A few words on Burma (Myanmar), Buddhism, Christianity, Politics, Violence, and Apathy

I wrote the following on Sept. 28, but for some reason neglected to post it until now.

Burmese monks arrested, killed, tortured, generally sedated after a little more than a week of peaceful protests, leading their countrymen in thousands-strong marches in Rangoon and other cities across the country. If Buddhist monks are not sacred, what is? The last vestige of a peaceable religion, in its entirety and fundamentally pacifist, is put down violently less than a decade into our newborn century.

I can’t even begin to express my outrage at the hypocrisies of my own countrymen and our elected leaders. But then our country and its religion is one of war. In our own short history we’ve littered our country and numerous others with the blood of innocents in the name of freedom and democracy. Yet peaceful protests in the name of the same ideals are put down with militaristic precision. I’d like to believe might does not make right, but evidence at hand points to the contrary.

I find little coincidence in the fact that I share my day of birth with Mahatma Ghandi. What precious little I know of his life and what he held dear are akin to my perhaps unfounded desires for humanity and its wellbeing.

Dictators and power-hungry opportunists will always exist. This is our curse as a species; the blood-lust for the ability to exert our will over that of others. However, recognizing this, shouldn’t society in its numerous manifestations of law, religion, governance, etc., strive against these tendencies? Yet instead it seems to be encouraged, not just in the corrupt dictatorships and communist governments of the world, but in capitalist societies as well. Economics drives a hunger for more: efficiency and wealth take precedence over sustainability and altruism.

And let’s not forget the history of injustice and violence in the name of religion throughout the ages. The situation in Burma accentuates the irony of this historical truth: peaceful monks put down by a power-hungry police state.

Maybe this is why those of us who are trying to forget our place in this history of events are so given to indulging in the present: sensuality being the most prominent among the indulgences. Irony and detachment replace activism, for rewriting our own history and our future is an exercise in futility. Forget the past in the present, save our souls by forgetting they ever existed. Nietzsche is still alive and well.