Sobering Thoughts

 

I just started reading Klaus Schwab's book "The Great Reset". I have been following it's author, an engineer, economist and chairman of the World Economic Forum, for over a year.  While I am not interested in economics per se, I am interested the insights and inner workings of those who have tremendous power and sway in our fragile world.  I have always had an intense desire to understand how powerful, and visionary men are able to capture people's hearts and use that power for the betterment of society or its destruction.

 It is the same reason I have read and re-read the  propaganda of Hitler; Mein Kampf  and A Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. I want to understand their intent as well as  their methods. The  Pol Pot regime in Cambodia has always been of particular interest to me, especially after I visited the country and witnessed its "killing fields" and "re-education centers". I have sought to understand how its proponents committed genocide against their own people in the quest to create an agrarian socialist society. They were well intentioned but the outcome was devastating nonetheless . They annihilated anyone who challenged them, particularly the scientists and the educators. And then there is the Holocaust against the Jews. I have not not been to the concentration camps in Europe where women, children and men were stripped of their humanity and dumped into mass graves, but I have read enough biographies and historical documents to verify that it occurred. These atrocities only scratch the surface of the horror visited on  humanity throughout the ages. And it continues. How many months ago were the bodies of first nations children discovered in mass graves? We like to imagine that we are above such acts of cruelty. We are not . 

History repeats itself. 

There is always this fallacious belief: "It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible." Alas all of the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We like to imagine ourselves "evolved", conscientious and incapable of the crimes our ancestors committed. How I wish that were true. A brief glance at the world news will remind you that sexual child abuse is rampant in India, that there are more slaves now that ever before in history and that intolerance of religion is at an all time high, particularly in countries where there is an Islamic extremist presence. 

I find myself asking: how did German citizens turn a blind eye to the  annihilation  of their Jewish neighbours and friends. What would I have done if I were a young German woman during the rise of Nazi power? What I would have done as the daughter of a rich plantation owner?  I hope against hope that I would have stood up, resisted the tide of hatred, and fought to protect the oppressed rather than subjugate and enslave them. 

I currently find myself in a position where I disagree with the mandates being issued by my own government. And while they are a far cry from the historical refences I mentioned above, they are an infringement of our constitution.  I have witnessed countless friends loose their hard earned careers careers because they are not willing to bow to governmental control and loose atomy over their bodies. Do I remain silent? Do I speak? I have been in agony over the issue, because I have been uncertain where I stand on many of its divisive issues. I am not a conspiracy theorist but I am aware that there is value in looking at the present through the lens of history.