An end to war or the end of humanity

If humanity doesn't find a way to end wars, the very existence of our species is at risk of being wiped out, writes Gerry Georgatos.

BEFORE PROCEEDING to read this article, please listen to this interview. For many, the war on Iraq does not seem that long ago. People in Iraq die to this day because of the invasion by the “coalition of the willing” but more than one in five of the world’s population has been born after the invasion.

War is the main preoccupation of humanity. Humanity has been ordered around war; in preparedness for war, in an escalation of preparation hurrying to ensure conflict, in pitted hate of the other, in the actual bloody act of war, in the foggy celebration of war. The cycle does not end.

“I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.” ~ Albert Einstein

Civilisation is centred on war, controlling each human to this end. Each day is committed to the purpose of war. Hierarchy is the gatekeeper of war. War serves powerful elites — wicked people who know each other. Nations exist to facilitate war; they are the middle managers. Unseen servants to the elites are the upper management. They determine the public narratives. They are all-powerful. No whistleblowing has ever ended or averted war.

War is self-perpetuating. But it cannot exist without nations, without hierarchy, without hate, without lies.

“For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.” ~ Pythagoras

The ability to discover the truth is outstripped by the capability to manifest deceit.

Without war and the universal guarantee to an end to all forms of war – and to any form of preparation for war – only then is there peace.

The malaise that has been for millennia, the human cannibalism we term as war, makes us the only species on the Earth and likely throughout the cosmos that experiences a consciousness we term “evil”. I cannot think of any other species on our planet that exhibits any form of the strict definition of evil.

For millennia, only humans have preoccupied their brief claim to life, to find more ways to kill each other, to quickly kill each other, to kill more of each other in a mere moment. The extinction of the human species is guaranteed, according to the math — simple arithmetic. Not even the unseen elites will survive.

“War itself is, of course, a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilised pursuit. It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace.” ~ Walter Cronkite

If the Earth can be saved in time, from the cataclysmic apocalypse that is the human-incurred destruction of the planet’s atmosphere and seas, there must come an end to civilisation as we know it, bent on war, driven by war. The end of the world is at stake. To some extent, it is as if human beings deserve this end, they will not be missed. But if any of us have any sense of empathy for all the other life on this planet, they do not deserve suffering and extinction.

The burning of the planet by recklessly tampering with the Earth’s maths and physics has brought evident torment to the planet’s filaments — the atmosphere, the seas, the crust. To continue with the madness of actual weapons of mass annihilation and destruction, arithmetically we all know where the numbers lead. To paraphrase Charles Darwin, it is not the smartest or strongest who survive but those who change.

We must change our ways, or if we idle in the chaos, we are also watching and narrating our demise as a species.

It is 90 seconds to midnight, we have to say it simply. Complexifying the arguments, we risk bogging ourselves into endless debates, sophism, for which we have run out of time, guaranteeing the end.

“The Bible just said ‘Thou shalt not kill’, then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath.” ~ John Marsden