Tuesday 24 March 2015

Drawing Lines with Blood

The world stage is going through some brotherly love issues. As if reflecting modern society's global issues, a new family "saga" has been launched on fast-becoming-a-production company Netflix - Bloodline. It struggles against a backdrop of emotional discord, anionic intertwined family relationships and some fantastic slow-burn character destruction. The cause of all the tension and ultimate tragedy? historical trauma and hidden secrets. If people would finally learn that only by paying attention to the experiences of our elders, avoiding human instinct to err on the side of base hatreds and truthfully engaging deep-rooted obstacles, brings future enlightenment.

Current world issues are littered with historical miscalculations. High-stakes ones at that, with renewed Israel-US tensions, Iranian discussions coming to "do-or-die" status, Russian transgressions forcing even Putin into hiding for over a week (did he become a Daddy? Hair-transplant? Plug-in to an electricity supply to recharge?), Sino-Indian power-plays, tedious yet potentially volatile Grexit possibility (just go already so we can holiday in cheap Drachma) and general income disparity leading to even more outburst of violent reaction in developed and supposedly mature nations. Seems only Apple is living up to its religious reputation and becoming a nation-force unto itself, with a no-doubt-soon-to-be-reached $1trn valuation and global reach more powerful than ISIS's attempts to dominate the Twittersphere!

The mistakes of the recent past are hopefully somewhat rectified with the news of a breakthrough in the Iranian talks. Opening up a once thriving and commercially driven nation, in the midst of a spoilt collection of GCC states that over-emphasise the allure of material trappings consequent with youthful riches, brings only positive repercussions from a historically deeply cultured civilisation. Hope is the intelligentsia of Iran sideline the hardline cleric "leadership" and rise to the forefront of the new challenge "normalisation" of relations with a keen US will bring. It cannot be anything but promising that a land where minorities are treated with utmost respect and even represented democratically (the Jewish community is an intrinsic part of Persian land and sits in Parliament) will balance worrying signs of extremism in other quarters where leaders tell their people to beware of the "Arabs voting in droves" - yes you Bibi..Israel's self-destructive PR disaster-man. Let the seismic change begin.

Lines in the sand are shifting out of sheer natural retribution. Unfortunately plenty of blood is being shed and used to draw such lines. Some say this is nothing new, we are simply more aware of every geopolitical "tragedy", with instant social media distribution empowering the media watching masses. That doesn't make it any less regrettably horrendous to witness. Others believe our overly materialistic modern-living obsessions are causing a loss of spiritual understanding. We are not grounded. We are not honest about what is important in life and we may be hurtling towards some deeply dark and worrying times.  Not necessarily, only if we blindly walk towards disaster.

Fixing mistakes of the past is a US necessity. Afghanistan, North/South Korea, former Yugosloavia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran and on and on. So much of what was done in the dire needy times of the battle against Communism has brought modern headache and saddening loss of life. A smart young Frenchman (Touqueville) once declared "when the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness" - unlike Netflix's well-crafted drama, this is real-life on a global scale. The time for sleep-walkers to be jolted into reality and face the consequences of their actions is long overdue.