Cry. Suffer. Violence. Cry all time. People suffer. No one cares. Just make money & go go go like a UFO!
Violence carves up the news. Violence renders history. Mutilates art. Destroys life. New wars break out as yet more bloody reruns of neverending dramas. Tears flow for years and years then dry up as deserts fill with sand and dust. Years of tears. The biggest desert, however, is the ocean, and it is full of salt.
Recently watched HBO dramas The Pacific and Band of Brothers on Netflix about American units in the Second World War. Was appalled by the savagery of high intensity combat. These shows captured the ultimate essence of violence, it’s banality and senseless destruction as well as how those contradict with the necessity for violence and survival. Grim. I felt the same watching the horrors of melee combat in films set in Ancient times such as The Gladiator and The Eagle. Felt the same grimness watching the Medieval combat within The Last Kingdom series, Braveheart, and shows set in the Crusades. First World War movies such as every version of All Quiet on the Western Front and 1917. There are amazing war films and shows set in Ancient and Medieval East Asia, in Africa, in the Americas, and many others whose titles jumble together in a carnage of memories set free with tears. The glory and the heroism itself brings tears as well as the horror of heroism.
Oh, the vastness of wars stretched out over time and place. Who remembers those where many hundreds and many thousands died in longago wars and battles so remote in the mind even history buffs must look them up? There are wars lost to history where not even the names and places are remembered. Often the tribes, cities, and civilizations of everyone and anyone who could and would are extinct.
I cry at all the wars and the suffering we humans put ourselves thru for our violence never ends and we all want it to end so much.
Vastness of wars…
Prehistoric
Ancient
Medieval
Modern
Postmodern
Now
Everywhere…
Africa
Eurasia
Australia
Zealandia
North America
South America
Global
We justify and explain every one of our causes with righteousness and vigor. We Humans defend with great vigilance and mayhem then resign ourselves to the madness of it all to the endless hatred and suffering and torment we inflict upon each other in the name of clan, tribe, politics, religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, language, sex, gender, culture, and so on and on and on and on and on as if we are unable to break free from our robotic, biological programming…and in the moment we justify what we do simply to survive. Yes, to survive. Survive. And live.
Some Humans with knowledge and experience of UAPs/UFOs claim there is indeed a real Galactic Federation of extraterrestrial species as well as hostile species opposing such said Federation. Many of these so-called Aliens are alleged to look at us and shudder. Our lives down in this Earth are short and brutal. We’re often unable to get along within our own families much less our many countries. Ironically, our human penchant for mutual slaughter supposedly makes our species ferocious fighters and our planet too difficult to conquer unless the “Aliens” commit an Earthwide omnicide. Meanwhile, Non-Human Intelligences from the stars or not, we are the one Homo species to successfully conquer, assimilate, and/or exterminate all of the other Homo peoples who once shared Earth with us. We’re also the one species upon and within our planet driving other living organisms into mass extinctions.
And I cry and sob. Yeah, maybe I’m a big old crybaby and you’re just a tough old piece of fencepost, sure, and at least I’ve the goddamn guts to allow myself to be vulnerable and boohoo away in the first place, you fenceposts rotting away in rocks and dirt and broken tangles of rusty, barbed wire.
At some point in time and place, however, one must let go of such grief and stand back up. We must learn to practice the practices of accepting what is so before we can even begin to change anything. We must learn to manage change before we may consider the practices of transformation. Love, compassion, forgiveness, courage, empathy, even anger, anger without rage and blame, await our practices as Humans.
Our past makes us stronger and more flexible only if we learn our lessons.
One thing, tho, watching all of those World War movies sure made me want to light up and smoke cigarettes. Oh, I’d quit eons ago, but it’s those rituals of tapping a pack of cigarettes and the camaraderie of sharing lights and smokes made me yearn for a smoke myself. Thing is they all stink after awhile, cigarettes and cigars and pipes do, your clothes and hair reek, and folks die of cancer, COPD, emphysema, and God knows what the Hell else.
It’s a common war movie trope, too, for a non-smoker to get so stressed out from the horrors of combat they often start smokestacking away on tobacco. Another common trope is for combatants to share smokes with the enemy. What would happened if they shared cannabis instead of tobacco and got stoned together around all the guns and foxholes?
William Dudley Bass
Thursday 28 September 2023
Thursday 5 October 2023
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.