evil, greedy, and power-hungry. In a large global context as well as many country contexts, that continues to be the main story and truth about how and why humans suffer and mourn.