Feature Article October 3, 2001
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A QuandaryIt is necessary to muse about the foibles of man while the world echoes and reechoes in the wake of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. My thoughts are as confused as are the reasons for the attack. In all wars rationalization depends upon the viewpoint of the combatants, while propaganda encourages the fighting. Who is right or wrong? Who is just or unjust? That has never been solved in the history of war, as combatants interchange alliance and adversary over centuries of squabbling. The winner becomes righteous, and yesterday's foe is today's friend.
Symbols are raised, rallying accomplished, and one is expected to declare allegiance without knowing all truths behind the conflict. Blind obedience to a leader's whim is expected - loyalty to the cause, no matter what the personal cost in life or conscience.
What can we, the little fellows, at the bottom of the war fodder chain do, except to express sympathy and confusion?
Every one is touched in conflict, the innocent and the guilty - judged by whom, as each side proclaims its innocence and denies its guilt. Some are more affected than others are; lives on earth are lost, and souls soar to heaven for being killed and killing, depending upon particular religious beliefs.
Huge financial profits are accumulated, while lives and homes are wiped out.
I can express only so much concern or sympathy without losing sanity. To whom do I give it?
To the 6000 lives of business people wiped out in matter of hours, or to the equivalent number of fellow humans wiped out by shoddy business practices in the pursuit of profit at any cost? Six thousand human lives expiring over a longer period of time will not rally the troops, but surely deserve as much concern.
My sympathy also goes to the many people losing jobs in the economic slowdown caused by us constricting our lifestyle from fear, as well as to our seasonal workers who annually plan for an interruption of work, yet demand no more than their normal due. Big business was quick in reducing workers to keep dividends up.
Political leaders urge me to continue spending money on shopping to disguise my age, be amused, and keep in style, while the next film clip shows gaunt fellow humans begging for food and water while trying to flee annihilation.
I am to give my blood for humanitarian reasons, while the pharmaceutical industries won't produce cheap drugs to stem the tide of Aids and other diseases in the Third World. I am in a quandary, and our personal idiosyncrasies, our troubles, and our local politics pale in comparison or do they? A basic mathematical premise states that the whole is the sum of its parts. The world is made up of all of us and reflects what we are.
