Peace and Love

Zeno

They were right all along, the peaceniks and beatniks, the hippies and the ban the bombers. Flower Power could heal the world, given the chance. But armed forces can never make either peace, or love, for that is not their purpose.

The tin-pot, demented dictator with the ginger wig looks set to take over Greenland and with the most powerful army on earth, no one can stop him.

You thought you didn’t like Putin very much. Another hair brained maniac intent on empire and conflict.  And what of Benjamin Netanyahu, determined to inflict holocaust, having learnt nothing from the suffering of his own race.

So much for international law, for NATO, for the US constitution. A geriatric thug with a bad case of narcissism and incipient dementia has pissed all over all of it and no one is stopping him.

So much for Peace and Love.

The trumpets of war sound in every corner. Armies are to be increased and paraded and manoeuvred and given their head once again.

And all on the pretext of “peace” and “security”.  Such lame excuses justify the murder of untried people in fast boats on the ocean. The kidnap and imprisonment of heads of state. The invasion of neighbours and foreign lands.

The Empires Strike Back! Russian or American, what difference, who cares.  Lebensraum.  Theft of oil and minerals.  The demonisation of the “enemy” who must be conquered, eliminated, overrun.

If any of this sounds familiar, then it ought  to. It has happened with monotonous regularity over thousands and thousands of years.  Again, and again and again.

Only Flower Power can stop it.

Or at least the underlying philosophy which brought out mass demonstrations against war, brutality and greed.

It was Vietnam in those days and it was the Russian communist bogyman who had to be defeated.  With napalm and vast fleets of bombers.

And so on through the ages back to the dawn of humanity and on to our eventual demise; in all probability.

For those determined not to get caught up in the feverish nonsense of humanity it looks so absurd and unnecessary. So avoidable. 

The world is a bubbling, heaving mass of unnecessary “doing”. Whereas all we need “do” is to “be”.

To want what we have, not what others have got. To understand ourselves, to see what mean and ugly motives generally drive us.  To spend our time improving life by looking after our people, not filling our own pockets.

By ditching armies and war and by concentrating on science and improving our planet. By preventing the obscene injustice whereby the rich own the world and the rest lie in the dirt.

It isn’t politics, it’s simply decency.

So very little of what goes on in the world matters. Nothing matters really – except peace and love. What a silly phrase and yet how true.  The endless grubbing around like pigs in the dirt for more of this and that. The absurdity of economic growth and the destruction of the very base of our survival – a fragile planet.

How little we need to live a good life and yet we endlessly seek more. Always at somebody else’s expense.

Commerce is a zero sum game – someone is always on the take.  Trying to convince the losers he is on their side.

How often has all this been said. How many religions have taught all this and failed.

Lay down in front of the tanks. Even if only metaphorically. Vote for peace not war. Vote for equality not capitalism and commerce.

Lay down flowers. Look within to better understand the view without.

It’s never too late.

11 Comments

  1. This hits the nail on the head so hard it’s nauseating. We’re literally watching a bunch of narcissistic, demented fossils play Risk with the planet while the rest of us are told to “just be” and “look within.” It’s a fuckin circus.

    But here’s the reality check: we keep waiting for “decency” to win, but decency doesn’t have a seat at the table when the guy across from you is a ginger-wigged sociopath, or an imperialist maniac intent on empire, or some fossilized communist hack preaching ‘the people’ while starving them to stay in power, or some religious extremist hiding behind a turban and a prayer bead while hanging people from cranes for the “crime” of wanting to breathe. We’re stuck in this infinite loop where the pretext is always “security,” “the party,” or “god,” but the result is always a body count and a fatter wallet for the elite, whoever fuck they are.

    The hypocrisy is what grinds my fucking gears. These “leaders” claim they’re stabilizing the world by leveling cities and stealing minerals, but it’s the ultimate gaslight. Waging war for peace is like fucking for virginity! It’s a logical train wreck, yet we’re expected to nod along while they parade tanks through the streets for “our own good”…

    So what’s the actual move? Does laying down flowers actually stop a thug who’s already wiped his ass with the Constitution and international law? Or has the world become so addicted to the “zero-sum game” of greed that we’ve forgotten how to actually dismantle a dictatorship without becoming one ourselves?

    I’m sick of the “monotonous regularity” of watching the worst people on Earth win. If the only alternative is “Flower Power,” then we better start throwing the whole goddamn garden, because “understanding our motives” isn’t doing jack shit to stop the fucking missiles!!

