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After some irritating delays Blogger now seems to be letting me add stuff. Don’t know what was going on there but since it doesn’t cost me anything then it doesn’t do to complain! They do a bloody good job given the volume of blogs and the load that must be on their servers.
So I had my chat with my bosses and I don’t believe they’re overly happy campers with me. So I’ve started looking for another job and had some small initial luck with what’s out there but I’ll have to see. More later on that…
Wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald after reading about the death of the first Australian soldier in Afghanistan. The letter:
Whilst reading about the death of SAS soldier Andrew Russell in Afghanistan (SMH 18/2) I was reminded that nearly 39 years ago Sergeant William Hacking became the first Australian to die in Vietnam. Over the next 12 years 507 other Australian, 58,000 American, and several million Vietnamese names would be added to that list. All of whom died in an American-instigated ‘war against Communism’ that had murky aims and dubious benefits. I can only hope there won’t be 500 more Australian names added this time.
Andrew Russell from Adelaide, with a wife and new born child, dead after the vehicle he was travelling in hit a land mine. At Anzac Day we always say “Lest We Forget” and now we get to add another name to the list of men and women whom we have to remember. In this case yet another Australian who died helping enforce American foreign policy in a war not our own. Enough to make me quite depressed really.
The crazy jingoism we seem to experiencing at the moment in conjunction with the equally naive and probably ultimately pointless ‘war on terror’ really makes me wonder about the world we have made. I wonder whether me, and hopefully others, feeling this way is sign of the potential for greater enlightenment. Then I think about the philosophers, humanists, and political scientists have had similar thoughts for centuries and little seems to change. As the philosopher George Santayana, wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Perhaps we are beyond hope, devoid of merit, or as some of the more extreme environmentalists believe, a pox on the planet. Or more importantly perhaps a desire for humanity to be different, to be more cooperative or peaceful is wrong within itself. Perhaps we are forcing humanity into a mould that it does not fit into – that our natural state of being is one of chaos, disorder, violence and individualism. That cooperation, communication, and community are concepts forced upon us and ones not suited to our basic natures and desires. It is often hard enough for us to communicate at a micro level that it is no surprise that the macro level is a disaster. Personal vested interests always seem to override any community feeling we try to generate. Selfishness and fear work together to overcome any attempt to at mutual aid. It’s ironic, given the medium I am communicating in, that many people believed closer communication and the elimination of the tyranny of distance would induce world peace, mutual understanding and global cooperation. It seems, however, to merely highlight faster the inequities, suffering, misery and pain which humans inflict upon each other. I’ll leave you with a quote from Tesla that shows the hope for universal peace which he and others believed would be fostered by the growth of human inter-communication:
War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment… (Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, Hart Bros., 1982.)
Signing off in a melancholy mood…
Listening to: Pixies – Doolittle and Paul Kelly – Songs from the South
