Honor all the Fallen Peoples of War
Not just Americans
As Memorial day weekend has passed.. we remember the fallen. But much as the Twilight Zone episode where a man in war, who was much too enthusiastic about killing the enemy, enters the Twilight Zone & wakes up on the other side. Fighting for the other army as a Korean person during the Korean war against the United States.
As much as we believe in countries & methods of organizing humans. They aren’t anything but stories. Wars usually don’t start because you’re DIFFERENT. Wars start because mad men have too much power. Meanwhile the regular people get caught up in the propaganda & end up on the front lines.
During memorial day we generally remember the fallen soldiers from these wars who fought on OUR side. On OUR side of history. American soldiers seem as though they are in OUR story because we are also American. But if you found yourself standing on the moon one day. If you end up standing on Mars & looking back on Earth. The people on Earth are all Earthlings.
Since we are all living inside the same story on the same small planet, we should celebrate the lives of every fallen soldier & civilian during these wars. During humanities growing pains as a civilization.
In our shortsightedness as a species, many of our leaders were consumed by power & lost perspective of themselves. The people of this Earth bore the brunt of the punishment.
This is why we celebrate memorial day. Because the people who fought & died through the turbulent dark ages of humanity brought us all closer to realizing how useless & senseless violence is. The most potent wisdom gained from a war is not who won & lost… but by demonstrating how gross & evil war is… we gain a clear perspective of how to build a civilization which is opposite of war.
Nobody has ever figured out how to organize humans collectively & successfully in history. By repeatedly failing to place power in the hands of the few & then recognizing every single time the corrupting abilities of power upon those few. And then the massively destructive events of suffering which occur afterwards.. After all of this. After all of these millennium of time which humans have been caught in these cycles of suffering & triumph.. It becomes very difficult to figure out which one is which? Suffering? Triumph?
One people’s triumph is another people’s genocide. Not to say that there aren’t cases in which one side of a fight is very much justified. But after a few hundred years goes by these are marked as chapters, as footnotes.
Being as how there are over 7 Billion people on the planet right now.. There’s no way possible to even understand the “historical events” of yesterday. Nobody will ever be able to completely piece together what the year 1945 meant. But we can be glad that it brought the end of violence in the entire world.. at least for a few years after the War.
In the end we take what anyone says with a grain of salt.. because everyone is just making things up as they go.. the human operating system is based on story. It’s super weird. The entire experience & human understanding. Just remember to have respect for both sides of the coin, because the people who fought the wars of the past were fighting for everything we have today.
