Recent media coverage have brought to light allegations
of unethical, perhaps illegal, conduct of people in positions of trust: a
(former) prime minister accepting secret cash payments in clandestine meetings,
a member of parliament mistreating recent arrivals to the country, a mayor
buying off a challenger prior to an election.
Other disturbing pictures (which we aren't allowed to see) relate to
dehumanization: the use of torture to extract confessions to justify war, use of
drones and robots with ordnances firing white phosphorus, cluster bombs and
depleted uranium to kill, maim and poison people and the environment for years
to come.
Words today such as insurgent, terrorist or militant, as in Alice in Wonderland,
mean “just what I choose it to mean.” The euphemism “collateral damage” is used
as a cover for the truth of civilian casualties.
President Eisenhower on leaving office in 1961 warned against “the acquisition
of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex...and the disastrous
rise of misplaced power.”
Eisenhower in 1961 could have been talking about the current financial crisis:
“We must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease
and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow...(and) mortgage the material
assets of our grandchildren... risking the loss of their political and spiritual
heritage”. With corporate bailouts and war expenditures, there is a colossal
transfer of “wealth” from the have-nots to the haves by mortgaging the former
into long term indentured servitude.
Over 25 years ago Jorge Livraga, among others, foresaw the beginning of a Middle
Age. Some skeptically conceded that it might happen at some very distant date,
but not soon. Middle Ages are periods of insecurity in all aspects of life with
abject poverty affecting large segments of society. The last Middle Age in the
Europe lasted about 1000 years from the fall of the Roman Empire about 500 CE to
1500 CE, with the Renaissance.
Recent events suggest that we are indeed at headed to another Middle Age. It's a
human crisis with the descent of the higher values of respect, generosity,
fraternity, dignity, kindness, integrity and community. Greed, denial, ignorance
and corruption are gaining ground.
Let's be inspired and live by the moral, intellectual and spiritual values
contained in the traditions of Antiquity and transmit them to future generations
with the hope of another Renaissance in less than ten centuries!
