Impermanence

Source: 056 Teaching Impermanence, at Wat Olak Madu, Kedah, Wiki Commons

Let’s face it, we are a species of brutality, instability, and division. Sun Tzu wrote “The Art of War” amidst the disintegration of the Zhou Dynasty and the rise of conflict in Eastern China. Albert Einstein wrote, “So long as there are men, there will be wars” in a letter to Sigmund Freud as Hitler’s henchmen took over the Weimar Republic, slaughtering and imprisoning thousands in the process. John F. Kennedy bitterly claimed, “It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war,” just before our world would potentially face a devastating end during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Regardless of how different ideas, history, and predicaments these great minds had, they recognized that the world is continuously entangled in conflict. Despite their words of wisdom, these words reflect a sobering truth about the human condition: peace remains an elusive goal, often overshadowed by conflict, amidst our attempts to accurately document these fleeting experiences. 

This recurring theme of conflict is not confined to the past; it continues to shape our present. The unjustified war between Israel and Hamas, the massacre of the Sudanese Civil War, the decades-long Tawain-Chinese tensions, the everlasting War on Drugs, and so on, all have one thing in common: the perversity of human nature. But isn’t this just how “the way things go,” as the artist Beabadoobee noted in her reflection on human indifference?

With dire situations like these, humanity is yet again on the edge of another mass extinction (another World War). A Cauldron of Calamity, à la mode: indifference is the base, saturating the roots of our entertaining self-destruction (Social Media) devices, a dash of perpetual human suffering, with a condiment of apathy towards other ideas against our own.

Being submissive or against other ideas with the catastrophic news of far of lands, the average reader would rather hone into opinion pieces that support their own, sometimes, fixated realities. 

Indifference to different ideas leads to people refusing to listen to other beliefs, which prevents sharing an accurate history and finding common ground. This could cause society to fragment into isolated groups of thought. The echo chambers of social media amplify this division, wrapping individuals in their biases and prejudices. In this digital age, where information flows freely yet history and facts are often distorted, the challenge lies in accessing knowledge and determining its authenticity. Dialogue, once the cornerstone of progress and understanding, now struggles amidst the noise of conflicting narratives and stubborn viewpoints. As the drums of war reverberate through our land, indifference, and unwillingness to listen to other beliefs are what makes our society waste away in falsehood. We might not end up stampeded by the cavalrymen of Sun Tzu’s era, or turn into reckless ghouls from the potential nuclear winter of Einstein’s and JFK’s era, but we might very well be deprived of human history, communication, and empathy. 

To preserve our sanity and stability, we must recognize suffering is inevitable. To minimize distortion, we should attempt to understand issues from multiple perspectives and maintain an accurate, unbiased history. As Mark Twain observed, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” If we fall short, we will rhyme with preceding catastrophes. Therefore, fellow writer, how will you preserve accurate stories to alleviate the future of brutality, instability, and division? 

Matias Mendoza