On the Ukraine-Russia Crisis
#NoWar #JustPeace #DeescalateNow #FreeAssange
Little Boy: Do you smoke?
Fatman: No.
Little Boy: Well, it’s never to late to start!
Fatman:
No matter who you are, where you’re from, what you practice or what you preach, I’d like to think that we can all agree on one basic fundamental thing: inching closer to Nuclear Midnight helps no one. World Wide War and the ensuing armageddon will only bring the ultimate prize: nothing. I mean that in the most literal sense possible: the end of life on this planet as we know it.
Nuclear death is no joke, y’all. Listen to Edwin Starr.
What is the gnarly root of the dark side of human nature?
As creative beings, many of us get frustrated when we can’t create. Our breathing becomes erratic and we lose our ability to reason. We stomp our feet, gnash our teeth, and wring our hands. When we get emotional, we make bad decisions. Not only do we make bad decisions, we act out — and seldom out of a desire to bring about goodness.
Bad decisions + bad actions = badness
What can I say? Been there, done that. I bet you have, too. We live with our decisions. We have to because that’s life. But even badness is not nothing. Unattractive? Yes. Undesirable? Yes. But badness is still something.
I’ve noticed that when I do something wrong, or if something goes badly, that I unconsciously assume there will be time after. Time to process, time to think, and time to make adjustments. Time to chill, to reflect (or to escape), and time to make changes — or not. Some of us learn from our mistakes. I try to because I want to become a better person. Why? Because if I do better, the world will be better — first, my world, and then the world around me. The same applies to the worlds of the people in my loop, or the worlds of the people whose loops I am visiting. Either way, a better world is in my interest just as it is in yours.
Mine/our.
What if there’s no after?
But what happens when we can’t live with the decisions we made and the actions we took? What happens if the consequences of our actions lead to anti-life? Are you ready to live in the anti-world? Not me. Not yet, anyway. Maybe we’re never ready.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing this.
Before there is no after, there’s still a before. That’s where it’s at!
Humans are contradictions.
As creative beings, the one thing we cannot create is nothing. Children? They’re something! A kickass meal? Yes, please! Writing a sappy love song for your sweetheart for Valentine’s Day? Sure, why not — there’s a time and a place for everything. Just maybe not Valentine’s Day 2023, ya dig?
Forgive the tautology, but all the things I just mentioned are things: breathing beings (kids), tasty treats (ingredients transformed into a meal via the application of knowledge and heat), love songs: sound, rhythm, and words transformed by the application of knowledge, emotion, and heat! But whatever, they’re still all things.
As creative beings, we cannot create nothing. To be sure, I can turn my shiny new car into scrap by driving it into a wall, but why would I? I wouldn’t. I mean I could if I wanted to, but I’d be stupid if I did. And what about that poor wall! What did it ever do? It didn’t have it coming. Gah.
True, parents might be let down by what their children eventually grow up and become, but even under the most terrible conditions (circumstances I don’t want to entertain), the adults children become are never nothing. They’re people, too, and maybe they’re as messed up, or even more messed up, as me. Heck, I could be one of them. Maybe I am.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing this.
Embrace contradictions and work through them until they’re not
One key to unlocking the contradictory thing we call human nature resides at the fulcrum of the profound urge to create and the crestfallen disappointment we feel if we cannot. If nuclear war and armageddon are as close to nothing as we can come in our acts of creation, then the total annihilation of life on earth paradoxically becomes our highest ideal. That’s a pretty twisted contradiction, I know, but it seems to fit our nature quite well.
Hulk, smash!
Is it the quest for the allusive thing we know we can never have that drives us to the precipice of the unthinkable?
Is it the tantalizing impossibility of the Neverafter that propels us to create the anti-world and fill it up with anti-lives?
I don’t know. But I know this: war is a waste of people, resources, and time, and nuclear war yields nothing — literally nothing.
I hope I never have to experience life in the anti-world. I hope the same is true for you. I hope everyone conscripted in militaries the world over lay down their arms. The extent to which we have the ability to revoke our consent is the ultimate measure of our political power. Say no again and again and again until people stop doing bad things.
Lastly, and most sincerely, I hope there is a special place in hell for those who get obscenely rich from the industries of death. I feel sorry for people like that because they’re already living and creating anti-lives and anti-worlds. But hey, they can stop at any time. Revoke your consent.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy this last tune before you go.
#NoWar #JustPeace #DeescalateNow #FreeAssange
