What has this world evolved into? Breaking away from the very painful period of the last two world wars, one would have thought we would have learned the lessons of the past. However, the ever eternal disease of greed and power continues to prevail.
Religion throughout the ages has been a tool to give some form of hope to the masses that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Leaders over the millennia realised this and in an effort to take more control of their destinies made themselves religious icons or gods epitomised by the Pharaonic culture that lasted thousands of years, followed by the Roman Empire and the more power hungry Caesars.
Christianity developed from almost nowhere at the peak of Roman arrogance and when their empire was expanding at tremendous cost of human life and suffering. Like Moses at the time of Exodus, who through the aid of his people’s beliefs conjured up a rebellion to escape enslavement from within the powerful Egyptian Empire, little did he know that history would repeat itself and experience similar undertones. Almost 1300 years later, Jesus was born in Bethlehem at a time when people also needed miracles to help them break away from the tyranny of the Romans. Reading the New Testament, one can almost visualise the desperation of what average people were enduring at the time and how the gap between rich and poor was so monumental with human life having no real value.
As England began to expand it’s reach and gain power during the Tudor period, Henry VIII in order to gain more power and keep a hold on his people and allow himself to have a free rein to do as he saw fit including overruling the pope and divorcing his Roman Catholic wife, decided he should become the head of the Church of England.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you look at the build up of communism in the Soviet Union and the desperate need of the millions of peasants who had no life as compared to the Romanov’s, and other noble families. Like their distant relatives in the English Royal family, the Tsar was also very much in control of the Russian church and as such it was not surprising that faith dwindled over the threat of poverty and starvation to a point where belief was almost lost entirely. Following on from Lenin, Stalin proved to be no better than the former Tsars and indeed, millions lost their lives through a period of outright terror and radicalised purging.
Not so far away, Germany was also going through a similar Great Depression as with the Tsars, while not being killed, Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate as Emperor, following the end of the Great War in 1918, ending what had been a dynastic period that had lasted in parts of his nation and empire for over 500 years.
Through the miserable period that followed, Adolf Hitler a relatively obscure individual rose to power and following a short period in prison, where he wrote “Mein Kamph” My Struggle, built out his Nazi party through enforced propaganda and brain-washing the masses, programming them into a belief that he was the answer to a greater Germany and superior race. Hitler’s final solution and system of ethnic cleansing to eradicate all Jews from Germany and all the countries that he invaded through the course of WW2 surpassed all the horrific acts of earlier dictators and one would have thought, this would never again be repeated. However, like with any wrongful act committed by an individual, time seems to have an effect of eradicating the consequences of such acts and others step in and continue purging societies not even caring if their people have been the victims of these types of atrocity…
History is a subject that seems to be losing popularity as too Divinity or Religious Studies that were a must in the last century. How are we to learn to behave right if we do not hear the wrongs of the past or have some form of guidance and hope for a better future. The disease of greed unfortunately tips the balance, the want for more wealth and an ability to have anything at the cost of millions steers infected individuals on the wrong path and ultimately breeds similar such behaviour from all that surround these individuals.
You only have to take a look at North Korea and see how this is happening right under our very eyes today. Kim Jong-Un is a ruthless dynastic dictator and despot leader of an impoverished nation. Instead of looking after the welfare of his people he seems bent up intent in following the footsteps of Adolf Hitler, investing all the country’s wealth into building out a powerful army in addition to amassing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction! For what? Well, he is just intent on continuing his dynasty, maintaining a lavish lifestyle & enjoying all the mod cons while the average North Korean has nothing and no opportunity to even question the wrongs of this tyrannical regime.
On the other side of the globe and considered not just by the dictators of the East but also by many Middle Eastern dictatorial regimes, most notably Iran “The Great Satan”, comes the United States. Does the US have failed leadership, the answer I believe is yes, but instead of being seen as tyrannical leaders, they have followed a different course becoming weak through the inability to say no.
In one of Churchill’s most famous speeches titled: The Defence of Freedom and Peace – October 1938. Within it he stated
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“…Alexander the Great remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they had not learned to pronounce the word “No.” Let that not be the epitaph of the English-speaking peoples or of Parliamentary democracy, or of France, or of the many surviving liberal States of Europe.”
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Indeed, this speech drilled down into much what I have stated already but which very sadly seems to have been forgotten with time. The US today is a bankrupt nation unable to repay its debt.Instead, leaders print more money and sell misery through production of arms and weaponry which they want to produce more of by instilling trouble throughout the world in an effort to prop up the coffers of their technically empty treasury. I am sorry to say that looking at all the potential candidates for the presidency of this nation, not one has any charisma and all they do is want to slang off each other and preach lies to their voters almost in a similar fashion to how Josef Goebbels handled Germany’s propaganda machine.
Moving on to 2023, history is once again repeated with genocidal atrocities this time driven by the Israelis supported of course by the US extended debt mountain and arms primarily supplied by US defence industries.
The UK unfortunately through the failures of their past colonial expansion and inability to respect borders and tribal boundaries, gave away land that was not their’s to give away in the form of the “Balfour Declaration”
This grave misunderstanding has caused consistent violence since its proclamation in 1917 and today has reduced Gaza to rubble not witnessed since the levelling of cities by bombers during WW2. How can a nation of people who have experienced the horrors of Hitler’s Final Solution and the Holocaust, now effectively wear the Nazi SS scull & cross bones and dish out similar horrors to the Palestinian people.
To conclude, every nation needs to find leaders who lead by their hearts with the welfare of the people taking priority, give up the need for arms and instead, invest in protecting our environment and ensuring peace and unity for our children and our children’s children. We need a Utopian society more than ever!!
