In the 18th century, the French Illuminist Voltaire wrote a philosophical novel titled "Candide", where the view that we live in the "best world possible" is mocked mercilessly.
I am no Voltaire and I don't mean to write a philosophical novel, but let's face it: this is hardly the best world possible from any point of view.
I'll be blunter and more straightforward: I used to like the world much more than I do now. In fact, this is not the world I want to live into. One might say, "It's not like you have much of a chance to stop the world and jump off it right? So get used to it and live by". My simple answer: "No, I can't jump off, but sure as hell I am not going to live by as well". I am going to complain, to point out what makes this world so unpleasant and induce people to think about it. And while I don't trick myself into delusions of changing the world, I will at least take my time to condemn the involution of civilization we are living through.
I am not really concerned with Iran's attempts at enriching Uranium, despite I positively assume that their plan consists in using that Uranium to build up nukes. Why, shouldn't I be terribly afraid that Muslim fanatics are getting armed?
No, I shouldn't.
In case someone in the USA missed this factual point, for each action we perform we provoke a reaction, most of the times a predictable reaction, and sometimes a scarely unpredictable reaction. But a reaction is provoked nonetheless. Indeed.
Why, we are sitting on a planet that is packed with nukes. You can count them in the thousands across the world. The UN "authorised" five nations to arm themselves with nuclear weapons: the US, USSR, UK, France and China. Sure.
And how long did they believe they could prevent others from building them? In the meanwhile, India, Pakistan, Brazil and presumably Israel have built their own nuclear arsenal. Iran and North Korea are next in the line. Welcome aboard, pals!
What did they expect, when they built that first nuke they so irresponsibly used to scare the wits off Russia by blowing off Japanese cities in a futile show of military strength? That the rest of the world would stare in awe of the mighty power of the United States and bow to their whimsical desires of world dominance in fear of their new weapon?
Heck, people are stupid, generally speaking, but their amount of stupidity always manages to surprise me. There's no way other nations can be prevented from building a nuclear arsenal. Once you create a weapon, the weapon gets used. Welcome to the real world friends.
So here we are, facing this "new threat", which by the way is no threat at all. The real threat is the thousands of nukes sitting right under the American and Russian soils, weapons that retain an immense destructive potential thanks to their sheer numbers.
At the basis of this, there is one particular cause: the thwarted plan conceived by conservative Americans to reassert the might of their decaying nation in the new century. Another example of futile attempts.
In case the Republicans in the US, Dick Cheney in particular, failed to notice it, the Americans don't scare anyone anymore, apart from their allies perhaps. They have failed to win in Vietnam and now they have failed to win in Iraq. All their technological warfare is nothing when confronted with the new means of modern war. Unable to counter the Americans with weapons, the weaklings resort to different arms: such as terrorism, for example. Terrorism is what people do when they are frustrated by the inability to oppose military strength to someone that is meddling with their national interests.
This is not going to be an American century, despite the efforts set forth by Cheney and his contorted plans of world domination. New powers are rising everywhere. India, China, and who knows whom else. This is going to be a century of stupid, futile and pointless conflict caused by the immense stupidity of man. More than ever, this world we live into is dominated by greed, a thirst for power, and a general decadence of Western civilization.
We thought that Westerners had learnt from their mistakes, and that the civilization we represent had become somewhat more enlightened, less prone to condemn others and more inclined to diplomacy, understanding and peace.
Totally wrong.
Westerners today are calling for a civilization clash against the Muslims, with tones that sound reminiscent of those of the delirious Christians of the Middle Ages. Just like those ancient delusional, fanatic assassins, we rally again condemning peoples and religions and hatred becomes so common among us that we fail to recognize it.
See, I am not in the least concerned with Muslim fanatics. There are Muslim fanatics, maybe it's a side effect of living in hot countries or being ruled by testosterone-intoxicated males. There also are a majority of Muslim moderates that do not crave the death of every unbeliever on Earth. What concerns me is Western fanatism. In case we didn't notice, it's us who provoked their anger. It doesn't really take Marx and Engels to realize that if someone is bloody rich at the expenses of someone else, that someone else is going to be damn disappointed.
What a nice world we live into, with no sense of humanity left anywhere. We prove to be just beasts, wild beasts tearing at each other with paws and fangs and killing for the sake of killing. We are a species of murderous apes, evolved from murderous apes and condemned to extinction in the long run, which is probably for the best of the planet.
Let's have fun then, let's show off muscles and strength and be oh-so-manly, with all the nukes and the greed and the Dick Cheneys and the darned stupidity of this forsaken land of sorrows. It would only take that insignificant hint of vision to understand that we share the same planet, the same resources and the same rights, that we are a bunch of irrelevant beings that nature can annihilate in a blink, even without our aid. But no, we lack that vision. Our species is magnificently short-sighted. All we are skilled at is tearing at each other, hating each other, stealing food to Africans and Middle Easterners and then complain if they want to nuke us. And maybe nuke them first, so that some other guy elsewhere will think we are a bunch of bastards and will blow himself off in a restaurant somewhere. And so on. Sure, let's blow everything off. Dammit, isn't that what we do best? Blowing off all the good the best of us could create?
Murderous apes, intoxicated with their testosterone and unable to think with anything else but their balls. This is not a world, it is a hell. There's no place for peace, understanding, mercy and beauty. So go on, human species, follow your path to annihilation, blow yourself off and go to hell, together with all your capitalism, your greed, and your immense, sheer, fantastic, unmatched stupidity.
Amen.
