Personally I mourn the loss of life in Paris, Beirut, in the sky over Sinai, and everywhere else, to violence. These acts, murder and war diminish the human spirit. Every time something like this happens it dulls human consciousness and we lapse into the debilitating grayness of wrong thinking.
America does not need ISIS or any other foreign group to commit acts of terror here. We do it to ourselves. It is Americans who have killed people in theaters and innocent children at school shootings. Homegrown terrorism. Armed to the teeth we shoot each other every day in random acts of violence and anger.
When I look around each day I can’t help but be grateful for my life. Grateful I was born in America where I have had a good life full of opportunity. I acknowledge that America is not perfect, we are an experiment in progress. There are those within our own country who would use fear to manipulate us for their own goals during the fog of war. The battle cries and tribal drumbeat rally the masses into a frenzy of revenge against the uncivilized barbarians. Isn’t this the same drumbeat to which the barbarians are marching?
I have been in the military and believe in self-defense. But I also believe that human evolution holds something for us beyond our current stone-age reactionary minds. As a species, we can’t evolve unless we take risks to go beyond this never-ending cycle of tribalism that clearly seems to be leading humanity to extinction.
j r martin