WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE: Part Two

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."  ~Albert Einstein

"One death is a tradgedy;

one million is a statistic."

~Joseph Stalin

  I said I felt odd scanning the names of passengers of the Titanic to see if I had "pretend" lived or died, and that I would feel especially uncomfortable doing the same thing with a list of victims from The World Trade Center. This, given my emotional ties and relative proximity to the event on the river of time, but I have to admit that I would eventually reach a point far enough downstream to a place in the past where I just wouldn't be effected. And pretty quickly too.

 If I were to circumnavigate certain personal tragedies in my own life, I would imagine that somewhere just past the Space Shuttle Challenger, Vietnam, and World war II, -those last two only because of older relatives and friends, I would find myself in uncharted emotional territory. In the grand scheme of things, If you were to display it by a map with a long river representing time and a boat to indicate how far I just traveled on my journey of emotional relevance, you wouldn't even have seen the boat budge.

...So what would it mean to me to go further back?

"What does NASA stand for? Need Another Seven Astronauts."

This was one of many jokes about the Challenger disaster.  I remember that it took almost two weeks before I started to hear jokes about the tradgedy. Things spread by word of mouth back then. Perhaps the internet would have sped that process up. It's darkly funny now, but it was horrible to hear not long after the actual event.

  It is said that between the time he came roaring out of the Steppes on his war horse and until he died, Genghis Khan's short lived Mongolian Empire Slaughtered somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 million people.These were living, breathing people who had hopes and dreams just like Millvina's family along with everyone else on board the Titanic and at the World Trade Center. Most, (probably all.) of Khan's victims died savage, brutally horrific deaths, (as did the Cathars.) and yet, if you gave me a list with their names, it might take a hell of a long time, but I could mention everyone of them in any context with no emotional attachment whatsoever.

“I am the punishment of God...If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”

~Genghis Kahn

 All of this begs the question, "So what did you accomplish here?" Well, I certainly haven't broke any new ground by revealing that "Time heals all wounds" or that "Time lends perspective." I'm also fairly certain that that while the little monkey-men who first hopped out of the trees to brave the Savannah may not have been have been aware of this axiom, certainly those who lived within a short time-boat ride forward were. Actually, I wrote all this to ask you a question..."If the passage of time heals wounds and lends perspective, why don't we ever learn anything from it?

"The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant."

~Salvador Dali

 Accidental tragedies such as the Titanic and Challenger will most assuredly always happen, but why is there no end to atrocity? What do we ever really learn from history? If it can be said that the common goal of all modern societies is to minimize or end human suffering, then why don't we ever seem to make significant strides? Yes, it is understood that there are evil people in this world, and not because the influence of some fictional devil, demon, or jinn, but rather because of a complex mixture of contributing factors, such as, but certainly not limited to mental disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, chemical imbalance, oppression, improper nurturing due to physical and mental abuse, poverty and/or lack of education, etc. It would appear that people, much like disasters, can be the culmination of a series of mistakes and misfortunes.

Gorby and Ronnie square off.

 You may point to events within my own lifetime to illustrate progress, for example the end of the Cold War and the understanding between the United States and what used to be the U.S.S.R. of mutually assured destruction. However, I would caution you to hazard a glance at India and Pakistan. With a whole lot of spilt blood and no love lost between them, (and a fuck-load of nukes) they stand poised to bring nuclear holocaust to the entire planet as a means of settling a very old score. Millions have died already in their previous conflicts. So what was the catalyst for this suffering and senseless loss of human life? If you answered differences with a regard to an invisible guy in the sky, I'd say,"Bingo."

It's all fun and games until it goes thermonuclear.

 Can we blame the invisible guy? As a de facto-atheist, I would say no. We can't blame that guy, not unless we stand ready to blame ourselves. After all, we invented him. While there are many vehicles for evil, religion just happens to be one of the most fuel efficient. The problem is more complex, part of a much larger series of mistakes and misfortunes. A disaster that gained momentum a very long time ago. With over 7 billion of us on this planet now, the variables are endless.

 National Geographic did a study recently where they used a worldwide database of human physical characteristics and pictures of faces to determine what the average person on Earth looked like. When they were done crunching all the numbers, (and faces.) they came up with Han, a 28 year old Chinese man. Han represents what the most common person on earth looks like, how old and what nationality that person is. In other words, Han is the ultimate average Joe.

