Now North Korea and South Korea are at it again. Looks to us very much like North Korea is at fault…. but of course, they deny that.
And how blameless are ‘we’ ( I mean South Korea and us, the West, we are on South Korea’s side, right?) ?
Because if they start throwing shells what sort of good result do we expect from throwing shells back?
Hard though it might be to not fire back isn’t it true that we’d look in any international court including the informal court of public opinion, world wide, much better, much cleaner, much clearer, much more provably and demonstrably ‘right’ if we didn’t fire back?
So that for every subsequent shell they threw they’d make themselves more and more demonstrably in the wrong – bad, stupid, evil?
And what did we hope to gain by firing back? Start a war? End a war?
There was nothing to gain. Nothing.
Only lives to lose. People to die.
The commentators everywhere talking about this incident today – ‘North Korea’ did this and ‘North Korea’ did that.
But ‘North Korea’ did nothing. ‘North Korea’ is a political concept and/or a geographic concent, an economic concept – it is a concept, not a thing.
‘IT’ doesn’t do things.
People do things.
It was the North and South Korean people who did all this.
And it is our belief that the North Korean people are acting under duress, under subjugation by an oppressive and evil regime, are not free to do as they wish but suffer deprivation and even starvation under this evil regime.
Which is an argument for excusing the North Korean people and blaming only their leaders – Kim Jong Il and his mob.
In which case the reportage should be ‘Kim Jong Il’ caused shells to be fired today.
Not “North Korea” fired shells. Because “North Korea” fired shells makes it sound as though each and every person in North Korea was responsible for this. I’ll wager 99% of them didn’t even know it had happened when it happened.
We should tell it as it is.
But, we, on our side, are supposedly different. We don’t suffer under oppressive regimes and we ARE free to do as we wish.
In which case we have no excuse and you are I must share responsibility for the deaths that occurred in North Korea from ‘our’ return of fire.
We colluded – ‘freely’ – to bring about those deaths and maimings. You and I, all of us.
‘We’ can say ‘WE’ because we claim freedom. We claim to be where we want to be doing what we want to do in freedom. Hence we have no excuse and must share responsibility.
Well in that case we also share opportunity for doing things to help.
If we willy-nilly must share responsibility for the deaths and injuries that are caused by our side we also have a responsibility to consider the actions of our side carefully before agreeing with them, condoning them.
And part of ‘considering’ is viewing options, planning strategies, actions.
And as people we’ve never had a better time for doing such.
For the first time we can each do something to effect these conflicts blown up, organised, directed by our ‘masters’.
For too long, far too long, for all of human history, we, the people, have had to struggle, fight, die, be maimed and tormented, tortured in the course of implementing strategies that our ‘masters’ deem appropriate.
Often brother against brother. As in Korea today.
As people we never before could really talk to each other, not within our own ‘armies’ nor across to folks in the other ‘armies’.
The coherence of a mass of people, the expression of a direction, a will, was only possible by the institution of leaders who were the mouthpieces for this.
Now we have something very different. This robot thing, this intelligent telephone, the computer – soon to be indistinguishable from a phone.
Now the people can talk to any of the people they wish to talk to.
Individually or in groups.
Groups can form and dissolve in moments. Communications continue at bewildering pace like the deafening clamour in a rookery except it is all intelligible within the realms of the computer and the internet.
I can talk to the whole world here, including the leaders and the generals, the soldiers, the sailors – the injured in the hospitals – those about to die on the front line – on either side! On my side and on the other side!
And we should be talking to each other and saying to each other that we don’t want to hurt each other. That we want to help each other. Hard as that is.
Lets me practical. Pragmatic: do only what is practically of benefit. Face the human facts of greed and apathy. Face it that we don’t want to share another’s agony, deprivation, torment, starvation, slavery. Face it that we don’t want to give up our wealth and ease.
Don’t do a sanctimonious, hypocritical, weaselly cop-out lying pretend about it. Get real. Tell it as it is.
I got it all and I’m not giving it up.
BUT: I got so much I can spare a little. If it don’t hurt me too much I can help. And I can be truthful about the limits of my greed – how much I don’t want from you – how much I am not looking to cheat you, steal from you, increase your pain and tribulation.
I can stand before you revealed as a fat, spoilt, greedy, idle westerner and admit to it – but I can also insist as I stand revealed that I don’t want your last forests, I don’t want to enslave you in one of our international mega companies slaving in filthy and dangerous conditions for a pittance, I don’t want our soldiers to come to your village and destroy it and kill your people, I don’t want our guns trained on you and your people, I don’t want your land, I don’t want to occupy your land: I bear you no ill will!
AND – I would like to help you if I can – given the limitations of my greed and indolence and fear of discomfort.
We can expose ourselves, the increasingly hated Western ‘developed’, ‘materialist’, ‘capitalistic’, ‘imperialistic’, ‘industrialised’ west as what we are. We are not that bad. And we suffer, too.
Until we expose ourselves and discover our counterparts in the other nations and the other armies we all on both sides will continue to be dumb pawns, cannon-fodder, in ridiculous wars and conflicts…
It needs our solutions. It needs US to talk to US because it it WE who suffer.
Led by a PM or a President – going to war and dying because of this in this day and age. Killing thousands, bringing terror and destruction, disease and deprivation on thousands and thousands is ludicrous. It is Middle Ages thinking. It comes from the time of Khengis Khan.
We have always been cut off from each other. That was our weakness. And ‘leaders’ have always been able to manipulate us so that part of US oppresses another part of US.
Together we stand. Divided we fall. And, historically, the people of the world are always divided. Divided in the first place by the necessary fight for food for survival which pits family against family for scarce resources.
Presided over by families that don’t have this primitive imperative because they overcame it some time ago and now through the generations they simply maintain their position and increase their web of contacts, friends, allies, while you and I, generation after generation, start again with nothing but our family, our little nuclear family, essentially alone in the world versus the rest.
So we have this wonderful new tool which enables us all to come together. The computerised internet.
We can meet, think, plan, know here.
And like the missionaries once travelled the world with the aim of telling everyone about ‘The Bible’ and ‘The One True God’ in order to bring everyone together and create a New World we should be travelling the world to get everyone onto the internet with equal access.
And a prime target for that is the people in North Korea.
We need to get through to them.
We need everyone of them to have access to the rest of us, via the internet.
So we should be dropping thousands and thousands of internet capable cellphones to them.
That’s what we should be shelling them with.
Love. Friendship. Ability. Opportunity. New Dawn. New Horizons. Greetings. Welcomings.