I would like to raise the opportunity today, in remembrance of “Anzac” and actually to all the Anzacs of the world, to write briefly to you about the senseless and growing threat of increasing global violence… Knowing that those who follow this blog in different countries, may not have heard of “Anzac” as such… I would like to ask to try to take it as highlighted…”to strive, to seek, and not to yield”.
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Whilst “Anzac Day” in Australia and New Zealand bring to mind the Anzac landing at Gallipoli in 1915 on the 25th of April, a day where many were killed during both an epic and horror event against the evil of a major enemy, – Anzac remembrance is in someway overrated in it’s prime focus on the past, .. rather than a more rightly and joined focus on the future where the evil of major wars should be prevented …
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For Australia this particular event, 100 years ago, was a profound loss and disaster.. Apart from this, many Australian soldiers and others died on the battlefield of Gallipoli whilst they have been under the illusion that they would go there for some adventure, very young in age, and often ill-prepared…Often misled, somehow, by the authorities who did recruit them with incorrect information, – propaganda as well…It’s a never-ending story which repeats itself time after time, propaganda and war, – war and propaganda. And the stories are rarely fully correct. Those poor soldiers in those days had really not the faintest idea where they were in for… This massacre was a shame for so many who lost their lives, for their families, – but also perhaps a disgrace for Government authorities who did recruit them the way they did, and the way those young soldiers were prepared. Being in the hands of government authorities and the military, who may wrongly guide you into defeat disaster and death, – is in essence a cheat against human life and not often highlighted in the public domain, – where governments do fail in wise assessment on the risks they take.
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If those who died could speak from their graves today, Anzac would not be about the past but about the future.
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War and conflict, where ever it was, where ever it will be, marks both the souls of those who are involved and the countries which are affected, – either by major destruction or escalating sectarian violence.
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This will be the picture of future war’s… Close to, or, total destruction perhaps, where even the sounds of propaganda get silenced, whether they were right or wrong.
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In past war’s soldiers returned to their country of origin with hardly any after care for the trauma’s they sustained. Often with things they don’t want to talk about anymore. But torments still festering as a sickness in their souls, with so many PTSD and other human disorders in those people who sustained the particular horrors in monstrous combat.
Those who died, died alone, – those who were able to survive came back and often had to live a very isolated and lonely life, in a different world, often misunderstood and undervalued…
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Gallipoli – is only one of the many battlefields of the past century. One was worse than the other. Some battlefield’s were totally senseless and ill-selected by those who did decide to go to war, – not rarely for the wrong reasons at a cost of many innocent people.
The Australian sentiment from ” Anzac” commemoration could be: This never ever again! …Like people who visit the Auschwitz extermination concentration camps – built and operated by the Third Reich during the 2nd World War. Those people, so many years later, may also feel that this should never happen again. However the slaughter of people goes on and on in different identities, and those being responsible not often held accountable.
The victims however in the future are of all kind, – not only restricted to the poor, but also to the rich. Not only restricted to one religion, but potentially to all religions. Not only restricted to two countries but to many countries…It is not a concern of any one race, it is the concern for the all human race where human dignity suffers on the potential and mindless onslaught across nations.. Where human dignity suffers, because humanity became inhumane by not avoiding the last choice of murder carnage and perhaps extermination.
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When we think about those who died in the past, we need to be mindful of those who may die in the future, as just this should be the lesson of history, – how to prevent this happening again.
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We live in a time where quality and quality improvement is so important, but the last seems to be restricted to some areas of life and manufacturing, – but not to all life and the improvement of life.
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People often do live in joint circumstances today where resentment can grow in unexpected ways….
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Violence never created, rarely accomplished, – and so it will never do in the future where the voice of reason is not heard or ignored. And so where modern violence is ignited, it will create new violence and possibly massive and unpredicted retaliation. The last with perhaps the same repetitive propaganda to make people go to war. War and violence, violence and war, – both massacres and slaughter where the law of civilisation does not count anymore.
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We can see glimpses on this from Afghanistan to Yemen, from the deserts in Syria and Iraq where ISIS tries to prevail in not less than barbaric style, – glimpses on the conflicts of African countries, and the tensions between Israel and the Palestinian people. But also the dynamics around Iran and the Ukraine…The list goes on, on and on….
