Heal The World

Songwriters and film-makers and artists would have us believe that love makes the world go round. It's some form of self-delusion that they have to engage in to keep themselves functioning, or at worst it's a feeble attempt at mass deception. Either way, such songs and movies and paintings about love and all that are at most a minor distraction from the real thing that makes the world go round - hate. Be it the multitudes of Islamic extremists attacking and killing innocent people because of their hatred of some vaguely defined evil imperialist ideology of America, or the irrational hatred of right-wing Americans for all things non-right-wing-American, or the equally irrational hatred of left-wing Americans for anyone who dares to profess a conservative ideology, every big decision anyone makes these days seems to be primarily driven by hate.

Not that this is a new phenomenon. After World War 2, the poster child for hatred, came the Cold War. This gave us amazing advances in space exploration. Mankind hadn't yet figured out how to fly at the turn of the twentieth century, but merely seventy years later we managed to put a man on the moon. Incredible, you say? It was only possible because the Soviets and the Americans would do anything to beat 'those imperialist dogs' or 'those commie bastards', respectively, to win the space race. The reason we haven't heard much about space in the last twenty years is because comity and harmony don't get NASA funded, so the fall of communism has not been so good for it.

Go as far back in time as you choose, but the only people who made a real difference in the world seemed to have had issues about love and happiness - issues which prevented them from practising either one for any extended length of time. Alexander, Napolean, Genghis Khan, Babur, Hitler - they wrote their piece of history and shaped many lives, kindoms, even generations, but they sure killed and maimed a lot of people while doing so. Sure Rembrandt and van Gogh are famous, but paintings don't count for zilch in this world. It's hate that makes the world go round and you better go about it the right way if you want to make a difference.

Which brings me to the extremely long-winded point I am trying to make - way to go, people of Switzerland. You specifically banned minarets and only minarets from being constructed in your country, which is a blatant act of discrimination because you did not ban construction of any other religious buildings in any way. Just goes to show that the most neutral country in the world can hate with the best of them. Ever since the Moors were beat driven out of Spain by the Christians, Europe has been nervous about the next, ever imminent Muslim invasion. Of course, our dear, peaceful (ahem) Muslim brethren can't ever have enough things to get offended about, so this little piece of legislation plays right into the hands of all the extremist nut-cases. And we know there are more than enough of those to go around. Grab a bag of pop-corn people, coz this is going to be fun. And by fun, I mean not fun at all.

Good grief, can't we all just get along?