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    1. I don’t think laying flowers will stop them. But nor will tanks and guns. When the world went to war in 1939 a better world did not emerge. And the “good” side (us, supposedly) undertook atrocity every bit as terrible as the enemy. Millions upon millions were slaughtered because of a madman, just like the ginger wigged pig in the US. And there were madmen just as hideous opposing him – Stalin for one. Remember the shocking loss of civilian life in Dresden and Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Berlin and so on ad infinitum. There is no end to any of this. It will never end. Perhaps just let the fuckers get on with it.

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      1. Yeah, history has already proven that neither “laying flowers” nor “tanks” actually brings stable peace. Forcing peace fails, and total domination just sets us up for the next war. The self-proclaimed good guys usually end up committing atrocities just as bad as the enemy they’re fighting to “save” us from.

        The reality is that peace is just a reload phase. Humans are incapable of maintaining it without some higher power forcing order on us (say some aliens who have already found us and quietly examining us from the space). But we all know how that ends. If that power has even a shred of human “logic”, it slides right into the dictatorship trap. We are wired to destroy ourselves.

        I believe it’s because there’s demand for it. That sounds counterintuitive but the dictator is not the issue, it’s the followers. As long as there is demand for extreme stupidity, there is a path to self destruction. There was a time people were afraid of evil force and it was taking quite a bit of time to spread their fear-mongering ideology to collect followers and wage war (all religions, cults, world wars, etc.)… However now we are at a point that with the rise of the internet and social media, stupidity spreads like wildfire and COVID managed to have a baby… it’s a whole new strain of stupidity that we need a new fucking name for.

        I wrote a post called “Stupid vs. Evil” right before his inauguration last year. Now that I read it again, I feel like I was way too nice… way more shit than I expected has happened… (I’m new to engaging with other blogs so I’m not gonna drop the link to avoid getting flagged as spam. Thankfully my blog’s search bar works pretty damn good to find my screams there).

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      2. I think you are right . We, or most of us are wired for it. Hence my comments on looking within, examining ourselves. Or, to use another word, meditation. It does work wonders in terms of putting absurdity in perspective and keeping right out of it. The more people who deeply take in this absurdity, the more people who will refuse to play the game humans have always played. Hence when I talk of laying flowers and peace and love that is really what I mean. Quiet reflection spreading through the population and eradicating so much foolish behaviour. If it sounds odd or unrealistic, well that’s the way of it. It has worked incredibly well for me and I believe it would work as well for so many others. Just my own cranky and barking view on life, the universe and everything

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  2. Orwell’s map morphing into position in front of our eyes, perhaps minus Airstrip One (though yellow belly Starmer would sacrifice us all to Hitler in a toupee if it meant saving his own pathetic ass).

    Our post-Brexit island feels an awful lot smaller today…

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    1. I’m wondering what the correct response is to an Evil Empire. Which the US has undoubtedly become. I suspect there is no defence and the insane bloke in the ginger whig and his hideous henchmen will walk all over us. But war can not be the right response I think. It has never brought peace. And it’s not just the senile fool in the wig of course. It’s every madman who voted the swine in.

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      1. It will be interesting to see what happens in the mid-terms. I have friends in Houston who voted for him (lesser of two weevils if you can believe that) who are truly horrified in the way things have turned out. It may be a barometer to see what the populace think about his tenure, but it ain’t gonna change a thing.

        For me there is no alternative, there is no magic wand to be waved, no cavalry exits that will save us from these goons, things will play out as they play out – until eventually everything is gone.

        The doomsday clock will likely tick to midnight in my lifetime, for sure my kids, until then I’ll continue to open my curtains each morning to see if there is a mushroom cloud on the horizon, if not I’ll crack on with my day 🙂

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      2. I don’t believe there will be any Mid -Terms Michael. I believe they will be cancelled on some ludicrous pretext and the coup d’etat will be complete

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  3. I think everyone is overreacting. Good bad or indifferent, we are witnessing history taking place before our very eyes. We are only here for a little while with very little power to make a difference.

    Enjoy the show, relax, have a brew and avoid rushing to judgment based on facts that have not yet surfaced. In order to remain psychologically healthy, we should also consider working on our own tolerance for uncertainty. My tolerance for uncertainty is very high, and my door to possibilities remains open and unfettered by fear.

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    1. I entirely agree with your remedy although I stand by what I say. Trump, Putin, Stalin, Hitler – all are out of the same mold. We are at a tipping point and it could go either way. World peace or world war. And the fool in the ginger wig is not helping things.

      But down to what to me is the really important part of your answer. And it is the exact same conclusion I have come to over many years. The practice of which has led me out of depression. Letting go, resigning, ignoring, realising it’s always been the same and there’s nothing to be done. You are right. I have been planning a follow up post on exactly those lines. Fuck it and let them get on with it. Abandon the ten thousand things, as the Tao would have it.

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