kill or be killed

Sun's almost up.

I've been thinking a lot about life, my life, and the nature of life. I know I'm no student of Philosophy, never been able to wrap my mind around that stuff, but I can't stop from ruminating.

I'm a young man, in my early 20's, living in turn of the century America, in a semi-small University town, a few miles from the coast of the great old Atlantic, living just as best as I can. I'm smart when I should be simple, clumsy when I should be smooth, never know just what the right thing to do is, and all those other stupid little problems that come with being human.

I've been reading this book about the life of Stalin and I've been watching this 2006 movie called The Wind that Shakes the Barley which is about the Anglo-Irish War/Irish Civil War and I think that, combined with way too much time on my hands, has put me in this schizophrenically reflective mood. Watching the movie and reading the book really gets in my head how lucky I am to be living here at this time. If this was Ireland in '22 or the USSR in '37, I'd be dead now. I can't watch my damn tongue, I'm too meek, and I have too many opinions on everything. Someone would have shot me a long time ago.

You wake up in the middle of the night and some crazy bastards throw a gun in your face, threaten to blow your head off if you don't say you're in favor of something or other, so you proclaim your absolute and undying love for that something or other and try to get back to sleep after washing your blood off your pajamas. Next day some other crazy bastards show up and shoot you in the throat for earlier proclaiming your absolute loyalty to whatever that was. That's the kind of thing that happens in those situations, in that kind of fratricidal war, but it's not happening here.

The Fed keeps our economy from going into an absolute tailspin, the Army keeps bombs from falling on my roof, the police keep dangerous minorities from selling me drugs or robbing me of the $12 in my wallet, our two party system insures there is never any serious or lasting political discourse which would involve me getting shot, my tax money is collected by somebody, and my Big Mac isn't going to give me ptomaine poisoning. The country I live in is one big oily, solid, glutinous pudding that isn't going in any particular direction, and that's just fine with me. The government is not going to kill me (probably), nobody who is fighting against the government is going to kill me (maybe), and nobody is going to put a gun in my hand and tell me to kill anybody unless I volunteer (hopefully).

There's a scene in The Wind That Shakes the Barley where a bunch of IRA fighters, including the main characters, break out of prison, but are forced to leave a couple of their comrades behind. They storm into the elegant country house of the gentleman farmer who informed on them, which had led to their imprisonment and torture, and take him prisoner. He is forced to write a letter stating that he will be shot unless the IRA fighter's comrades are freed. They are killed. The man has to be shot.

I'm watching this scene, which takes place in the way back of beyond in the Irish countryside, on an absolutely beautiful windy hill, and I'm thinking, "What?" This man, he was an absolute asshat, but think of all that you are destroying when you kill him. His childhood, his years of education, his years of work, his wife and children. It's all going to be erased with some cheap little metal bullet. It won't mean anything to anyone.

If the forces of the British Empire, the auxiliaries or the Tans or the Tories or anybody else talk about the story, they'll just make it something it wasn't. "Protestant gentleman shot by Irish ruffians" or "Another murder by Irish thugs". That kind of "England expects" bullshit. If the IRA talks about it, they'll just say "An enemy to the Republic has been removed from great Eire" or "Another victory for our heroes". Nobody is going to say "This man loved the purple flowers in his garden" (my conjecture) or anything like that. It can't be called killing, killing is when you step on an ant or hunt an animal for food. It's nothing but the destruction of something beautiful and amazing, human life. Ahimsa is on the right track.

You kill me, you could probably make it mean something. I'm probably against something or doing something you don't agree with. But I'd like you to know that I pay too much attention to my feet when I'm walking, that I like nothing better than a beer and a book in my favorite camp chair on a warm afternoon, that I adore sunlight in any form, that I'm fascinated by glass, that I love and respect my parents more than anything, and that I'm worried about the world, the future, my future, the future of mankind, the future of my dirty socks, all of it. You kill me and you're leaving my bills unpaid, my grandmother uncalled, my floor dirty, my bed empty, and my phone uncharged. You'd be destroying one of you, your kind, another human being, whatever your reasons.