Our Insane Heart of Darkness, Colltalers

129 death. 532 hurt. The grim tally of last Friday’s bloodshed in Paris keeps rising just as grief and indignation overcomes the world. Once again, we’re frightened by an invisible monster who seems to erupt at random and violently rips out the lives of innocents at will.
But if there are many realizations about yet another act of brutal terrorism, its apparent open-ended expansion and choice of settings to strike, there’s also one that we’ve known all along about this sort of massacre, however horrific it may be: it teaches us nothing.
If anything, it only reinforces everything that’s wrong about our world, our mutual hatred towards people who don’t look like us, our misplaced sense of entitlement and patriotism, our abhorrent ways to seek total, and ultimately impossible, submission of our enemies.
Even to pontificate on the sins of our age is also a by-product of going through again this unrealistic exercise of searching causes that we already know for conflicts that we keep on making possible. In the end, it’s hard to distinguish which is more unbearable: to experience deep sorrow for the victims, or witness the callousness of political leaders, ready for anything that’ll boost their profile.
The only thing that this new massacre may have accomplished is also not new: it’s just moved the needle a bit closer to

the breakdown point. It won’t gather any more sympathy or repulse towards ISIL or terror groups just like it, nor was it designed to do so. And neither it will make any more acceptable the quasi-institutionalized doctrine of permanent war in the Middle East pursued by Western powers.
For every time that another terrible attack like these happens, we’re reset back to the same starting point from where all others took off. The needle is indeed moving, but all else, including us, seems stuck into an infernal repetition. Only the names change.
Thus, so to spare anyone of yet another useless opinion, one that has been stated on this space over and over, and that we’re sure, are multiplying all around as we speak, let’s keep this as brief as it should. Surely, we had to write about it, but there’s no need for eulogies about a disappearing open world of gentility and peace. Or another disastrous theory explaining it all, as if you were a child.
What? Will that justify yet another wave of bombings in some faraway land? of course. Will it be used to increase security around our cities and surveillance of all citizens? have no doubt about it. Is already prompting nauseating speeches about the sanctity of the human life and the absolute need to wipe out all radical militancy from the face of the planet? You bet. Will anything change? Are you kidding?
Pardon us if we seem too despondent as we pick up the pieces of our own naiveté, and ultimate failure to solve the problems of the world in just under-1200 tidy words, give or take a few. The world is really not enough, as we need to solve first our own malaise about it.
We’re obviously very sorry for those who died or got hurt in the most abject way, and for the fact that their sacrifice won’t change the way these things work. We’re so incredibly sadden that this is beyond history repeating itself as farce, one too many times over. More likely, this is history mocking our grip and willingness to withstand the consequences of our choices, however benign they may seem.
For if we really wanted to change this deplorable and ultimately unstable state of affairs, we would’ve done it already. But who’s interested in changing their thinking instead of preaching, or preying, on other people’s minds? Who even thinks that self-introspection and restrain have any value now?
Perhaps more than we give it credit for. As for that being enough, solely or along a plethora of self-improvement strategies, we’ll say what’s seldom said in so many bombastic recipes for world peace and understanding, complete with assuring techniques and even a great deal of compassion: we don’t really know. But we’ll keep on trying and hope someday you join us. Have an easier week ahead. WC

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