I’ve always
loved prehistory, it’s so undocumented and mysterious. Then civilisation came
and we forgot about wielding stone. When I was seriously involved in weeding a
strawberry patch this spring, the handle broke off my trowel, so I just used
the metal blade as a hand tool to dig into the unwanted root systems and lift
out the soil. I joked about it, thinking I had gone back to the Palaeolithic! Using
stone tool technology today? Shame on you, Edward.
Then it
seemed to me that we are not so very distant from our archaic hominids. Not at
all. Lazier maybe. A caveman might exert himself quite a lot to knock another
man on the head with a stone axe. Today a fighter pilot pushes a Playstation-like button
to launch a heat-seeking Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile (Asraam,
also called an AIM-132 missile [no similarity to Ashram!]), costing ₤200,000 each
by the way, to shoot down an “enemy aircraft”. Or maybe to test out some nice new
developments, state-of-the-art SSN-30A Kalibr cruise missiles are launched from
warships to destroy whole towns 500 miles away. Lazier, more technified, more
murderous. Why kill one man if you can kill a whole lot of men much easier?
Now
supposedly, our prehistoric caveman just got angry about something that was bothering
him and bumped his neighbour on the head and left him cold… Our modern civilised
men, though, are professional killers – we’ve taught and trained them to remain
aloof, cold-blooded, patriotic and obedient. When you get the order to press
the button, you press it! If a mistake has been made, someone will try and cover
it up later. Once you click on it, it’s too late.
Can you
tell me who is crazier? The angry caveman? Or the pilot, the rank and file, the
officers, the head of military command, the head of the government involved in
the conflict? Who are the nutcases? You and me? On any single day of the
year, public military expenditure hits the US$4.7 billion mark. That
means, with a global population of 7.4 billion people, 65 cents of a dollar every day for every human being in the world. Yes, your share of US$0.65 is spent on methods for
killing people. For so-called “education” (including military training I
guess), you get maybe a US$1.32 a day; and for public healthcare, maybe US$1.50…(data from Worldometers). So you’re lucky to be in a part of the world where there
isn’t a war or a terrorist attack, because you get the intended benefits of
education and healthcare instead of having bombs dropped on your head. But what
if you’re unlucky one day? What if you’re hit by a bullet or a missile? Isn’t
this all totally out of proportion? Technology gone wild? Aren’t we supposed to
be civilised? Civilised for what? To have new-fangled, fashionable ways to kill
and be killed?
Sorry,
folks, we have not progressed very much from the Stone Age mentality of “this
bothers me so I’ll hit you”; “you’re from another cave, and I want it, so I’ll
smash your head to get it;” “you have broken our caveman rituals and must be
punished by death;” “you’re attacking me, so I won’t even stop for a grunting
session first – I’ll protect myself by trying
to kill you,” etc.
No, it’s
all too simple. Couched in modern terminology, and classed as national defence, defending our religion, or defending the free world, it may sound cool, and seem necessary, but once
analysed, it’s pretty clear, and pretty brutal. We still live in the Stone Age, but our reach is just longer. And it’s crazy.
I want to get out of the Cave. I don’t want Stone Age minds with Nuke technologies. I refuse to allow
anger to sway me. I refuse to allow violence to guide me. I shall sit in my Cave and create a new species of man, a new species of Me. And I’ve only got this one life to do it
in. Wish me luck, as I wish all of you the best of fortunes as well!
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