death and the lonely guitarist as a young boy in search of purpose 


 

You hear it casually on the news. Hundreds of dead in an earthquake in Iran, the figures for the casualties slowly climbing as the day wears on. Somebody blows themselves up to kill other people. Somebody, in a dark theatre, carefully aims the gun at the President. A Vietnamese monk sets himself on fire to make a point. George Bush signs the decree that will bring war and death to thousands.

Life would seem to be cheap, so cheap and expendable that people won't hesitate to snuff out other people's or even their own vital flame, sometimes even for the flimsiest of causes, an insult or a perceived dishonour. Maybe it is easy to do this if you believe in god and after-life, and that when you die not all of you dies but your soul lives eternal. For those of us who have difficulty with these concepts, it is a far more horrendous thing, to contemplate eliminating the little time and opportunity that someone (including ourselves) may have while we are alive, that brief spark of light between two eternal voids. The little time we have is all we have. If there is a god, whatever that may be, he or it is busy with very enormously big things, and small, don't count on us being in any way special in front of his eyes. Sometimes it is necessary to extinguish life, in order to survive or defend yourself. Killing is an inevitable part of nature, of a world based on competition and survival of the fittest but, in this thing as in so many others,, why should we be enthralled to the biological agendas which we still carry in ourselves, of the earlier, savage forms of life that preceded us? We are self-aware and have a sense of moral judgement, we should be able to put aside our beastly, literally, heritage. 

Posted: Tue - February 22, 2005 at 10:32 AM          

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