The Real Enemy - Misplaced Emphasis - Avoiding The Iceberg Part 4

As Cold As Ice! The thing is, mankind does have real enemies. Non-discriminatory enemies. Real enemies that can attack anytime, anywhere, and without warning. Just like the iceberg, they are cold, inhuman, unfeeling, with no conscience and no awareness of what they do. Such things could sink our ship at any time and they can certainly take big chunks out of the crew. They come in many forms. Some we are already familiar with, but anything could be just over that horizon. If we're lucky, we have hopefully avoided going completely MAD, and blowing ourselves to pieces with our mutually assured destruction, but even so we have many other things to contend with. Viruses, bacterial diseases and antibiotic resistance, crop disease, pestilence, pollution, global warming and climate change, earthquakes, asteroids, solar flares, floods and other natural disasters, that could strike at any time. Possible food shortages, energy shortages, population problems, all looming now and in our future. Corruption, crime, anti-social conditioning, religious indoctrination and brainwashing, all interfering in the smooth running of our ship. Even obesity and rising health problems created by poor lifestyle choice. These are the real enemies and the real enemies of ALL mankind. They do not care about the small-minded petty differences that seem to occupy us so much of the time. They are completely indiscriminate and they will interfere and kill, or take a slice out of anyone, regardless of who they are, without conscience and without feeling. As cold as ice!

Whole World On Edge! We badly need to start applying our emphasis in a more adult fashion to combat the real enemies of all mankind. The recent flooding and total devastation of New Orleans was a tragedy that could have been avoided by spending money on building up the levies - the embankments that hold back the water. New Orleans is effectively below the water level, therefore completely dependent on protection from the levies. People knew what needed to be done, but it was not done. Now it is too late and thousands of people's homes and lives have been destroyed beyond salvation. At the same time America spends billions of dollars on weapons and wars and its interference (as some see it) in other countries, has put the whole world on edge. Reverberations of which could go on for generations to come. While America thinks it should spend so much on looking after, or interfering in, other countries, depending on your view, it forgets to look after its own people. There are of course many other examples from all over. It is fair to say that we have enough problems in this world without creating additional, unnecessary ones, ourselves.

Over The Horizon: The recent outbreak of Ebola has dominated the news of late. It's a horrible virus that causes a meltdown in the body. At the moment, it's reasonably containable because it is only transmitted by physical contact through bodily fluids. However, viruses can mutate to become less, or even more virulent. If something like Ebola came along that was airborne, or even a highly virulent form of flu, it may well be a very different story. For example, just after WW1, the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 killed something like 75 million people. That puts mankind's pathetic attempts to exterminate himself into perspective, as in WW1 we only managed to kill 16 to 17 million of each other. It may take such a catastrophic event for mankind to realise just how small minded we are when we fight and squabble with each other the way we do. Such an event may make us realise that we really are all in this together and that we really should all work and pull together as a team, for the common good. Whether we like it or not, we are all on the same ship and we are all ultimately dependent on that ship and the integrity of its crew. Just like the iceberg with Titanic, at any time any such event could creep undetected over the horizon and sink our ship or take a big chunk out of the crew.

Too Late To Turn! If we could open our eyes a little and look to the horizon and the future of our planet, we could try and prepare for such potential events and put much more emphasis on doing so, but, much of the time we are too busy squabbling over nonsense - and as most of us know, it really is nonsense. We want for nothing in this world, except to learn how to behave. Due to the way we currently behave, for some, life can be very short! However, in time we do hope we will all realise that whoever we are, whatever we are, wherever we're from, life is too short for fighting and arguing! There are solutions to all the problems that we potentially face, however, if we misplace our emphasis and are too preoccupied fighting and squabbling, we may not find them in time. It is a bit late to acknowledge our faults and act when already facing disaster that could otherwise have been avoided. If we continue to let our faults and our mistakes dominate and get in the way, we may find that, at some point, we will be head on, staring that iceberg right in the face, and just like Titanic, it will be too late to turn!