At times like these many are taking stock of the world & searching for the guilty ones. The need to blame is deep rooted. You may be looking at the pandemic or the political gyrations of the moment. It is all too easy to point the finger.
It may make us feel better to have that self-righteous certainty that we have nailed the guilty but where does it lead?
The culprits must be penalised. Justice must be seen to be done. Punishment as an example, a deterrent to others. Justice as cleansing.
But the culture of blame breeds a climate of fear and hate. The eternal tit-for-tat of revenge and settled scores. But they are never settled.
The Mandela/Tutu Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa demonstrated another way to go.
But beyond the obvious superiority of love over hate is there a real opportunity to get serious about change?
Could we not fix our sights on the cause of our ills rather than the perpetrators?
How and why did the demigod come to power? How and why did the virus jump species?
How did apparently intelligent and civilised people (like you & me) do nothing to stop the trashing of the planet?
A quest to uncover the underlying causes would follow their chain of events back to the root. When we find that origin, we can solve rather than punish. Surely this is the only way to escape the endless cycle of hatred and destruction that we all know so well.
In Infinite State, the final part of The Infinity Trilogy, I have tried to depict how such a path might lead us to a better place. It may be just a work of fiction but nothing featured there is beyond the means available to us now.
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