Solving The World’s Problems - I Don’t Think So.

As I ready my daily dose of news - that frequently depressing litany of man’s cruelty to man - I am frequently reminded of how incompetent we are as a species at finding solutions to the long standing, often repeated social and economic problems of our shared world. There are days that feels as if not only have we never learned from our mistakes but that we continue to invent new ones. Reading about the disaster that is Syria, it is tempting to rail against western governments, greedy capitalist, overly enthusiastic fundamentalist (of all stripes) and mentally unbalanced dictators. It would be so easy if we could just say “ it is our fault - if my government had done this or not done that, we would not be in this mess” or “if I had given more money to this noble charity or that one, there would be less suffering in that country”. But the mess in the Middle East can not be defined by a simple acts of engagement or disengagement. The original roots of this particular disaster are mired in events of 1500 years ago (BBC). Those events have been agitated by the continual interference for reasons of greed and the assumption of superiority by colonialist western powers for the last 100 years. The cost of the greed, the cost of an adherence to a doctrine that at best is only marginally related to our daily existence and the willingness of some people to take advantage of the chaos is the displacement of millions and the deaths of thousands. And so we sit by in our reasonably warm and comfortable homes and wring our hands at the profound sadness of it all. There are, I suppose some long term solutions. One would be ( as I have written about in other blogs) is to stop the manufacture of all guns and of course bullets. If nothing else, if our means of killing people were less effective - fewer people would die. More affluent countries could open the borders and allow in thousands and thousands of refugees or we could insure that a significant part of our national budget be used to help the people of that war torn, oppressed and almost destroyed country. Or we could do nothing - all of the foreign countries that are now there could just leave. We could let the people of Syria solve their own problems. But neither the option of trying to rescue Syrians and their country or abandoning them to resolve their own issues would solve the problems; neither of those things would ensure that those people living in Syria would have the opportunity to live safe, comfortable lives. The damage is far too profound. The players both on the ground in such cities as Aleppo and in the capitals of other countries are far too immeshed in and benefiting from that particular nightmare. There are just far too many agendas being played out.  It is long past the time when any one person or any one country had either control or or even a modicum of power to effect a quick change. So I sent my money knowing that if sent all of my savings and all of my friends sent all of their savings - it would not come close to being enough to help one tiny village. I would write to my prime minister telling him what he needed to do and post it on Facebook,Youtube and everywhere else - if I only knew what that one thing was. All I can hope for is that someone far smarter than I will tell us what the solution is and in the meantime all that I can do is to pray that we humans start to learn from our mistakes. Lord knows we have made them often enough.