a fragile world

The other day, in a lecture on modernist poetry, the lecturer was talking about the sentiments prior to the first world war. Back then it was generally thought that europe was advanced enough to be free of war. Europeans actually thought that they were enlightened enough so that they would never engage each other in war again. Then, of course, the first world war happened and shattered everyone's idealism, world war two finished it off in an even different way.. but anyway, we were discussing the effects of these changes on poetic style and stuff... but then my mind started to wander away from what the lecturer was saying and I realized "we are in the same mentality today!" Granted it is a bit different, but we are stuck in this sense of human triumph and idealism. 9-11 did a bit to slap the world awake, but we are still blind to our own lack of control and chaos. Sure, we have realized that no one is immune to the attacks of terror, but we have made a critical world view mistake. We (western countries in general, I suppose) have made the error of assigning the role of "evildoers" (a word bounced around the media a lot for the past couple of years) to outsiders. Once more we consider ourselves to be above basic human nature and that to have morally evolved past everyone else. I mean, when we think of war I bet another european war seems ridiculous right? But at any given moment we are only a couple of decisions and events away from another european world war, an american war, another american or spanish civil war. It blew my mind to realize that. We have created no real permanent safety for ourselves. Pax Romana lasted far longer than anything we have experienced lately and even then it was just a matter of time for the roman empire to crumble and leave a world in even worse condition than it was before. I know it sounds farfetched to think of france trying to take over europe, or britain fighting italy or the US splitting up, but seriously, think about it, what is the only thing holding everything together at this point? Just people and their sorry little plans.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You are so right.
29/1/06 11:30
Anonymous said…
Doesn't it make sense that man cannot be left to their own devices but there needs to be a trust in a higher power, a being who can see the whole picture who is strong enough to handle things here on earth?
29/1/06 22:23
Anonymous said…
A fragile and unsafe world indeed. As a regular user of Madrid's public transport I've observed the way commuters get anxious when there's a sudden strange noise in the metro and how they get restless when a suspicious object is spotted. Why can't I help getting nervous when a muslim person with a backpack sits beside me?.
Call it post-traumatic reaction, whatever, but the age of inocense was for sure over on 9/11 and now we certainly need some help from Above to mantain sanity in this mad world.
31/1/06 08:54
Anonymous said…
oopps! don't know what happened there ... I wrote the last comment.
31/1/06 13:13
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