War is mankind's most vile, useless invention. It is self-perpetuating. There is no glory in war, there is no honor, there is only shame and regret. There are no winners, no victory; only losers, anguish, despair, fear, loneliness, loss. War destroys everyone who takes part in it.
The Rifleman's Creed has a bit about how I must kill my enemy who is trying to kill me, until there is no war, but peace. It sounds nice, but it's an empty promise. No amount of war can create peace. War leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. And once you hate, you are lost, because the war has destroyed you.
They say, I must kill my enemy who is trying to kill me. It's basically an admission that we have no real reason to kill each other.
I want to stop having enemies, and I see three main approaches to this.
We could kill our enemies. This is what our enemy does, and I don't like that. It's war. War begets war. This isn't the answer.
We can run away, hide, isolate ourselves from our enemies. Sometimes this works on a small scale, sometimes even entire cities can pull it off. But it's not a sustainable plan, it doesn't prevent us from having enemies, it just means we can't see them, for now.
We could convince our enemies to stop being enemies. I know. This is by far the most challenging option, and sometimes it feels very ineffective, but it's also the only real solution. And there are lots of people so stuck in their ways that we will never be able to reach them before they die. But we can create hope for the future.
The answer in the long run is education. We have to teach the kids to do better than us. We have to teach them to see the world, as it is, and as it could be, and to be the change they wish to see. Education is our key to fixing problems. Knowledge is power.
We've had the war on drugs, the war on terror, both of which were designed to make you more afraid. How about a war on ignorance? A war on fear that's not aimed at creating more fear? What if we dumped a war-sized budget into improving education in the US? We need more teachers, more good teachers, more passionate teachers. We need happier teachers. And you know what would go a long way to encourage good teachers? Bigger paychecks and better working conditions. Smaller class sizes. More schools. More flexibility. More opportunities for the kids. Improving the culture and public perception of the school system. Relaxing the insane resource constraints that our teachers work under would help a ton. We have the power to do these things, we just need the numbnuts in charge to say OK. This problem is fixable, but we won't fix it as long as we're spending all our money building bombs instead of people! I'm sick of killing people! I'm sick of being hated around the world, for being a country that just kills and takes and manipulates! *sigh*
Wouldn't it be nice, if America were great, for the first time in its history?
We could lead by example. We have stolen all the resources we need to do it. What if we did something good for once? What if we gave back? What if we decided to finally join up with the rest of the world, fight the good fight, instead of the really stupid evil one?
In my view, war and education are diametrically opposed. War has had its chance, and it's failed us, time and again. Let's give education a real shot. Let's try it for the next 300 years and see if we're better off for it.
areudirty
2087
tangentwithtanner
