![Touchy Politics: The Foreign Policies of Big Governments
[or reason #457 why i’m not a democrat. or a fucking republican.]
I don’t have the political prowess or the history base to compose an elegant introduction to an idea that’s equally simple and insane: What if genocide is a recent cultural construct, a euphemism that came from the same compassionate human place as religion and spirituality, to explain the indifference of the way this earth works?
The word genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1943. Remember that year?
If you think this idea is fucked, don’t ever read War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence Keeley. It will make you mad. It will make you feel like an ant, and ants aren’t for everyone. It will make you powerless and foolish. It will make you turn on the time machine and choose the red pill.
[i want the red pill. i want to believe in a good god and a bad devil. i want a heaven and a hell. i want people to be either good or bad, so i can condemn or congratulate them without worrying about gray matters. this is because i want to believe in my own goodness, which sucks the sting from my badness. but the red pill sticks in my throat, and the story ends.]
Now: Flash back to the holocaust, then flash forward to Darfur, or North Korea, or Rwanda, or China, or Congo, or Liberia, or take your pick. Sometimes the body counts are called massacres if they’re not high enough. But remember 1943.
And then: The United Nations was created so genocide would never happen again. Um, whoops?
So this thought that genocide and mass murdering via fucked up government isn’t really genocide, but something bigger than human beings can actually control or prevent or even cause, has crossed my mind a couple times. This is not an easy way to think, because it feels evil. It’s the same sensation I get when I hear people hollering about global warming and climate changes and how we can prevent this terrible thing that we, the human beings of the world, have caused.
This doesn’t mean I don’t think we shouldn’t try. But I don’t think we’re nearly as powerful as we think we are, and I think there’s a reason why our brains have come to be built this way. We can stop evil. We can change the weather. We can make the world work the way we want it to, because we are all little gods with little god powers.
And then I go and listen to Dan Carlin again, which always fucks with my head, because the dude is comfortable thinking these things, and has the guts to say them out loud. Even if you’re put off by his limbaugh-rant level of enthusiasm, it’s hard to argue with the latest Common Sense show: A Little Less Evil.
It makes too much sense, and that sucks.
[highly recommended for ranty liberals and uppity conservatives who think the US “war” with Iraq or Vietnam or Bosnia or Korea - or take your pick - is a bad fucking idea.]](http://7.media.tumblr.com/kfibP3zrMl7twk3mwJunTzkuo1_400.jpg)
Touchy Politics: The Foreign Policies of Big Governments
[or reason #457 why i’m not a democrat. or a fucking republican.]
I don’t have the political prowess or the history base to compose an elegant introduction to an idea that’s equally simple and insane: What if genocide is a recent cultural construct, a euphemism that came from the same compassionate human place as religion and spirituality, to explain the indifference of the way this earth works?
The word genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1943. Remember that year?
If you think this idea is fucked, don’t ever read War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage by Lawrence Keeley. It will make you mad. It will make you feel like an ant, and ants aren’t for everyone. It will make you powerless and foolish. It will make you turn on the time machine and choose the red pill.
[i want the red pill. i want to believe in a good god and a bad devil. i want a heaven and a hell. i want people to be either good or bad, so i can condemn or congratulate them without worrying about gray matters. this is because i want to believe in my own goodness, which sucks the sting from my badness. but the red pill sticks in my throat, and the story ends.]
Now: Flash back to the holocaust, then flash forward to Darfur, or North Korea, or Rwanda, or China, or Congo, or Liberia, or take your pick. Sometimes the body counts are called massacres if they’re not high enough. But remember 1943.
And then: The United Nations was created so genocide would never happen again. Um, whoops?
So this thought that genocide and mass murdering via fucked up government isn’t really genocide, but something bigger than human beings can actually control or prevent or even cause, has crossed my mind a couple times. This is not an easy way to think, because it feels evil. It’s the same sensation I get when I hear people hollering about global warming and climate changes and how we can prevent this terrible thing that we, the human beings of the world, have caused.
This doesn’t mean I don’t think we shouldn’t try. But I don’t think we’re nearly as powerful as we think we are, and I think there’s a reason why our brains have come to be built this way. We can stop evil. We can change the weather. We can make the world work the way we want it to, because we are all little gods with little god powers.
And then I go and listen to Dan Carlin again, which always fucks with my head, because the dude is comfortable thinking these things, and has the guts to say them out loud. Even if you’re put off by his limbaugh-rant level of enthusiasm, it’s hard to argue with the latest Common Sense show: A Little Less Evil.
It makes too much sense, and that sucks.
[highly recommended for ranty liberals and uppity conservatives who think the US “war” with Iraq or Vietnam or Bosnia or Korea - or take your pick - is a bad fucking idea.]
