War

My daughter announced to me suddenly: "Today Samson (her aptly named classmate) and I agreed - the people in Afghanistan should stop fighting and we should just be friends." This startled me. It seemed so fresh and radical.
I said, "You and Samson are right, however...it's not quite so simple" So then I had to explain 9/11, the war on terror, Bush I & II, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and all kinds of human insanity and bad-ness. I felt like I was justifying it by making it comprehensible. It is all just so stupid and yet hasn't it always been like this?
Humans have this burning need to be important - to be on top of the food chain. It's a lot easier and faster to get important by being hard-hearted, selfish, and greedy than by being kind, humble, and generous. It all unrolls from that little kernel: all the wars, Wall Street, and most of history.
You'd think that being important would make people happy, since we desire it so ardently. Sure, being important does provide lots of adrenaline thrills and there is no greater drug than home-brewed adrenaline. It just never ever ever is enough.
Nope, it's the nurturing and generous people that are deeply happy, which is some kind of quiet justice.
But we've really got to get a handle on the adrenaline thing - if we're ever to have a sane world.