Here are my thoughts based in part to the ideas presented by a writer here on Substack and from the ideas from the book on culture universalities vs. the aspects of how differences are perceived, be it individualistically or through the lenses of expectations of equality and freedom from extreme impoverishment, rape, slavery, the exploiters and abusers and warmongers.
Yes, that is a mouthful but so is the air we breath and the water we imbibe.
We developed speech to a point where a machine understands commands from here on earth as to where to fly around our earth’s moon. But also with speech is a disease of lies. It is inevitable to experience some small part of our atmosphere with impurities. Same goes with our speech. But as we leave the atmosphere, we find there is no impurity. Same with speech. Same with interactions.
So, we need to talk with our neighbors over our fences but if they are subjugating women and intruding on their freedoms from abuse for example, we have every right to disregard the elite protestations or that we have no right to intrude on their way of life.
Our ancient mechanisms to see differences of people walking near our clan’s cave for gender and family hierarchy is irrelevant for color of skin and gender roles and so on today.
We do however use our ears for glasses to aid sight!
Nevertheless, we need to think back to Greek times. They understood that the infinite aspect of the universe is reflected in our ability to recognize physical reality as truth and the virtue of honesty as truth. There is a level of moral behavior that is universal, always, and not a voice in the abyss of your frontal lobe. We have a stairway to climb towards our outer world and a stairway to climb towards our inner world and they meet at an infinite possibility of excellence I suppose. We cannot ignore one from the other.
Our ideal must be like a seeds’s purpose: To survive as a people from earth. No one need be subjected to injury or death prematurely. We are the angels who welcome the newborns. Shall we ignore those who require our immediate shift in thinking and action, or just remain on our cloud nine for them to fend for themselves? This does not sound like sound judgement. More like let’s live and let live. Maybe the future will laugh at the folly we exhibit as earthlings today.
Throughout history we can find heads of state one after the other expelling their group in hopes, that like Jonah, life will improve for the rest. Not before, of course, the assets are stripped away and some are denied further passage through life by various means of quick or tedious torture.
Afterwards, we contemporary people are content to watch the advent of events we call war but consider it inexorable. Yet our house is not blown up. How magical to watch a war without fear! Or do I not know how a human might react to the abuse at which we only stare? This is my conundrum by which I am flummoxed: Why are we diabolically disconnected from a group of humans being singled out for unreasonable abuse? Why the weak response? Why the replication of response to the weak Germany as it boasted of building its war supply and intentions in 1933?
We see a very few who have accumulated a gross amount of wealth. (Think: more than 175 billion dollars). What is a billion? My next question is, why didn’t our taxation system pare down the income by more than half in order to prevent this disproportionate amount from being in the hands of so few. This kind of wealth means all kinds of forms of power. The Russian oligarchy have been making even more obscene amounts of money in earlier years while oil prices were shooting up and up. Now they have assets everywhere and giant yachts and jets. Can I expect anyone to agree that war is a “fun” game to some of them when it procures profit for the owners of tanks and mortars production? Our side had profiteers from the Iraqi and Afghanistan wars as well. So we now know the motivation. Putin and his cronies are sending their citizens’ boys as fodder while greed takes first place.
By standing by, we are disrespecting ourselves and our country. We don’t need to fight. We need to rally as many folks in the world who will become soldiers in defense and as a back up to the country’s fighters or to help rebuild the cities behind the lines. I see no emotion of action nor movement toward planning a strategy to put the bully back in line with world views of acceptable behavior by countries in this modern age of higher than ever technology.