Are We More Invested in War or Peace?
Russia said today it will treat U.S. warplanes in Syria as "targets" after the U.S. downed a Syrian jet. Meanwhile, an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is allegedly widening in scope and protesters recently disrupted NYC's Trump-themed Julius Caesar play by rushing the stage and shouting "CNN is ISIS!"
I imagine most of us are asking right about now (if we haven't already been for months): "What is this world coming to? Has the world ever been this mad?"
I imagine we also think, "If only the other side would bend the knee and see that their narrative is wrong and ours is right, then everything would be okay again."
Right?
But would it?
It seems to me, while the world becomes a caricature of itself and offers up a million and one reasons to be afraid, enraged or aloof, we are being presented with a unique opportunity to see it all for what it is decide what is truly important and what kind of world we want to live in.
Do we really want to live in a world where the greatest satisfaction we get in life in is indicting the "other" at all costs? Where the buzz we get from seeing someone else humiliated or suffering is more important than finding common ground? It's like watching a medieval sporting event where the only thing that matters is that the other team ends up bloody or dead.
In fact, it seems that many Trump-bloodthirsty Americans might actually be more invested in proving the Russians "cheated" him into office than whether the U.S. and Russia start a third World War that ends life on planet earth. Meanwhile, many Trump supporters might actually be more invested in proving that anyone who doesn't support Trump is a globalist conspirator than finding ways to gracefully dethrone the financial elite who are puppet mastering the whole thing.
Are people really just objects to be sacrificed upon our altar of self-righteousness, myopic ideology?
When you step back from it all impersonally and don't take a side, it starts to look like some large-scale cock fight where the whole earth is the ring. Doesn't it?
But while we are all writhing around as a collective looking for answers, we are also presented with an unprecedented opportunity to see this "reality" for what it is: unreal, silly, absurd and cartoony.
The true and only danger, despite appearances and looming WWIII (and civil war) threats, seems to be in saying, "To hell with it all. Since everything is absurd and no one's got it right... I'll just go 'do me' and keep my head down because there's nothing I can do about it and it's all too dangerous right now to stick my neck out anyway."
Some stuff matters, and the future of planet earth is one of them, and there is something we can do about it beyond pointing out how absurd everyone is to act out this unreality and behave so badly.
But how do we help ourselves and others see it and find our way out? That is the question. To be or not to be?
What if, one by one, we stepped out of the ring, stopped pecking aimlessly at whatever roosters seemed to be coming at us, and reinvested ourselves in the outcome of the planet. What if we did more than say, "It's all absurd. Screw the world?" What if we decided that every soul matters -- yes, even those who are stupid and narrow-minded enough to be or believe [fill-in-the-blank] -- and that there was something we could do about it all? What if we each took responsibility for our secret nastiness and short-lived "victories" over others, and truly followed the golden rule?
Do unto others as you would have them do to you -- not as you think they do to you or before they can do to you.
Individually and collectively we must each and all decide whether our sense of superiority over others and the delight we take in this smugness is more important than being what so many of us purport we are: One. God's children. Citizens of cosmos.
However you choose to see it or say it, I hope we can become it before we destroy the earth. This day we must choose what God, Universe, Ideals, Love, and/or One we serve.
Will we serve the thrill of confusion and "otherhood," or the peace of solidarity and brotherhood?
I vow before you this day to TRY to step out of the ring and serve you, my sisters and brothers, my fathers and mothers, my universe, my God and myself. Om. Amen. Āmīn. So be it. It is done. It is finished. It is sealed.
