Humanity And Its Absence
By David Kennedy
19 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Dear Franklin,
I have just read your letter to Janet with its heart-rending account of the Sabra-Shatilla massacre. It is good to know there are still people who care about humanity and display a decency that is all too rare among humans, especially the most powerful - those who control such events as the Sabra-Shatilla massacre as described at A Letter To Janet About Sabra-Shatilla.
We live in a sick, sick world, a world that is full of hypocrisy and duplicity. Science has opened the door to all kinds of wizardry that allows evil people to control the destiny of most of humanity. I was taught Physics by the man who first split the atom (in 1932). He was a mild-mannered man who, on seeing where his discovery was leading, left Cambridge to return to his native Ireland and dedicate himself to teaching. Ironically, he was a pacifist. Who can tell what evil men will do with our discoveries? But science marches on regardless, putting more and more powerful weapons into the hands of powerful and unscrupulous humans: such is the madness of the human brain.
Recently, I have read the accounts given by Arundhati Roy of what is happening to the poor forest-dwellers of India who are being dispossessed of their lands and way of life by International mining companies, aided and abetted by a government which actively supports global corporations against the people whose interests they supposedly represent. The lives of these innocent, harmless people are being torn apart in the most violent manner, both physically and mentally, by so-called educated and civilised human beings, the elite of our society. What is the future of humankind in such circumstances?
Robotic planes now deliver death from the sky on innocent civilians. These are the modern-day equivalents of the olden day thunderbolts of vengeful gods. They are controlled by vengeful and evil men, men that WE elect into power.
I have just finished reading a little of the evils perpetrated by Christian Europeans against many, many innocent millions in North America, in Central and South America, in Africa, in Australia, and in South and South-East Asia. Their evil rivals and, in scale, far outdoes all that happened in Sabra and Shatilla. All this is done by people who pride themselves on being the acme of cultured civilisation, but who are strangely blind to their own true nature.
I ask myself why these things happened, and keep on happening again and again? The only explanation I can think of is that it lies in the human brain, and in particular in the imagination, that uncontrolled part of the brain that in our blindness we so much admire: the inventive/creative imagination.
We invent language. We invent writing. We tell stories and invent god(s). We invest these gods with all kinds of power. We then focus on a single god - THE GOD - God of gods! We imagine we are made in the image of this god of ours. We image that HE (note the gender - isn't that a give away?) gave us dominion over all life, to treat as we will, and, of course, this god of ours blesses us whenever we are called to arms to slaughter our fellow-men with the same enthusiasm and lack of conscience as we slaughter and destroy the rest of life. In raining death down without mercy on the innocent, we are indeed made in his image.
Your account of Sabra-Shatilla was a another painful reminder of just how despicable humans can be, not least when they are fulfilling the imagined destiny decreed by this god of ours.
If ever we are to find a way out of the mess our imaginations have created for us (and the rest of life) it will surely come from our confronting the evil that is us, and then seeking honestly to devise a better way of life. Your message serves this end since there can be no peace without justice, and no justice without truth.
Thank you for your contribution to truth.
Yours sincerely,
David Kennedy
