Monday, October 19, 2009

The Fog Of Life

Blind and ridiculous, humanity forages into the future like a hungry beast whose organs vie in internecine war. Can any stomping ground, even one the size of a planet, suffice?

Robert McNamara, reflecting on his long un-illustrious career, especially during the insanity of the Vietnam War, stated as one of his eleven hard-learned lessons that, “Rationality won’t save us.”

His justification for this was a phenomenon called the “fog of war,” in which variables deteriorate into chaos under the onslaught of misery and violence.

And yet, is not the fog of war a mere corollary to a greater complexity: the fog of life?

If rationality won’t save us, what will? Cynics say we’re doomed, but there are other cradles of hope.

As we blunder into a long untrainable night, perhaps the most viable source of illumination we have is small yet doughty, a fragile candle called love. We must be supremely cautious, lest winds of fear extinguish it.

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