Sacred Pasture Sacrifice

In sacred pastures they lay me down to die
Bleeding out beneath the pale blue sky.
A melody so softly hummed
'Mongst winds and rippling grain;
I pray that this day's sacrifice
Will not be in vain.

Dream of Tomorrow

Man's nature is to dream;
Whether awake or sleeping.
To dream of things that are not, but could be.
Should be.
Of all things that can not be;
But one day, maybe.
To see the future 'fore it happens
And shape it in the image of the past.
To know the universe,
And others,
And dream until the dream does last.

Firearms: Humanity's Worst Invention

If I had to pick a single invention which has had the most impact on civilization I would bypass the commonly thought of light bulbs  automobiles, and the computer and go back a bit to the firearm.  While all these other inventions can be shown to have had massive, incalculable effects on our daily lives, only the firearm has uprooted societies and precipitated the wholesale slaughter of entire races of people.  Of course, firearms have undoubtedly done some sort of good for societies and individuals throughout the years, and while I'd like to argue that our world would be far better off had they never been invented, the argument is impossible to prove without the aid of some sort of time machine.  Instead, I'd like to try to make the case through a look at how firearms have changed our perspective of killing.

It would be impossible to have any sort of discussion about the impacts of firearms without looking at how warfare has changed as a result of their invention.  Today firearms and explosives are the weapons of choice for waging war, and it's clear why: they're effective.  Warfare before the invention of the firearm was an arduous process which took years or decades to resolve.  Single conflicts could take days of fighting (the Battle of Varna is reported to have lasted four days) and sieges of individual cities or fortresses took years or even decades (the Siege of Candia lasted 21 years).  Even after the completion of these conflicts, the death tolls were minuscule compared to the wars of recent history.  

Some might argue that the expedition of warfare is a good thing as wars today last years rather than lifetimes or generations.  But of course, this is only because we've developed weapons capable of killing the same amount of people in far less time.  The reason wars took so long before the firearm is because they were fought with the sword, spear, and bow, weapons which took extensive amounts of training to use properly and were capable of far less damage even in the hands of the most skilled.  Warfare today is not based upon the skill of the soldiers, but on their quantity and their armaments.  After all, the most disciplined armies and talented marksman are completely helpless against nuclear arms, or even less devastating explosives.

The best illustration of this point is the child armies which have become commonplace around the world.  Before the firearm, the notion of sending children to fight wars was ludicrous.  Children had neither the strength nor skill to properly utilize the weapons war was waged with.  In times of desperation societies would recruit adolescents (which we think of as children) and the elderly to assist them, but they were never the major components of any legitimate army.  This is still true to some extent today: no army of children will ever be as capable as one of well-trained disciplined men and women, but unlike the weapons of old which required strength to use, a gun in the hands of an untrained child is every bit as effective as one held by an untrained adult.

The problem with firearms is that they make it so effortless to kill.  Soldiers no longer have to look into the eyes of their opponents as they kill them.  Killing is no longer a massive struggle of swords raising and falling, it's a trigger being pulled with all the effort it takes to change TV stations.  It has become a deeply impersonal thing to take another's life.  We kill thousand with the press of a single launch button, and we destroy cities and topple societies in minutes.  We have the ability to kill entire peoples without sending a single soldier into battle, and we don't bat an eye at this practice until we feel it is being "misused."  And to top it off: we spend more money funding military pursuits than we do to advance the lives of our own people (here in USA at least).  Our capacity and appetite for destruction is so great that the majority of our war efforts today are reconstruction of the things we were so quick to shatter. 

So why are firearms the worst invention we've ever come up with?  Homer said it best centuries before these weapons were even developed: "The blade itself incites to deeds of violence."  Even then they knew that the sword serves no purpose but violence and ownership of a weapon is meaningless unless it used.  Sure you could perform acts of violence with just about anything imaginable, but firearms have no other purpose but to commit acts of violence.  And even though we've since developed amazing technology which allows us to defend ourselves without having to use lethal force, (mace, stun-guns, rubber bullets, etc) firearms have so disconnected us from what it means to kill another human being that we seem to prefer lethal force.