Never Forgetting and Trying to Learn

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11th November.
Commemorated as Armistice Day and marked with 2 minutes silence while people pay their respects to those who died during the First World War. Yesterday, Sunday, wreaths were laid at the Cenotaph in Whitehall and at hundreds of others across the country. Today across the world, memorial services will be held and thousands will quietly reflect on the enormity and consequences of that war.

We also remember other wars and battles that have taken place where so many lives have been lost and so many families broken.
WW2, the Cold War, the Gulf War, the Korean War,Vietnam, Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and many wars in the Middle East and Africa that continue to rage today and destroy people.

It is easy to be sanctimonious and say that all wars should stop now or naieve and believe that there will ever be world peace. Sometimes it seems that if there ever was peace on this earth, then we would go further afield and declare war on other planets.

I am not clever enough or educated enough to suggest a solution to war caused and perpetuated mankind. Nor am I able to explain to my grandchildren, why we persist in hurting each other. We have evolved enough to cure illnesses and disease, to make artificial limbs and  other body parts, that work as perfectly as the original. We have the technology to do things that are incomprehensible to the ordinary person, such as me. Yet, we do not have the ability it seems, to  curb our desire for power and domination of others in our world.

What I am saying here of course, is nothing new. It has been said  thousands of times by people who are very much more intelligent than me.
Which makes it all the more worrying that we continue with our destruction.
The terrible events in the Phillipines this week have shown again that natural forces are perfectly capable of destroying us and everything around us. Nature does not need mankind to fight amongst ourselves
to eliminate us completely.

I shall be remembering this as I reflect on the past and wonder about the future. Please feel free to join me.

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