Saturday's programme, "A History of Scotland", which I wrote about yesterday, prompted some more serious thoughts, questions I don't know the answers to. The history of Scotland, like that in most places at the time, was violent & brutal. Babies were slaughtered for political gain, people skinned alive etc. I accept this happened in times past.
What I have difficulty is in understanding how mankind has failed to improve his ways in the intervening centuries. I watch night after night as Israel bombs Gaza. The Palestinians are virtually besieged without food, water, fuel, medical facilities. Israel may have been bombed first - I don't know sufficiently to make any real judgement on the question - but that is no defence for the inevitable injury to innocent citizens. Equally I hear that rape, even of babies, is regarded as a tool of war in parts of Africa these days. Not so long ago, in Rwanda & the former Yugoslavia, genocide once more reared its ugly head. Torture still goes on. It may be more sophisticated but it is still torture.
How can this be? This is the 21st century. Surely man is capable of better, of evolving into a more humane being for whom verbal negotiation could solve problems, rather than such atrocities. It's bad enough that so many die from natural disasters of floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes etc without mankind himself adding further to the maiming & death toll. It's time we gave peace, tolerance & living in harmony with one another a try.
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