Please Tell Me Why (article) by Regis Auffray on AuthorsDen

[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha'Tara]

When I was in elementary school (about one hundred and twenty years ago) I was taught that you're not supposed to hit people. It was, you might say, a pretty standard rule, and violation of it meant 'penalty time'—certainly the one caught bullying or beating on others didn't get any hero award, that was a given.

Then I grew up and lo and behold, the rule changed completely. People who were really successful at brutalizing, bullying, beating and killing others were now national heroes. They were the ones who 'defended' my rights, you see. I had no idea what those were but they were very important and no one else had them so the whole world out there, except for some friends who weren't always friends and couldn't be counted on to remain so, was out to take my rights. Oh, they wanted them bad. And they would stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to get to them. Seems they knew what those rights were better than me. Anyway, it was obvious that unless 'we' were at war with 'them' all the time, they weren't, ever, going to give up trying to get those rights.

So there it was, obvious as hell: we had to live in a state of perpetual war or we would be enslaved by 'them'. And what is war, if not bullying, destroying, maiming, raping, stealing and wholesale slaughter? Of course, I'd also been taught that the earth was the school ground, the place where everybody was supposed to play nice together, with the older ones taking care of the younger, the bigger helping and protecting the smaller. Well, it was a nice idea. I remember becoming one of the 'older' ones and putting that in practice. Surprise: it wasn't easy. Not all 'bigger' kids had a mind to be kind to the littler ones, or weaker ones. It wasn't in the genes you might say.

So there were fights, in the school yard and on the way home. The 'heroes' stood up against the gangs of bullies to defend the powerless. Not surprisingly and often, parents joined in the fray, taking sides. In fact, much of the bullying that came through the kids originated at home. You see, these self-righteous, bigoted and racist parents were teaching their kids to 'defend their rights' and it didn't matter if those 'rights' were right at all. What mattered was the cause, not justice, certainly not the reality of the place. What's reality or common sense got to do with defending rights? That sort of crap is like living a virtuous lifestyle: it just gets in the way of getting anything done. And it gets you bullied, enslaved, and eventually, killed. According to that philosophy, and it seems to pretty well sum up the philosophy of the planet as a group of rag-tag collectives, Hitler had the "right" idea after all. He should have won, of course, established his global Reich and then everybody would have been secure in their rights. Maybe I'm missing something…

What's the bottom line in all this? I have observed over my one hundred and twenty six years that Earthians aren't nice creatures at all. They are nasty. They are dirty, noisy, exploitative, sleazy, greedy, oppressive and extremely brutish. And, they live in basic denial of all that. Of course, how else could they live with themselves if even for a moment they really, really, looked at themselves? If they spent, say a mere one hour a day tracing all the ways their thinking and acting affects others negatively?

Thank Almighty God there's Radio, TV and the Internet, not to mention drugs, legal or otherwise, and endless organized entertainment to plug the gaps between work, commute, eating and sleeping. What would an Earthian's life be like, really like, if she or he, were forced to contribute one hour daily to uninterrupted honest introspection? Forced to reason the why's and wherefores of the day, without any available excuses? Without a doubt the rate of suicides would skyrocket—pardon the contradiction.

What is it that people in general really don't want to see? Why do they hide in meaningless, dead end enterprises? It's not from ignorance, not for the majority. It's from fear. Fear of taking responsibility when it is so obvious that those who claim to lead are just like the rest: cheats, abusers and self-seekers who couldn't care less about anyone and are in it strictly to powder their own ass while blowing smoke up everyone else's. Leaders of the day are the worst example of Earthian leadership and you know? That is exactly how it should be because you don't need leaders. You're too advanced for that kind of childish behavior. You're to 'educated' to let yourselves be lied to, stolen from and led by the nose as you are. You have the power to rid yourselves of your scummy leadership and you could do it practically overnight.

But you don't want to take responsibility for your own corner of the universe, your own house, your own family, your own neighborhood, your own borough, your own city, and so forth. Oh, it's not that you don't know how. Any alien listening to your 'play by play' of daily politics at all levels would quickly realize that you are quite in the know about things in general, and quite an adept at fixing everything. What she wouldn't understand is, why you do nothing meaningful about any of it. Why you go back to your comfortable pews, voting booths and assumptions about 'the enemy' and stubbornly believe, after thousands of years of 'not working' that all will be well for another day as long as the war to defend your rights is raging somewhere… that is, anywhere but in the back yard, your back yard, that is.

Oh yes, I said 'your' rights because they are no longer mine (whatever they were). I've given up on rights that the whole planet cannot freely enjoy. In fact, you know what? To hell with it: let 'them' have those rights. I'll bet the plantation they won't do any better with them than you did. I fact, I know they won't. It's a sure thing. Go ahead, take my money!

You know what your curse is? You created (or allowed to be created) a State within which you scrounged just enough freedom to make room for taking some responsibility and making a difference in the world but chose to do absolutely nothing with it. Whining and bitching doesn't make change agents and doesn't count as expressions of leadership no more than yelling at a referee gives you the right to determine the play. Attacking others, killing them and taking their resources isn't it either. Sweet talking them to Jesus or forcing them to Allah? Nope.

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity. (Voltaire)

How many absurdities do you currently hold as true , or simply 'necessary' for your good life to continue? How much longer, do you suppose, are your personal absurdities of belief going to hold up your good life? Here's one more question, while I'm on a roll here: How many innocent 'littler ones' are you going to bully, exploit, extort from, and murder before your absurdities can no longer support your good life? Maybe you should travel back to a time in Germany, say in 1945, when that nation's particular absurdities collapsed. What did those people see when they opened their eyes after ten years of self-imposed blindness to the bloody genocidal terrorism of the Nazis? You know what most of those people did when they began to realize their complicity with that system? Simple: they closed their eyes again.