In
keeping with the politically free theme, and our #MakeAmericaDeadAgain movement
we have decided to study human needs, mostly the need for power. The need for power beyond
And, if
you want to talk about power a great place to start is the ancient Assyrians.
They had some power, and were uninhibited as all hell about its use and
potential.
According to historian Will Durant;
"If
we should admit the imperial principle – that it is good, for the sake of
spreading law, security, commerce and peace, that many states should be
brought, by persuasion or force, under the authority of one government – then
we should have to concede to Assyria the distinction of having established in
western Asia a larger measure and area of order and prosperity than that region
of the earth had ever, to our knowledge, enjoyed before."
Of course, that kind of peace and security come with
a price. In the case of Babylon the cost was absolute destruction. According to Sennacherib, King of
Assyria 705 to 681 bce. Here is how security was achieved in Babylon;
“I
levelled the city and its houses from the foundations to the top, I destroyed
them, and I consumed them with fire. I tore down and removed the outer and
inner walls, the temples and ziggurats built of brick, and dumped the rubble in
the Arahtu canal. And after I destroyed Babylon, smashed its gods and massacred
its population, I tore up its soil and threw it into the Euphrates so that it
was carried by the river down to the sea.”
A Look At Today;
It isn’t much different than what is happening
in Syria today, I guess. It was much more difficult and required a lot more
labor, but the results are more or less the same. But, what happened to Babylon took place a
long time ago, and the crisis in Syria is so far away. And I was never very
good at history, or geography.
Looking at the world
today makes me wish I would have paid more attention to both, though. And it
certainly makes me wish world leaders would have learned a little more from the
past. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, right? Only
when they repeat it with today’s arms and abilities the whole world will end up
like Babylon, or Jerusalem, or Carthage.
Oddly enough, (or maybe not odd at all) they
always had a reason for every barbarous act of annihilation. Today, they are
just interesting bits of information on Google. Nobody ever thinks, "man we haven’t
changed," we still find a reason, and still pretend it makes sense.
#MakeAmericaDeadAgain
I think we will end
with some more Grateful Dead today;
“If
the game is lost then we're all the same
No one left to place or take the blame
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or that shining ball of blue we can call our home”
No one left to place or take the blame
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or that shining ball of blue we can call our home”
No comments:
Post a Comment