How to Be Human under the Tyranny of a War Culture?
IN FOCUS, 11 Nov 2024
Mahboob A. Khawaja – TRANSCEND Media Service
4 Nov 2024 – The Desiderata poem (by anonymous, Baltimore Church, 1854), tells what rationally sounds plausible:
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Horrors and Pains Inflicted on the People of Gaza
We, the People of Conscience are living in a time when most moral and intellectual vigilance are liable to ruthless purging of our being human, our very existence: ‘How to be human in tyranny of US-Israel War Culture?’ There is no sustainable idealism in human life except painted fantasy and much evil and much good in the world we live-in. If we claim to be a ‘moral being’ then we must prove to be moral human beings in all of our endeavors. The truth is we have serious problems defining ourselves as moral beings when the on-going wars in Gaza and Ukraine and bombing and killings of innocent people create data for daily abnormal doses of humanity to be the new normal of socio-economic and political consumption. The contradictions are covered up by massive adroit formulation of political, economic and inhuman manipulations of a few elite classes governing the global affairs. Often realist thinkers wondered if human beings were born as bloodthirsty creatures. Not so, Michael Wesch (The Art of Being Human: A Textbook for Cultural Anthropology, 2018), tries to define and quotes David Foster Wallace:
https://anth101.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/WeschAOBH_FrontMatter.pdf
RELIGIONS AND WISDOM OF THE WORLD “In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship – be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess… – is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things… then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. … Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. … Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid. … Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
Do cultures and civilizations grow out of the moral mire of bombardments,cruelty, killing, conquest, occupation and destruction of humanity? If the US and Israel think to be the most powerful nations on earth, they are on a wrong path of thinking and action to have killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and some 17,000 women and children still buried under rubble and a stinky unhealthy atmosphere prevalent in the strip. History reveals in all ages, people and nations claiming to be most powerful and transgressors manipulating the Earth and humanity were destroyed by the Laws of God – natural causes. We are witnessing the biblical warnings such as storms, flooding, earthquakes and wildfires happening across the globe as the Bible warns its faithful. Many empires and egoistic leaders went this natural route of meeting their ends. Life is a trial, and bombing, killing of fellow human beings is not a justifiable act of reason and truth but of stupidity madness and crimes against humanity. Has America and Israel reached that stage of thoughts and endeavors? Is it a gain in the present and a loss in the future? Do they not believe in the holistic conception of life as a sacred trust full of ultimate accountability to God?
Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: I will create a vicegerent on earth. They said” Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief and shed blood; whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy Holy Name. God said: I know what ye not know. (The Qur’an: Chapter 2:30).
Warmongers Waiting for ‘the Judgment’
The US Biden administration deceived and misled mankind while talking of a ceasefire plan since May 2024, and a ‘two state solution’ just to buy time to enable Israel put finishing end to life in Gaza and to the freedom of Palestine. Its Arab leader stooges in the Arabian Gulf region running around and pretending to be peace mediators were nothing else except authoritarian complicit rulers and failure in all walks of life. We see the US and Israeli leaders having unbridled ambitions and power unleash violent assumptions of hatred, secret intrigues and animosities and killings overwhelm the daily thinking process, a society – a nation no matter how normal claims to be, cannot function as normal beings to co-exist within their own self, the surroundings – they mock the originality of Palestinains and call ‘death to Arabs.’
The Israeli leaders had plans long before Gaza onslaught to populate it with settlers and rob off its natural resources. Felicity Arbhutant (Video: “Wiping Gaza Off the Map”:Big Money Agenda. Confiscating Palestine’s Maritime Natural Gas Reserves.Video Interview with Michel Chossudovsky.Global Research: 10/23/24), explains: An official “secret” memorandum authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”,namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as consultations with the U.S. https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-gas-oil-and-trouble-in-the-levant/5362955
A slanted vision flares up the dark face of political reality, the US-Israeli leaders pushing war as a means of peace and war economy are like scum floating on a torrent. Evil happens when conscientious men do nothing. Human glory lives in the conception of good and righteousness, not warriors of economic wars, robotic machines, weapons of destruction or agents of political terrorism. We are moral beings enriched with inner consciousness and vision for peace, human unity and sustainable future. It is a Hobbesian formula: “war of all against all.” German philosopher Immanuel Kant (“Perpetual Peace”, 1795), was more proactive and realistic when he noted that: “Intellectuals must be seated in chosen assemblies and systems of public governance to overt individualistic insanity against the people.”