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We live in a time where collective obsession may reach epidemic proportions, supported by social media. As we have seen already at an early stage…
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Whilst we increasingly and calmly seem to accept the reports of civilian butchery in far away lands, we tend as well to enjoy the television entertainment of movies with all sorts of violence – without restrictions for our children, who should be able to learn and live by example. But many of those youngsters are already confused by what they see at home, by what they experience on the street and via television or social media. Some of them in dysfunctional families. Some of them even willing to join ISIS, and travel to Syria to join this mindless evil of all evils, – at this time…
Countries, now, make it easy for other countries of all shades of sanity, to get whatever weapons of destruction they desire. Not recognising that unpredictable collective behaviour may affect us all in a chain reaction of violence. Things can easily have a domino effect.. Too many Governments preach peace with their lips and consider wars with intentions. Intentions on which strategy makers may get locked in political decisions, from which there is no escape anymore.
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The question is what we really learnt from Anzac and all those other Anzacs of the world. The fact that so many people from Australia, New Zealand and other countries died in one particular lost Gallipoli battle, with particular facts not highlighted, – should at this stage not be the sole sentiment, – but merely the realistic concern for the future, – our future. A future where governments proved to have learnt from the past , a future where we have a greater awareness of what to expect from our governments, where the last being possible. Propaganda is a dangerous thing when used for the wrong reasons to mislead the public….whether it is used in e.g. Russia or the US, or anywhere else…
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The sickness of the human soul is able to consume and breed violence, create repression which produces retaliation. And so the Anzac’s all over the world should not only cherish those who died in – as they may say – “noble conflict”, but cherish life for the living and make a call for joint efforts to slow down the destructive brutality which is breeding everywhere and anywhere. The brutality which affects the poor and the children. The brutality which poisons the relations between men because they are eg either a Jew or Muslim. The violence among Muslim states. But also the potential still,- of escalating violence around the Ukraine. We see the slow destruction of children as well, – not only by trafficking, but also by hunger and lack of the most basic schooling and living eg in houses with neither comfort nor heat…
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They are the future, but what sort of future if care and respect for life are insufficient? .. A new generation as such can spiral down in savagery and destruction, both at home and across the world.
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Prejudice among group dynamics in those children and young adults is the future we have to face, with even more advanced instruments of social media. With even more hatred, more bitterness and more combat missions… And as we see the western world is neither immune nor always right.
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I have no answer for those problems , neither principles to change all this.. There are simply no final answers, but when you teach to hate and to fear your neighbours because they are different in colour or beliefs, – you may lose part of your own identity if you don’t respect the other as yourself.. It starts with our children and all the youngsters.. It’s all about mastering the concept we have to learn to live with each other, however with the law enforcement and protection we all deserve, – based on being equal, regardless race or religion, based on being creative as a species, creative this way, – and not the other way!
When we learn to respect each other, recognising we share the same short moment of life, recognising that we all deserve a chance to live our lives in purpose … and respect that ways can be different without conflict on battlefields, – there will be less future Anzacs anymore and this should be the message among communities, cities and countries… And if we so look around us as fellow men, – we may be able to dress the wounds among us, and so we may become in our own souls brothers and citizens of this world again, as part of an evolution of conscious… As part of an evolution over decades and centuries… As part of an evolution that actually, – actually we have no other realistic choice with all we have to destroy if mass hysteria gets grip on those who hate.
Is this easy?… No, for sure not, – it is the biggest challenge we face on this planet….
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It is like the Indian diplomat and politician Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit once said:… “The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.” ..
No matter how necessary or justified a war may seem, no matter that wars are as old as humankind, – a new large and widespread, and – or – all over war, will take away from us the ability to live and makes all of us the victim. And once most of us are dead, crippled, or burnt, or poisoned, we have seen the end of war.. But at what price?.. It is simply better neither to risk it nor to come too close to it, as there is no common international law that war’s – if any – should be restricted to any one or two countries alone. And even then it is better to decide on the lesser evil, as even though not always true, – an unjust peace can be better than a just war.
…To strive,.. to seek in peace – as Alfred Tennyson, the British poet once said – to find, ..and not to yield in foremost peace, – the last one, however, … the only battle worth waging….It’s all a matter of wisdom, understanding and respect, mutual respect, – but also to make a mutual and united stance against evil…No act of peace however, no matter how small, is ever wasted.. And this, – this should be the baseline education for future generations and an understanding for almost all people around the world, young and old, – as humanity has never been created to sustain the potential of future warfare at the scale it can escalate and destroy each other.
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Thank you!
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Paul
We dream of things that never were and say: "Why not?" 