Meet Han, the ultimate average Joe

 I sometimes think that if they did that same study using the worldwide compiled statistics of human personalities, behavior and intellect, they would come up with somebody who was a complete ignorant asshole. Insert here the name of the person that you know who most accurately fits this description, but keep in mind that he is the average of all of us.

 I'm not about to tell you that I have a solution for the world's problems. Most days, I have trouble remembering where I put my shoes. But then, that's part of the problem too. It's the other thing that that the river of time erodes, memory. We seem to forget the folly of our ways, making it possible to repeat our mistakes. Mistakes that usually conclude with a solemn, "Never again." Unfortunately, as finite beings, we have as much trouble wrapping our heads around the concept of never as we do with forever.

It's not always easy looking back at time to try and learn important lessons. So much of it has passed by that it tends to get compressed when we view it as a whole. We sometimes imagine that events happen in rapid succession and don't appreciate the vast gaps that actually exist between them. It may seem counterintuitive, but Tyrannosaurus-Rex lived closer in time to the Moon Landing than it did to Stegosaurus. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon Landing than she did to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. And the Moon itself was formed closer in time to the Moon Landing than the Big Bang.

 Interestingly, the footprints on the Moon from the Moon Landing will remain there for an estimated 1,000,000 years.

Talk about long lasting impressions!

Perhaps I've come across a little negative here. I should point out that I do see the good in people. I notice the positive impacts  that some of us have on each other, and sometimes, in very rare cases, on the world. I see small but steady advances in the decline of racial intolerance and bigotry. I am encouraged by improvements in women's equality and the acceptance of "different" people, the sort of people that some ancient, backwards thinking "Holy" books condemn to death.

 When you consider that just 58 years ago Rosa Parks, after a long day at work, was arrested for not giving her seat up in the "negro section" of a bus because a white person needed a place to sit, you begin to realize that in the here and now, the river of time flows excruciatingly slow, almost stagnantly when it comes to progress. Yet, if we were to look back, way upstream to a time when we once thought the Sun was a god and that human sacrifice was a viable option for mitigating day to day problems; we can appreciate just how far it is that we've come.

 It's painfully apparent that we are not where we need to be yet. It is also hard to see from this point in time, what if anything will unite us all towards the common goal of reducing or ending all suffering and senseless loss of human life. It has been said that only a alien invasion would unite us all. As unlikely as such an event as this is, I do believe it would work. At least for a little while.

Can aliens unite us?

 Remember how we all felt just after 9/11? Everyone was flying flags from their homes and cars. All of us behaving just a little bit nicer towards our fellow Americans, ill regardless of race or creed, or political affiliation. We were all united against a dark force, an "Axis of Evil." Do you remember when it suddenly became "unpatriotic" and "pro-terrorism" to criticize the government?

If they told us on September 12th, 2001 that it was necessary to invade Canada, we wouldn't have blinked.

 Of course, that state of mind is very dangerous too. Just look at the primrose path of destruction and erosion of civil liberties we have allowed ourselves to be led down. If the terrorist's goal was to hurt our economy and restrict our freedoms, I would have to say,"Mission accomplished."

Derp!

Tick-tock.

 Tempus fugit, always flowing in one direction, forward, and yet we buck the current. It's the 21st century, and a staggering amount of us still embrace ancient ideas scratched on goat skin by first century barbarians. Incredibly flawed concepts such as slavery, racial intolerance, hatred of homosexuals, genital mutilation and honor killings. With or without these ancient ideas, there never seems to be a shortage of men willing to crush and slaughter each other for personal gain and power. Hatred abounds with groups of people who deny the Holocaust ever even happened. There are rumors that European teachers are dropping the the study of the Holocaust completly so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of their Muslim students. People have been murdered over books and cartoons, Organizations like the Westboro Baptist church cheerfully picket the funerals of U.S. soldiers to spread their message of hatred and intolerance towards gay people.

And so it goes.

Actually, if there were a god, he would probably hate signs.

 The longevity problem for peace in terms of our alien invasion scenario is that while we would certainly be united, one and all against these theoretical space invaders, the very moment we defeated them, or that they should remember an important engagement elsewhere in the universe, we would go right back to our old ways of social dysfunction. Just as we have since that picture perfect, brilliantly cloudless day when the towers fell. We would once again forget the important lessons learned. Our memories would simply erode and wash away all our progress, just like water under the bridge

Sapere aude and may Zeus preserve you!.