Can't We All Just Get Along?

By Shockpen

(A response to a really terrible political video I saw, about Islamic extremism)

I saw a video today (I’m not going to say which because it was really, excessively inflammatory, and graphic) but it made me see things differently, though not the way the maker intended.

The video was about radical Islam, and the intent of the video was to make me think that it is taking over the world, and thus convince me that the Iraq war is justified. So, I asked the question: what is the purpose of the Iraq war? It is (to momentarily put aside the corruption involved, such as the heavy tie-ins with the oil industry) to stamp out radical Islam, because it was the fear of radical Islam that drove people to applaud the war in the first place. Well, why do we want to stamp out radical Islam? That’s obvious: because it endangers our lives, which are precious to us, more precious to us than anything else in the world, and I have to add that they are rightfully so because our lives are the most valuable thing we own.

We are protecting our own lives by taking the lives of other people, people who deserve their own lives as much as we do. Whether those people would or would not kill us given the chance is incredibly beside the point, as I will explain later. The point here is that we are doing the same thing that radical Islam is doing, only to a greater extent in that we have killed more people than they have. While the radical Islamists want to eradicate Westerners, we Westerners want to eradicate the radical Islamists, because we both think we’re right.

As I pondered this, the questions kept coming, ones that all seemed to answer themselves at first, but not really. It is pretty obvious to me that there is no way to get rid of radical Islam through violent or passive means, and it is also true that radical Islam is spreading, not as rapidly as the video would have me believe, but still at a decently alarming rate. The problem I have with the video telling people such information in such an inflammatory format in such an arbitrary way is that it distances them from their own ideals, which are generally peaceful as a whole. When you convince someone that they are in imminent danger and that there is no way out but to fight, it doesn’t matter how rational a person they are, because they will still fight. And when they fight, people on both sides get killed, people who all deserve their own lives no matter what they do with them.

The sad fact of this matter, before I move on to the true issue at hand, is that America has already become distanced from its ideals. We want to stop the radical Islamists because they want to kill us. Or at least, that’s the way we’ve thought of it this entire time. The blunt of it though, is that we want to stop the radical Islamists so that we can stop the fighting, even though we don’t know that this is our motive. But it is, because the terrorism we want to stop is the radical Islamist version of war, and we are fighting them to stop that war. But here’s the punch-line: it takes two to start a war. We wanted to prevent the deaths of more Americans, so what did we do? We sent a whole bunch of our fellow citizens to the war in Iraq where they all got shot in the face and died in bloody heaps on the dusty streets of Baghdad. Those Americans may have gone there of their own free will, but it was because they were caught up in sensationalism, with exhibit A being the propaganda video I saw. The radical Islamists don’t value their lives, so no matter how many of them we murder, it is still a victory for them when a single American soldier dies in the process. By invading their country, we are fighting their war for them. Now, I have one more question before we get down to business: Why are you reading this? Well, for that one I have to say that it is because somehow I have subliminally made you think that I’m going to put forth some sort of solution in this article. If I’m wrong about that then pay me no mind, but if I hit the nail on the head then there is something you need to realize: by rushing in to find a solution to this, you are part of the problem. This is why:

Every war ever fought, every conflict that has ever erupted out of the volatility of man, was started as an attempt at solving some sort of problem. But I can’t just stand up and say “Don’t try to fix things people! Problems are good, so we should leave things the way they are and ignore the outside world!” A statement like that will always draw the same predictable reaction: problems are bad (obviously, it’s in their definition) so we should get rid of them. However, earlier in this article I was able to prove that war is also a problem, because people die in wars. The wars people die in are often wars fought to save lives, which is what really slams the irony in my face. So do we fight a war to end all wars? A war is a way of solving a problem, and wars are our problem, so it’s a perfectly fine idea, right? The answer is a resounding NO, because a war like that would only ever be over if everyone dies, because otherwise we might still have wars afterwards, right?

I answered every question in the paragraph above, except the last one, which asked basically, in “true or false” format, whether or not the only way to end war is by everyone dying, because otherwise we will always fight. And I will answer this one now, and it will take up the rest of the article, because this is the heart of the problem: can people get along? What a question! Can people really, really get along?

This paragraph needs to “have impact on the reader” and the only way to do that is for me to completely ignore trying to make it flow with the last paragraph, so here goes nothing….

We need to educate the world. Fighting solves nothing, because it is the problem not the solution. This simple truth is what makes humanity so complex in our minds. How do you solve a problem when it is its only solution? You can’t, but who ever said anything about war being the only way to stop war? Education is the only way to allow humans to coexist with themselves. If we teach people that they can live in peace, that they should live in peace, that fighting is bad, that everyone on earth is their equal, and that they need to value their own lives as well as the lives of everyone else in the world more than anything else, and they believe it and live by it, then we have a perfect world right there, as perfect as it could ever be. Easier said than done, of course, but so is everything in life. If we could just show the people of the world that to coexist is the only useful thing they could ever do, that anything other than peace is wrong, because it is simply lowers the quality of life for everyone, we could achieve this. What we need is for everyone in the world to realize something: they need to realize that their own existence is something that they’re experiencing against a-million-to-one odds. They need to realize that the fact that they were even born at all was something that they should take as an unbelievably lucky miracle. Because it was. Even though humans don’t live very long, a hundred years at the most, we shouldn’t take that as something depressing and limiting. Instead of a life that ended too soon, a life that was too unfairly short, we should see eighty years that we should never in eternity have ever hoped to experience. Those eighty years are eighty years won at incredibly sheer odds, eighty years that we shouldn’t waste fighting the other people who just so happen to also be alive, for that brief yet beautiful span of years. What we really all need to do is simple: we all need to realize that our fellow humans, all seven billion of us, are all brothers and sisters, united by our shared experience of the only world we’ll ever know. Instead of bombing each other, we should all sit back and watch the sunset together, knowing it will rise over somewhere else in the world, where there are more people who are your brothers and sisters, and as it sets again yet more of your brothers and sisters will rise to it as a new dawn. But no matter how far away from you they are, they are still your brothers and sisters, and truly they aren’t very far from you at all, because the earth is just a little blue marble in the infinite vastness of space.

All we really need is a little understanding, and a little bit of hope, so to the makers of those propaganda videos, try a little inspiration in place of damnation, because we’re a lot closer to world peace then we’d ever know, and all we have to do is just stop and listen to each other.