The world watches as one of the more relatively recent powers of the middle east punishes the old tribes of the land they claim they occupied first, and each of us has an opinion on who has justifications and rights. I am a pacifist now, but once I was a soldier, the conflicts that I was a part of made no good difference to the world, in fact they made it a lot worse, hence my pacifism.

For me, conflicts do not solve existent problems, enlightenment does, and as long as conflicts rage enlightenment is not a possibility. The reason is that people feel strongly for one thing and against another, basic polarisation. Enlightenment requires ground to be given, and a person, or a people, to be willing to be wrong enough to give that ground. The stronger your commitment to a cause the harder it is for you to see the flaws in the ideology that drives that cause.

When you listen to music, get to know it well, and then create it back vocally or on an instrument, you may experience the phenomenon of extra notes or sequences. This is because your brain has put bits in that were not there in the first place. This happens when an incomplete picture is presented, your evolved brain was good at this when you were a caveman, but it is merely a weight on your neck now. As the gray matter fills in the details left out it gets things wrong, at this point it is open to the suggestion that is other people’s mistakes. This mechanism is how a person can be made to look like something, and people will believe that of them, without it ever being actually said or demonstrated. This happened with the phrase “beam me up Scotty” in star trek, which was never said by Captain Kirk, or the phrase “play it again Sam” from Casablanca which was also not said, or the G note at the start of the opening melodic run of Wish You were Here by Pink Floyd, which is not played by Gilmour but played by most amateurs that recreate the song.

The world has had chances, many of them, to elect leaders that would have taken us all down different paths. I am a big fan of the nearly man Jeremy Corbyn, to me he is one of only a few political persons that favour trying every other method first before engaging in or supporting an armed conflict. One of the few voices that disregards the impact of the poor economic circumstances that might come about if we stopped doing business with the horrific nation partners we have chosen, in view of doing what is right.

Saying Corbyn is for terror is an unfair extrapolation of the position he takes, easily summarised by saying that he does not support violence in any fashion. Since he does not support the Israeli bombing of Palestine, which is a true statement, those that wish to position him as a sympathiser will very deliberately not include that he is also not in support of Palestine bombing Israel either. It is this omission that creates the impression that he is, it’s absence creates an impression. Staying within truthful statements is no guarantee of a complete picture, what is not said allows for imaginings, and those imaginings are the goal of those that leave information out. That way they say it without saying it.

In stylised violence in movies and TV shows it is not accidental that the good guys, the morally correct people of the narrative, are the best shot, the best fighters, the most cunning of strategists. If we set aside the fact that people like happy endings and movies normally provide that, and we look at the deep affect this continual absorption of moral violence is likely to have on the psyche of the viewers we might see why the populaces of western nations tend to favour the guys with the strongest and most modern militia. It is not true to consider the UK citizen has anything more in common with an American Jewish right wing zealot than he/she might have with an Islamic civilian, yet support for the most heavily armed oppressors in modern history never seems to waver, while sympathy for a child that just lost most of their family and some of their limbs in a bombing appears harder to find.

Both people’s love their own families, but both may celebrate the death of the children of their chosen deity’s perceived enemy. Imagine you were the sort of person who cheered or smiled when your side, or your allies, killed someone’s children, what sort of person would that make you?

Paul S Wilson