From Slingshots to Drones… Who Will Abdicate the Blow

In your leisure moments, when you dwell on major problems we humans need to solve, can you fathom the immense creativity it took to come up with the mechanics of a gun?

Slingshots. From long ago deadly slingshots, small and large, came the problem… how to kill, more efficiently. The human mind created a gun. From which came today’s current problem of how to kill many more… efficiently. And with the simple effort of developing a video game, we now have drones. Also, during those years between such needful inventions, we have experimented with bombs, grenades, missiles and landmines.

And in the background, “Thou shalt not kill.”… plus all the non-violent teachings of the Torah, the Koran, the Vedas, the Mahatma Ghandi and Rev. Martin Luther King. It is said “there are numberless billions of universes” and that “it is rare to be born a human.” We’ve been told “just to be is a blessing”… and that “to take one life is to annihilate an entire universe.” It seems that ancient moral or spiritual wisdom is the science we need right now.

But we are creative beings with free will. So whatever it takes to get what we want, we will invent a way to do it… even if it means taking away someone’s life. This is a way of living promoted by our media, our governments and our stories. It’s what we pass on to the children. We show and teach babies violence as animated enjoyment, as self-defense and even as ‘preventative’ offense. We can change this.

So what does it take to change our M.O.? Who will promote once again the wisdom and the courage to “turn the other cheek”… to abdicate the blow? What country will not retaliate against an agressor? What system will not kill those who have killed? What movie will make the Ghandis and the Rev. Kings into peaceful actions heroes? Who’s going to start the trend to let children know that if someone hits you, you can walk away and not hit back. Who has that much bravery these days? I wonder if I do.

If someone hit you, could you walk away? If someone killed your beloved, could you not want to see them dead? What about revenge or punishment? Should people who cause harm, be harmed? Those who kill, be killed? If you were governor of the world what would choose? Is punishment ever the answer or even a determent?

Huge questions to wrestle with when the news is off and the radio is silent. We are fed local and global stories of monstrous killings… by men and mothers, by the militia, the emotionally disturbed and mentally ill. Mortified, we can’t dwell on these issues one more minute. But, to make even a small dent in the dense traffic of our collective consciousness… in the depths of our daily solitude, where sanity prevails, we each must submit to this universe our intentions… to stop all violence everywhere.

Without exception.