The militarization of the world and subequently our police forces is not to be unexpected

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.

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.