Life and Earth are a Trust to be Protected
God created the Heavens and Earth as a Trust to fulfill all human aspirations and to flourish human generations since time immemorial. It was not meant to be bombed and destroyed by sheer ignorance and wickedness. Are we neglectful of our origin and encompassed reality? Life is a trust and connected to accountability. It is God Who gave you life, will cause you to die. And will again give you Life: truly man is A most ungrateful creature. ( The Quran: 22: 66). Our professed ignorance and arrogance towards Divine Knowledge has pushed us to echo evil and futility in a global cataclysm – the treacherous conflict causing degeneration to be at the epicenter of man-made cataclysm driven by lingering suspicion in relations to others within the splendid Universe. The earth and universe are meant for human beings and are enriched to support all of their needs over time and space. Are we living in a disconnected world of our own making?
How do you limit man-made terror, egomaniac tyranny and devastation against fellow human beings? Jesus is quoted in the Bible saying: “If the world hates you, you know it hated me before it hated you…if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you…John 15:18-25” How do We, the People of Human Conscience make these ugly and disingenuous politicians to learn from history and change the course of events into peace and harmony for all of us? The quality of our intellectual consciousness is lost in the world of time and space. All international institutions are broken and deliberately kept dysfunctional.Truth is One and the same unchanging as it was many centuries earlier. The emerging wars and destruction of Earth and human habitats are blatant violations of that TRUST between Man and the Creator and call for awakening of human conscience and soul: “Truly Man is to his Lord, ungrateful and that (fact) he bears witness (by his deeds.): 6-7: 100: The Qur’an).
All informed global communities have passion for peace, not wars.When nations and leaders subscribing to political absolutism start acting like God and challenge the sanctity and limits of the Laws of God; historically speaking they become an object of unthinkable natural calamities- earthquakes, wildfires, floods, deaths and destruction. The Message of the Qur’an (64 and 67: 40), clarifies the truth of universal brotherhood and wisdom for all the times to come:
It is God, Who has made for you the Earth as a resting place and the sky as a canopy; And has given you shape and made your shapes beautiful, and has provided for your sustenance, Of things pure and good; Such is God your Lord. So Glory to God, the Lord of the Worlds. It is He Who has created you from dust, Then from a sperm-drop, Then from a leech-like clot; then He does He get you out (into the light) as a child; then lets you grow and reach your age of full strength; then lets you become old. Though of you there are some of who die before; And lets you reach a Term appointed; In order that ye may learn wisdom
We, the people must synthesize awakening of human consciousness for an immediate ceasefire, peace and sustainable future. Our reasoning cannot be tampered with impunity as those responsible must be held accountbale for crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Caitlin Johnstone (“We never really had a chance to build a healthy world.” Information Clearing House: 09/11/22), author of Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. https://caitlinjohnstone.com: clarifies what went wrong: And we wonder why everyone’s so dysfunctional and self-destructive. ….So we’re all innocent, in the end. Again, we must of course push to bring consciousness to the parts of humanity that have taken a wrong turn — to the war criminals and plutocrats and managers of the empire, and all other abusers and the abusive systems which elevate them. But underneath that fierce burst of light there can also be a deep compassion and understanding born of a lucid seeing of how we got here in the first place.
____________________________________________
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution, Dec 2019.
Tags: Cultural violence, Culture of War, Direct violence, Gaza, Humanitarianism, Humanity, Morality, Structural violence, Ukraine
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 11 Nov 2024.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: How to Be Human under the Tyranny of a War Culture?, is included. Thank you.
If you enjoyed this article, please donate to TMS to join the growing list of TMS Supporters.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.
Join the discussion!
We welcome debate and dissent, but personal — ad hominem — attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), abuse and defamatory language will not be tolerated. Nor will we tolerate attempts to deliberately disrupt discussions. We aim to maintain an inviting space to focus on intelligent interactions and debates.