Violence Solves Nothing BUT ...

I recently posted Life Is Too Short To Drink Bad Wine, an article referring to life and how short and finite it is. Within that I said:

I have absolutely no faith in the efficacy or hold with any moral stance that taking someone else's life is justified. It is such a miracle that someone lives at all and will (spoiler) end that taking on the arrogance and self privilege to end it for someone else is unthinkable and a total desertion of what it means to be human.

I want to reflect upon that and what it means within me when people lay down their life for something bugger than themselves. Of course I mean soldiers, airwomen, and sailors, but also others that may see the only course of action is to either take anothers life for the greater good, or event to take their own.

This is not going to be an easy write nor read, bail out whenever you feel it's all too much comfortable that looking after yourself is always to be applauded.

Knowing that it's your time to lay down your life for the good of those back home, be they overseas or in the next street, must be ... I dunno, you choose the word that sums up the feelings and thoughts that must flood your brain.

Without making the enemy an "other", a non-human, something that is less than you and those you know, I don't know how people kill.

If you're about to die because someone has othered you, you are the enemy to them, you are the animal to be removed, then doing the same to them must be, surely the only way to go.

In cold blood, as the phrase will have it, to kill someone surely is impossible. They are you, you are them, to kill them is to kill yourself.

Millions have done this, thousands are doing this as I write. To kill or be killed and lose what you hold dear.

Hundreds of thousands have died because they were killed when trying to make the world better, or at least less bad. Many of these have died because the world they wanted is the world I live within, a world I'm privileged to go about my daily business.

They killed because of this fight. Many though did not do it in cold blood, and they didn't other the people at the end of the gun, and they suffered. They still suffer.

I honour these people. These people that have lost their lives either physically or mentally because of their stand.

As I've said, it's a tough world and for some the price of honourable living is very high indeed.

I do not honour those kill because of hate, revenge, or even because they are too frozen in their thinking to be better than their predecessors - mostly those men that are merely boys driving mens body. They deserve no honour, no remembrance, and to lose their place in history for ever.

Further thoughts on killing:

• Life Is Too Short To Drink Bad Wine
• An ethical dilemma - who would you kill?
• On Contemplating Suicide