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| Events in Paris that produced this response were not to be unexpected. |
Recent events in
Paris, Sydney and other parts of the world were not to be unexpected.
Broadly, humanity’s trajectory is toward violence;
aggression predominates in most of our activities from commerce to sport and
politics and to even the humanities.
It should not surprise us therefore; that a society rooted
in violence has many people who see the solutions they seek in bloodshed,
brutality and the physical and emotional battering of others.
Most of us see ourselves as remote from what happened in
those two cities and although that may be physically true, our endorsement of
existing governance structures, either nationally or internationally, makes a
lie of that.
Not for a moment should we endorse the behaviour of those
branded as terrorists, and although they may be driven by ideologies we find
offensive, they are simply people who have been marginalized by our market-driven,
competitive, consumerist society soaked in violence.
True, the world is now a safer place than it has ever been,
but only a slither of good-will stands between us and the expression of
disenchantment such as witnessed in Sydney and Paris.
None of us arrive in the world with pre-determined fates,
rather our destiny is shaped by the environment in which we grow and develop
and so it is what happens around us that sculpts what we become.
Present society is violent in intent, but this surreptitious
attack on our thinking is mostly wonderfully camouflaged to appear simply as
commerce, competition or entertainment.
With our minds and thinking under the constant influence of violent
images we vote for governments embedded with institutions which depend upon
violence (pay your tax or we will send you to goal) for their legitimacy.
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| The world's police forces are becoming increasingly militarized. |
Police forces around the world protect society’s status quo,
but many who disagree with what exists make their point using the tools and
violence that same society has made available, endorsed and allowed to infest
most every process.
Much of the developed world draws its control, its power and
authority from violence; a surreptitious violence not always apparent, but
always there, always ready for application ensuring the inequality that favours
a few and maligns most is preserved.
World events illustrate just how militarized our police
forces have become and so the sight of a death-laden police officer has now
become normalized and so unsurprising to most.
Gone are those officers whose first and only defence was inquiry
and a few words of compassion, benevolence and advice as they set about resolving
a human drama.
What happened in Paris was seen as an affront to free speech
and in that spirit of that cherished doctrine, maybe we should be looking
beyond our much prized democracy; a governance process history illustrates
fails every test of equality and fairness.
