Big Brother Wants You
Peace on earth. World peace. Those phrases have been used so often they’ve become part of the popular lexicon. Everyone claims to want world peace, and while it sounds nice in a Miss America speech or a Christmas carol, it would be just as practical to wish for magical unicorns or trees that really do grow real money.
No one wants or likes war (besides those who profit from it). I wish no one would ever again die in a war, soldier or civilian. But that’s just not possible. Sometimes it’s necessary to stand up for something en masse and fight someone else. No amount of reasoning was going to convince Hitler he should be content to rule only one country or prevent the German armies from marching across Europe. No amount of peaceful protest was going to free America from British rule. As long as there are tyrants intent on oppressing others (and this will be forever, human nature dictates that), I hope there are those who will not stand for it, and will fight back. Yes, that’s war, and in such cases it’s absolutely necessary.
But let’s say that by some miracle all nations of the world were suddenly satisfied with their territories, their rights, and their economies. No one wanted borders redrawn or resources redistributed. With no tyrannical empires trying to widen their reaches, surely there would be no more fighting? Wrong. As long as people hold different beliefs, they will fight about them. Another fact of human nature. And there seem to be few beliefs that cause as much strife among those with differing views as religious beliefs. People have been dying in wars over religion for as long as there has been religion. Can we really hold out hope that somehow that will change?
Just this past Christmas, a fight broke out in what some believe to be the holiest of places, the Church of the Nativity — built on the spot believed to be Jesus Christ’s birthplace in Bethlehem. Priests and cleaning crews were cleaning and preparing the church before the celebration of the Armenian and Greek Orthodox Christmas. While they were doing this, some of the Orthodox faithful stepped onto the Armenian side, and suddenly 80 of these men began beating each other with broomsticks, iron poles, and apparently whatever else was handy. Palestinian police had to be called to break up the fight, in which people were wounded.
The irony of that at first made me chuckle, and then I was thoroughly disgusted. Jesus Christ, above all else, implored people to love each other, turn the other cheek, take care of one another. So on what these people believe to be his very birthplace, they behave exactly opposite and attempt to do each other bodily harm — not in self-defense or to prevent someone else from being harmed, but because someone who held different beliefs stepped over an invisible line. That church became the whole of the Middle East in microcosm. They’ve been fighting and murdering each other over the same thing since the concept of God existed.
When people can so easily kill each other over a difference in ideas, over a different concept of God, can there truly be a chance for peace?
It’s interesting to note that in entertainment like literature and film, where a created world can be anything the author wants it to be, peaceful worlds are so often depicted as colorless, joyless societies controlled by a Big Brother, like the one depicted in one of the most popular dystopian-themed books of the 20th century, George Orwell’s “1984.” In “1984″ there was war, but it was mostly a fictional one, the combatants changed on a governmental whim to manipulate the people. All media was carefully controlled and rewritten by a Ministry put in place to alter history back and forth as was deemed necessary. In these dystopian stories, the Big Brother element, which is the governing body or some kind of collective, monitors each individual carefully. The things that bring the most pleasure in life–sex, a variety of foods, entertainment, laughter, even love–are strictly rationed or banned altogether. The government becomes God, and in some incarnations entire societies are further controlled through drugs, such as in the movie “Equilibrium.”
Photo by Marc Nozell used under a Creative Commons license.
No one really fights, because there’s nothing to fight for. No one cares.
The message seems to be that a society where people do not fight can only be possible through choke hold controls and removal of personal freedoms, choices and pleasures. Take away what makes us individuals, our loves and hates, our beliefs, our passions–all of which happen to be the things over which we fight wars–and what’s left is a monotonous, pointless existence.
Shelley Ontis lives in Illinois, surrounded by corn, cows and pick-up trucks. She claims it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
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