Blog Post #9: War – Gloria Pulley

Sometimes I watch the news. 

“Hmm… I could just become an old order Mennonite and not even watch tv and see all this and oppose all the violence (insert meme here).”

Then I remember I’m content with atheism.

I make the connection to religion because I find war in the name of religion to be absurd.  In fact, I find all war to be absurd.  Last year I took European history, and I can recall many times when I just wanted to chuck my textbook at a wall because of all the wars Europe had in the name of God.  I got to age of absolutism and about burned that stupid thing because all the monarchs decided to bicker over claims to the throne and stupid territories named after cows (that’s right Holstein, I’m looking at you). Then, we got to colonialism and the world wars and I was so tired, much done, such exhausted (wow) with reading the same thing over and over.  Someone did a thing that someone else didn’t like, and so they decided to kill them and anyone else they felt needed to go. Great. And where did this lead us, another war some time later.  It never ends.     

               

So no, war and violence is not acceptable.  Honestly, if you can kill each other over something stupid, then you can at least negotiate over something stupid first? Talk it out. It’s that simple.  Ok maybe it isn’t that simple.  There are communication and language barriers, nuclear weapons (hmmm I wonder why we have those???? Could it be from previous WAR???), differing political ideologies, economic stakes, alliances, etc. But imagine, what if instead of marching into a country with guns blazing, we just sat down and had a civil talk between leaders?  What if we didn’t automatically assume that everyone is a threat to us? What if we got the full story first?  I know there are a lot of what ifs, and I could sit here all day asking them, but we would still wake up tomorrow, and people would still kill each other for their cause.