Humans

We are strange creatures. We devote our lives, in one form or another, to a pursuit of happiness. We strive for simplicity and ease as we move through our days, yet over and over and over again, we launch ourselves headlong into episodes of great violence.

The New York Times has a good slideshow of images from Iraq. The final image is the most striking. It is also the most tragic. There is a man laying face down, body bloated, near a pile of garbage on the side of the road. A lone dog looks over the scene.

Is this it? Is this why we fight? Where is the democratic glory? I can only imagine that the real cost, and the real benefit, of any struggle at this scale, is felt purely at a personal level. Forget complex policy equations, the real world is known by a much more simple one: dust to dust. It's a shame we can't spare one another in the mean time.