To Die For?

Happy New Year, Virtual Readers!

I hope all is well in your particular part of this world. I also hope that if you've made any resolutions that you've managed to keep them thus far.

I don't make resolutions as I have no trouble disappointing myself in everyday situations.

I recently, as of two days ago, saw a meme that made me chuckle sardonically.

Jan. 01 - Everything is going as well as could be expected.

Jan. 02 - Australia is a fiery, burning continent of fire.

Jan. 03 - WWIII has started.

And while this isn't completely accurate nor funny, you get the idea? No?

Then that very night I had control of the TV remote and settled in to watch The Outlaw Josey Wales. Yes, I'm aware that Clint is a bastard don't @ me.

I hadn't watched it for probably ten years or more and was not disappointed as far as my memory of it. Which is extraordinary considering my memory is a wasteland of useless information and movie lines. Oh, wait. Never mind.

While I was watching and saying all of Josey's lines before he did, what struck me was the brutality of the scenes of war. The belief by both sides that the other side must be exterminated. Thoroughly and completely. The idea that you could and did believe in a cause so strongly that only destruction, complete, destruction of the opposition will do.

Now before you do what we all do, as humans, before you just skim your awareness of what that means, truly look at it.

There is a faction, right there, just over the next rise that believes that you must be killed and your family exterminated in the most awful ways.

You also believe that this faction is garbage, rabble, the worst of humankind and the only choice you have is to murder them and their families. Although I'd like to think I wouldn't do this, in the most awful way, it still has to be done. There is no question, that is the only choice.

You see, these people don't believe the same things you do. They disagree with what you see as right and wrong. They are brutal with no regard for human lives, only taking to benefit themselves.

And you? They see you as soft and forgiving and this is weakness and must be controlled or eradicated.

I know, I know dramatic . . . and romantic?

Of course, we can skim this kind of blathering because we are civilized and live in a country with laws and police and if we have a beef with someone we can just go on Facebook or Twitter and give them a solid trouncing. We won't take this shit. You can't keep us quiet.

We will Twitter your ass to death. Well, not actual death but you will feel the sting of our wicked tongues. Well, not an actual sting. You take my meaning.

We are civilized. We don't behave in such a way that even telling someone to piss off is now an offence, when in fact some people just need to be told to piss off. But, no, we are civilized.

Are we? Civilized.

Just imagine for a minute that our civilized way of life is only because we were born into it, not because it has anything to do with our ability to be civilized. It is geographical in nature not nature in nature.

Or maybe because of our societal civilized place we don't want to jeopardize our semi-peaceful existence? We can take the everyday shit of being taxed to death, lied to by our "leaders", polluted out of healthy lives by corporate greed, poisoned by big pharma because it is profitable and so on.

It's easier to go along to get along. Plus what can we do?

We certainly aren't rebels or freedom fighters, are we?

Virtual Readers, this is what I meant about skimming over the visual and written onslaught of monstrous images and articles that we are inundated with every, single day.

It's not happening to us, we are civilized. It's horrible and I feel bad for them, we are civilized.

I go on social media and display my outrage, we are civilized.

We are civilized.

Or, has it just not gotten as bad as it needs to get before the thin facade of civility slides away and we have to fight for our lives. Our actual lives. Not our social media accounts or our fake outrage, or our equally fake thoughts and prayers.

If it gets bad enough, I mean we are dying in the streets, our government is killing its citizens and your kids or brothers or daughters or mothers and fathers will be next. How about then? Will we be civilized? Or will we do anything we can to protect our loved ones and some semblance of civilized life?

I know, I know, dramatic. I've heard.

Will it come to such extremes? Probably not. Not in my lifetime at least but with the climate crisis and the horror show down south, you just never know.

But in 1865, at the end of the American civil war, this was the way of it. Right now in more countries then I am prepared to list, this is the way of it. Throughout history, this was the way of it.

Right now humans are fighting and dying for there actual lives.

And it will continue.

So while watching The Outlaw Josey Wales I asked myself, what do I believe in, with enough fervor, to fight till I die or they do? What will I consider is enough to change my semi-comfortable life for one of battle, pain and misery?

Money? Health? Freedoms? Family? Beliefs? Way of life?

That last one is sticky because to fight for your way of life you will, drastically, have to change your way of life.

We are lucky, geographically, lucky.

All of this poppycock has made me thirsty. I'd kill for a latte.

Happy New Year Virtual Readers!!

All the best too. . . all of us, everywhere.

AW

" You are what you do, not what you say you'll do."

- Jung -