Peace on Earth is the mantra that we hear, especially now but on and off over the coming year. Those who use violence, will smile it out. Those who profit from war may cheer those words from corporate offices. Those who hate will do so for entire collectives of people, children included. Politicians will lie words of peace with the deceit they are loved for. Christians will die in the land where a Jew was born and died to become their saviour, while that very land is buried beneath rubble and bodies. The three religions of an Abrahamic God will fight, kill and wage war as ideologies but for centuries most lived together in peace and harmony as friends, neighbours and human beings.
In the frontiers, beyond the Christmas grip are those who look on with non-Occidental eyes, ever confused by the examples set despite the words, “peace”. In a New York subway voyeurs watch on as a woman burns to death, the police indifferent as her body locks upright in place, tendons seized, body fat burning like a candle wax. The murderer taking her life in a horrid way. As a man he is putrid. In Palestine thousands are burned alive, their bodies mutilated and ripped by fire and shrapnel. Their murderers as a collective, we are told are righteous. Peace on Earth, so say the enablers, and supporters.
“I love you, I will protect,” lies the familiar as his bludgeoned partner weeps in the corner, her face red from his blows. On the rise, is such violence. Women killed by the hands of those they know. In fits of rage and jealousy or with entitled violence so perverse it often goes on in plain sight. It will happen all the more over this period as currency debasement, inflation and shitflation converge to pile on the pressures of debt and the obligation to spend in this consumer season. Many will flee from those related to them or who promised love with such lying words. The Christmas spirit away.
Men to boys are kidnapped and forced to fight a war of vintage nationalism for reasons that the media helped invent of lies, myths that are stained in blood and politics so devious that it required many nations to concoct. The outcome war. Russian and Ukrainian and those adventures paid or ideological fighting in broken and open ground for masters far away. While the world watches with a narrative, such a war seems conventional and is understood as invader versus defender. The conscripted men of Ukraine must fight so cheer the voyeurs through the screens, the Russians are evil, we have been told this. They invaded. If invasion equates evil, what about other nations invading other countries. Never mind, that is the exceptionalism of the mob that watches on, forgotten history and inconsistent narratives.
“Peace on Earth”.
Do you mean it? Honestly, is it what you really want?
It means you must sacrifice. That which you take as sacred may be required to end. Peace is not coercion. It is not the possession of others. You don’t own another person, whether a romantic partner or millions of strangers who happen to share your citizenship. We understand that love is a beautiful thing, it’s above all consensual and should be harmonious. Given with respect, admiration and above all should be voluntary. The consent is in the mutual reciprocity of such. Then why is it when it comes to all other social relationships they are based on coercion, bribery, threat. The entitled belief that a monopoly is required to do, to apply, to secure and aid. The more of it we have, the less of ourselves we know. The less peace, more war.
War is not just fought abroad in lands stained by conflict. It’s not just for those in Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan or Vietnam and Korea to look back deeper into time. It’s closer to home. When an individual killed a CEO, it revealed a contrast of justice and criminality for the spectators to debate. Many of those who cheer for the dead CEO, wanted the system that empowered such corporate fascism. It’s not from a voluntary free market but from the State empowering corporations and agencies while constricting access to health, care through the funnels of regulation via the use of coercion, threats and bribery. A family member of such a victim acted with passion and embraced the ideals of John Wick, and now is a criminal, or hero? Though entire nations were ruined and destroyed for less injustice, but when the collective weight of a population is engaged through the mechanisms of the State it is somehow righteous. Instead of one CEO killed, millions, including children are accepted to suffer and die. That is the magic of belief that such a system inspires.
But, peace on Earth right?
It’s a mindset, a philosophy. Unfortunately the underlying truth is that most are sociopath of a sort or don’t care enough to care. What they do care is about self, money and the comforts that a status quo provides them. To challenge that is scary. It’s an unknown. A feral frontier that defies conventions of education and familiarity. Yet, we see it every day. The most pleasant moments and acts of efficiency comes about when there is voluntary interactions, cooperation. We all are sleep walking closer to the realities of North Korea and the most putrid moments of the Soviet Union, not for the death camps and sanctioned murderslavery. Rather the ideology of the State above all else, scarcity, bureaucracy, censorship, surveillance and apathetic dependency. For such egalitarian Utopia’s always ensure elites and rulers profit and reside above the rest.
The unfortunate woman died in that subway not because of anarchic forces, the State was ever present. We live in a world where people learn from their masters, the social standards and that is always that might is right, violence and coercion above all else. Despite the platitudes of language, we simply can’t hear you over what you are doing. We see no examples set, only force, mandates, coercion, options and choices removed. Only debt and dependence remain. Loved ones are denied care, because it is a complicated system, no choice or options on layers of paperwork and processes and waiting times and paperwork all so those in Government and Corporate profit and have jobs. A woman is burned to death, and people watch on, speculating online, and from metres away they record it, police officers walk past. We have become accustomed to spectating violence and death with inhuman regard. It’s all very normal. The crowd loves a spectacle, bread and circuses as such. Except it’s not Caesar or the Senate, but each of us who are doing it. Who want it?
Be with your friends, family. Embrace them. For those with malice and violence, stop inflicting it on your loved ones. Be a better man rather than another who bashes their lady. Stop being a mercenary with indifference to morality, killing whoever the policy makers want you to. Peace on Earth begins and ends with you, me, all of us. We are each complicit and responsible in what we do or don’t do and who-what we serve and deny such service to. How we interact and act, whether we see others as individuals to interact with dignity and respect or view them as objects to satisfy entitlement, as taxation and labour chattel to live at their expense. A child is a child, whether born in Tel Aviv or Gaza, Washington or Moscow. The future? The children learn from you. Peace on Earth to you, to them.
