"Be ashamed to die
until you've scored some victory for humanity." - Horace Mann
As you continue to read about history, you almost see war as some sort
of “necessity.” Going back to A.D. 101,
Trajan, who ruled the Roman Empire for 19 years, defeating Dacia’s proud ruler Decebalus
(and might I add twice, after Dacia promptly broke a treaty several years after
the initial conflict). Trajan would then plunder the country Dacia of its wealth, resources,
and scribing the end of its history on a column portraying his conquest. Jumping to the 18th
Century, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and many other
notorious American revolutionaries took to arms to liberate the Americas of the
“tyranny” of England’s King George III. Jon
Meacham points out in his book, “The Art of Power,” as the flames of evident war
intensified, how the Continental congress did take pragmatic approaches towards
reasoning and reconciling with their motherland. One such act was a year before the
Declaration of Independence.
“On Saturday, July 8,
1775, having made the case for armed resistance with [John] Dickinson and
[Thomas] Jefferson’s Declaration of Causes, the [Continental] Congress extended
its hand to the king, dispatching an “Olive Branch Petition” to London.
Nothing came of it.”
And at the median of the American Civil War, Abraham
Lincoln declared at Gettysburg, an address of profoundness on grounds then more recently painted in death and abhorrence:
“The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The
world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here.” – Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address,
November, 1863
Often men and women see the world
as it is. And often accept that conflict
will be the only way to achieve answers, to achieve goals, and to achieve
victory.
But it’s not.
In regards to human nature,
Plato believed that the most principled victory we can make in life is that of
first conquering ourselves. How then can
we justify fighting and conquering others throughout all of human history, when most, if not all, of us
have yet to fight the demons within ourselves?
The outer world is a
reflection of our inner world.
In water, we often times
can see our reflection. And if Planet Earth
covered in ¾ water, conveyed the world’s reflection as a whole towards the universe, who would
want to meet with us in our present state?
What far-reaching civilization would want to share their advancements in
medicine, technology and wonders we probably would consider no short of miracles,
with us? Humans' being able to live forever? Were eternal life the cosmic rule, Earth seems to be the exception
We take advantage of each
other. We lie to each other. We belittle
each other. We kill each other.
We stockpile weapons that have no other use than to kill and destroy.
We stockpile weapons that have no other use than to kill and destroy.
And as bleak as it always seems...I always like
to remember that when the sun goes down and the curtains close, most of us have
the privilege to "go home." Whether you are the leader of your
country or the janitor of a school, when we exit the stage of our professions,
we are just... people. We are the fathers of children and the
grand-daughters of good men and women. We are the grandchildren of those who've
strived and the children of those who've dreamed. And living in peace
preserves our stories while war will only take them away.
But as gruesome as human history was and
may still be, it is just that. It is history. We need just hold on a little bit
longer and need try just a little harder, but achievement of peace is nothing
short of beyond the mountains. Our end
story need not be bleak. We can rewrite
it because we are not defined by it.
Oscar Wilde vividly puts our hope into perspective.
"Every saint has had a past and every sinner
has a future."
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