Butterfly’s Wings

Everything is interconnected;

Poor decisions made a century ago led to a half-century of deprivations and conflicts

Well-intentioned choices made by powerful people changed borders, governments,
created countries, and destroyed cultures and histories.

Displaced people, upset by Empire and cultural changes split off into ever more narrow factions,
 religious fracturing, extremism, violence, intolerance, and hatred.

The desire for unbridled control led to ever-changing alliances, wars, and overthrown governments; the enemies of enemies became friendly allies eventually reverting to even greater enemies than those feared initially.

Those new enemies, knowing so much about their previous allies, turned that knowledge into cultural and actual weapons with the never-ending outcome violence, attacks, insurgencies,
and the mass murder of civilians and the exodus of refugees.

Migration of desperate people combined with global climate change, weather anomalies, famine, drought, floods, and other natural disasters resulted in political discord, closed borders, hatred, blame, and distrust of the other, anti-Muslim and revival and increase of antisemitism resulting
in the rising popularity of insular and autocratic governments.

Greed, the exponentially increasing desire for fortune, power, religious, cultural, sectarian, sexual, tribal and gender-based hatred having an inordinate effect on economies, violence, acceptance, and national and international ethos systems  

Technologies designed to improve lives adapt to encroach on living; causing insecurity, fear, interference, lies, theft, and loss of trust, truth, and independent thought.

Technology also leading to loss of jobs and entire industries, causing more need by people receiving an ever-diminishing portion of income and benefits while corporations and the wealthy become even more prosperous.

Every year, decade, month, week, day, and hour someone’s choice and action will be the catalyst for an entire creation, destruction, or unintended or undesired circumstance; everything is interconnected.

Your unthinking words or deeds might result in another Treaty of Versailles, another Cause of Action, Hiroshima, Overthrown Government, Al Qaeda, Daesh, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Pearl Harbor, Tito, Mogadishu, Chernobyl, Fascisti, Pol Pot, Mao, Kim Jong-un, or Hitler.

History, past, present, and future are the roots, trunk, branches, leaves, and fruits of our lives; think before action or speech. Feed or prune the Tree of Life as needed, but don’t be responsible for any destructive growth undermining our foundations.

Ronda R. Scott-Marak

© 5 December 2019