FINDING PEACE

We live in very difficult times. Travelling does not even bode a peaceful sojourn in any country. The extremists have made it very difficult for us, even simple people to enjoy life. Everywhere, there is danger of meeting untoward incidents -- a bomb here, an explosion there, a killing up there. It seems everywhere there is no more peace available. 

Not even in the confines of our bedrooms where locks could be unlocked with skeleton keys and important documents pilfered, or things displaced to induce amnesia. All in the name of State protection. 

What happened in Russia to Boris Nemtsov, a critic of Putin has a chilling effect on dissent in society. It means that the powers-that-be are ready to hold on to power without question, disallowing all forms of criticisms of the regime. 

Maybe we should ask ourselves, what philosophies allowed such things to happen to our world? What did the thinkers on this planet plant on the minds of people so that ideas seem to converge on restrictions, controls, monopolies, killings in the name of ideologies, and so forth and so on?

Right now, I am reading the Bible and trying to understand the mind of Christ. How did he develop his teachings? Why are his thoughts so life-affirming? And service is so ingrained in all of his preachings?

Marx dissected society and introduced the divisions in society -- which have been adopted by Lenin, by Mao Ze Dong in China, applying his ideas to the Russians and the Chinese 
peoples. Here in the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison also took up the ideas Marx, and added Lenin and Mao in order to round up his idea of a communist society. 

Is Communism really an option on this planet? Can we not build a place where deaths will not follow? Can we not find an idea that will inspire everyone to help themselves but more importantly help others as well in order not to experience hunger, poverty, homelessness, and all other illnesses that make one weak and non-fully participative in society?

Our problem in our Philippine society is that because of the advent of new technologies, the people have speeded up their intellectual progress so much so that the people in the bureaucracies are having a hard time to catch up. Our people have surfed through all kinds of societies in the world and seen with their own eyes how other countries could be so developed that it is a great wonder that our professionals and workers  have to go abroad so that they can send back home large sums that lift the lifestyles of their families. Or, have our taste for a good life changed, from being a simple home with a garden and trees around and the family supportive of whatever we want to achieve for our lives?

We can go on and on trying to find out where we missed a step so that some groups are now able to control the situation negatively. However, I still believe like Rizal, that education is the final solution to any conflict in society. Not the barrel of the gun. 

Let us continue our search for that solution -- if you have any alternative that will insure lives to be lived up to a hundred and above -- with great happiness, Folks, not just simply lazing around.