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Perry
As usual your approach to your subject is confrontational and you throw a lot of the brown stuff about. You mock the suicide bomber, his God, his religion and perhaps all religion. You have a go at our country, our history, the culture of honour and perhaps all cultures. You are obviously highly sensitive to what is going on and angry about it. However, your exasperation with the world as you present it, i.e. bound up with concepts like religion, patriotism, honour and so on, tends to blur the central issue.
The real issue surely, is that in this so-called civilised age, human beings are still prepared to murder maim and torture on a scale unknown in the animal world. We are by this characteristic alone, the most despicable known life form in the universe. The fact of the matter is, no TRUE religion could underwrite such inhumanity ; no GENUINE code of honour could countenance such horror ; no COHERENT ideology could encourage such perverseness.
It is also true, however, that human beings are capable of heroic and selfless acts that go beyond all comprehension. They can display compassion and tenderness that language is at a loss to describe. And they can love one another with a warmth that contains the power to set galaxy aglow. The meaning of life, if indeed it has any meaning, is involved in how we plot our course between these two conflicting selves.
How should we react to this Jeykll and Hyde of a world? The answer to this I think depends on your view of the meaning of the existence of all things. If you believe we are involved in a war of good against evil, as Bush and Blair seem too, and if it is true that those who threaten the stability of sovereign states are an evil in themselves, then it follows that we should blow them away. However, if you believe that we are in fact one global human community, living side by side and sharing in Earth's assets, then perhaps we might take a more conciliatory tone. I wonder what's in God's mind?
Brian.
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