Tuesday, March 3, 2009

We haven't learnt how to live in peace

It's a snow day today and school is close so I thought I might just indulge myself in a post as part of a cathartic process.

My subject today is a multi-dimensional one. Firstly, the times could means that we haven't learned to live in peace with one another. Secondly, it could means that we don't know how to live in "peace" as in peace-time condition.

A post Cold-war era ushered a period of unprecedented peace if we simply looked at the degree and level of cooperation and prevalence of neo-liberalism. It however meant that nations needed to see itself as one body rather than separate states. Everyone had the responsibility of keeping their house in order and to learn how to work with the rest. Like any human organ, no one part is great than another. The brain therefore cannot tell the heart that it is superior to it.

Unfortunately even as we are sucessful in ending wars. We fail to address the underlying suspicion and the conflicts between states. This is the state of the world we live in, evidence in the happening in international organisations like the UN, the media commentaries that invoke these biases and the very perception and attitude of people on the ground. Hence my conclusion of the fact that "We haven't learnt how to live in peace."

I balk at ridiculous notions of Western articles trying to say that because Asian economies saved to much (and in part because of lessons learnt in the Asian Financial Crisis) and hence we supposed and overconsuming America and send it to the slaugther house like a fatted calf. We just can't seem to get it right can't we and so we're the ones to blame for both Financial Crisis. How ridiculous is that? They might as well create a new conspiracy theory to say that it was a intentional and engineered economic assault that heralds a new era of warfare.

Sigh. The divisions of this world. Misunderstandings from being lost in translations. We truly need to listen twice as much as we speak.

Maybe only then we have a common vision and work TOGETHER for all the wonderous agendas of sustainable development, tackling global warming, ridding terrorism and issues of a global nature.