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Express Tribune
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
War and human civilisation: a moral paradox
Listen to article The question might sound naive to bellicists, yet it is pertinent in this age of admirable human development and scientific advancements around the world: Can, despite all the claims of human knowledgibility and maturity of consciousness, the raging wars in Gaza and Ukraine be justified, particularly when the war casualties impact the innocent children and women? After all, what type of future is being bequeathed to the generations to come? Would they not think that the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, consciousness, scientific progress and human development cannot guarantee a world sans barbarism which human civilisation claims to have left far behind? Such wars seem to be the telltale signs of human regression towards the Stone Age with animalistic instincts as the law of the jungle. Such bloodshed and genocide with carte blanche remind me of Mark Twain's satirical essay, The Damned Human Race, wherein he proposes a theory and corroborates it with historical details that man is not the highest point of evolution, rather arguably the lowest. He says that unlike humans, animals kill only for a reason, not for fun or greed; they don't conduct wars because they don't possess any religion or patriotism. Similarly, in the second voyage of The Gulliver's Travels by J Swift, on the Gulliver's proposal to the Brobdingnagian king to use gunpowder against the enemies, the king appallingly summarises the human civilisation: "I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth." The so-called guardians designated to keeping or restoring peace on this earthly planet, like the League of Nations and the United Nations Organization, had and have proved incapable of implementing their existential writ the world over. As the former had failed in stopping WWII from happening and died its natural death, the latter too would follow suit if it fails to stop either of the above wars because such wars can balloon into a world war. These institutions had been established to be proactive to defang the impunity of any group, organisation or country to threaten the world peace, but their inertness shows that peaceful human existence would soon become extinct as it has already become an endangered species due to the species' own self- or auto-destruct practices. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres branded the war "the deadliest of conflicts" in decades. Speaking of Israeli carte blanche, he highlighted that Israel killed 196 humanitarians, including 175 UN staffers; most of them belonged to the Palestine relief agency UNRWA. "More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades," says an Oxfam study published on 30th September 2024. Now the question is not "Will the UN act to play its role in stopping genocide in Gaza?" as it has long been answered with a resounding NO. Instead, the very question arising from the pyre of disappointment with the UN has matured into a philosophical, moral and deeply political one: Is the UN helpless against the impunity of the US and Israel? "To assuage their collective guilt for their early years of indifference towards one genocide - the Nazi extermination of millions of European Jews - the United States and Europe have prepared the grounds for another," said Arundhati Roy in her acceptance speech on receiving the PEN Pinter Prize 2024. "If the US government withdrew its support of Israel, the war could stop today," she said, calling a spade a spade. The justification of Israel's egregious human rights violations against Palestinian civilians by labelling the October 7 attack by Hamas as a terrorist attack reminds me of one of the Aesop's fables wherein a wolf cooks up false rationale to attack the lamb. It would not be wrong to say that the world is under the siege of exploitative capitalistic pursuits. "The nuclear-armed state of Israel was to serve as a military outpost and gateway to the natural wealth and resources of the Middle East for US and Europe," says Arundhati Roy in the speech.
Yemenat
22-03-2025
- General
- Yemenat
A World That Breathes Pain
I often reflect on how I came to inhabit this tumultuous world, a realm steeped in conflict and turmoil—an arena overflowing with suffering and profound tragedies. It is a world rife with violence, oppression, and atrocities, where the right to life is sacrificed in the name of life itself, and justice is crucified under the guise of fairness. In this environment, the equality of opportunity frequently dissolves into nothingness. Throughout history, tyrants and despots have ruled with impunity and continue to do so in various forms. They have constructed their false 'glory' upon the blood and labor of the subjugated, trampling human dignity and burdening individuals with hunger and pain while shattering their dreams and extinguishing their hopes. The impoverished, the destitute, and the deprived endure their hunger and gnaw on their deprivations, deceived even unto death. They are afflicted by fates that refuse to release them, relentlessly pursuing them. These wretched souls are beset by ill fortune and a 'curse of existence' that encircles them, compounded by the misery of the era into which they were born. These unwilling subjects pay a steep price to their oppressors, sacrificing their meager resources and suffering to sustain the opulence and excess of those in power. Life, whether on land, sea, or air, is harsh and feral—brimming with sorrow, injustice, and anguish. This world is predominantly ruled by might, a harrowing reality that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer aptly articulated when he wrote: 'Tortured beings and torturers… who can only exist by devouring one another. Every beast here is a living grave for thousands of other beasts, and the way to survive is a series of painful deaths.' In the realm of humanity, this analogy holds with significant differences, as we witness brutality manifest in myriad forms. The American thinker and writer Mark Twain asserted that humans are more monstrous and savage than animals. In his essay 'The Damned Human Race,' he expressed that his experiences convinced him that humanity alone harbors malice, harm, vengeance, and contempt. Humans interact with one another through cruelty, humiliation, and subjugation. While animals kill from instinctual motives such as hunger or fear, humans abandon their conscience, ethics, and humanity, committing the most horrific atrocities: organized mass wars. A world has been established and continues to be governed by forces far more ruthless than the law of the jungle. In this realm, survival favors the strongest, the most cunning, or those most adaptable to change, as Darwin aptly noted. Yet, we remain uncertain about the direction this change will take and the destinies that await us. Countless individuals shed blood in the name of God and the sacred, or under the banners of ideas, ideologies, and toxic tribalism—all driven by the pursuit of power or an insatiable, tyrannical selfishness. This greed perpetuates itself without end. The history of humanity is rife with brutality, bloodshed, and the exploitation of one individual by another across various epochs. It stretches from primal savagery to the enslavement wrought by capital. Entire populations have been subjugated through iron and fire, enduring severe bondage, where slavery has reached its most extreme forms. This deep-seated servitude has become hereditary, passed down through lineage, race, and heritage. These harsh stages, despite their transformations and changes in nomenclature, illustrate humanity's journey from slavery to serfdom, and then into the bondage and savagery of capital. This enslavement, in its myriad forms and names, is marked by humiliation and oppression. It transitions from a system of slavery to a feudal order filled with serfs and laborers, ultimately evolving into a capitalist system that, despite any illusions of progress, reveals itself to be increasingly grotesque and savage. Wars, occupation, exploitation, hunger, famine, and widespread tragedies abound. Entire nations have been eradicated, while a fortunate few have escaped, often by mere chance or miracle. Tribes have fragmented, with many displaced, surrendered, or retreated. The relentless cycle of wars, pyres, crimes, and ever-expanding poverty continues unabated. A lengthy history of suffering endures, irrespective of how high civilization may ascend. It is a realm of anguish and torment on Earth. Great civilizations have risen upon the tragedies of peoples, nations, and humanity itself, marked by plunder, corruption, thievery, and an endless multitude of victims. This is merely a glimpse of what has transpired; the intricacies of these events cannot be fully encapsulated in this brief discourse. I shall conclude with a poignant reflection from Mohammed Maghout in his play 'The Hunchbacked Sparrow': 'There are bronze statues of cowards and thieves, memorials to harlots, walls adorned with pearls and jasmine for spies who carry their homeland in their wallets. Knights, as youthful as roses, entered Rome and exited with their entrails hanging from the tips of their swords on their way to exile. Trivial men entered restrooms and emerged on their path to the throne.'
