Mar. 03, 2002 - 20:00 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Not Bells

I seem to be standing alone and seeing about me every man's hand turned against every other man's hand. There is road rage, sports rage, ethnic rage, religious rage, bigoted rage of course - that we have with us always.

Rage to me has always seemed to me to be self destructive, an enraged person is in a fugue from which wakeing will never happen to my mind. And it seems that our whole world is enraged, people mindlessly striking out at each other.

When I was young an old graybeard said to me, "Don't complain, don't mention the faults and problems of the world if you don't have a plan to make things better than they are." I suppose he was right and probably still is. I have made a great effort to come up with something sensible and concrete that would help, to no avail.

Case in point, the so-called Holy Land now known as the Holey Land, was occupied before Moses' band inhabited that territory. And there has been fighting ever since. The meddling of the "super powers" hasn't helped either, from the time of The Crusades on.

What would it take, what force, what power would it take to force the heads of each faction to a table, sit them down and tell them, "You all have a right to live, a right to earn a living in a secure country with freedom of movement. Regardless of past history and its consequent deep seated grudges and hatreds -- that was then -- this is now. You are all wasting your chances for a secure, happy life. One side with the armament and money and the other side with the fanatic determination to wipe out the opposition, and destroy them to a man. Get logical, come together and figure out how to live in peace, even if it takes giving up some land, spoils from a war of the past to give a homeland to the people who were here before you. To the other side, every cent spent on arms and ammunition, every minute of time spent throwing rocks, training people to suicidaly do all of those things are a grave waste. There is little hope that you will overcome a superior force and by the way the world won't come in and back you up, the rest of the world has its own problems. Quit wasting your men and women, your money, your resources and your minds in a determination to erase from this planet those of a different religion."

I think that type of reasoning could be used in most any situation and with the cooperation of both sides - work. Not much chance of that it appears.

We all sit around the cracker barrel listing the things that piss us off and seemingly never giving a thought about how those situations could be avoided or at least alleviated.

Wouldn't it be nice if the people of the world would take a deep breath and unanimously say, "Lets clean up this mess, spend money where it is actually needed and have at the very least, tolerance of each other." It would wouldn't it ?

I have hoped and prayed for something like this to happen ever since I became a thinking being. At the beginning it was in the school yard, I could tell right from wrong even then and could see no sense in over-aggressiveness or cruelty.

The whole mess seems to be rapidly escalating with no hope to keep rage from spreading. I am wringing my hands, Not Bells . . . . .

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