Our world, we live in unforgiving times. We find so many angry and violent measures taken by those who are offended at the behaviour of others. We live in dreadful times when we are made to pay a high price for mistakes made. Mistakes, the very essence of human learning, made us what we are today.

On the world stage, we have countries competing with each other for power. Power over their own domain and power over others. We have particular and historic differences between most nations across this earth. And yet we are held together as our globalising world exposes us and makes us ever more interdependent.

Interdependent, where the relationships in power are more equal. Dependent where the power relationships are not equal. Co-dependent where the power relationship makes one state have a right to exert power over their vassal states. The relationships of power forever changing as power changes and strength and advantage gives more power to one or other. We have made wars since man developed conscious thought, conscious perception that he could exert will over others and others would play the role of subject.

The price of mistakes has always been high, whether we are living in our own social group or in a wider community. We seem to have in us an order we may follow, and the price paid for non conformity is war, is coercion, is life threatening. No wonder we are apt to view mistakes and their consequences so strongly. No wonder when we charge institutions like our political system, our police system, our military system, our religious systems of order with high standards. And when they fail and especially individuals fail our society, we are unforgiving.

Our unforgiving nature leads to all manner of bad behaviour. From individuals and institutions failing to move with the times, because they fear their own mistakes in transition, to covering up when mistakes are made. We see many of our social systems resort to secret behaviour in order to mask the mistakes they make day by day and year by year. We don’t hear so often how mistakes are handled, for they are behind closed doors.

Failure and mistakes are not well tolerated by us as we learn the consequences. And indeed our unforgiving nature is plain, for we trust ourselves and others to play by rules we know and understand, we trust others to conform to plans and schemes and let us play our part.

We have become less and less tolerant as time has made failure and consequences more and more profound.

In these days of terror and warlike behaviour, by many countries and political systems, the level of democracy and tolerance has diminished.We do not tolerate difference so well, we are all becoming more fearful as terror roams. Yet the level of terror feeds on itself and we find repressive actions by those who would protect our rights and freedoms.

Mistakes and freedom to make them, to make new paths of living, to live and let live, all these freedoms are diminished in our global world. Our world order is changing and accelerating changes, terrifying to many.

Economy, economics and interdependence is working one way to free our world of old boundaries. And at the same time we have political dogma and prejudice pulling us all backwards.

We have religions and strict orthodoxy looming and making our world safe for believers within and unsafe to heathens without. And religious strictures are binding many to ways of living they choose as to choose otherwise brings more danger of life threatening proportions.

We have religion used to settle old scores, going back across generations. We have political systems which change radically and let freedom unmask old wounds across authoritarian and democratic boundaries. Mankind is shifting its focus across this world, and the shifting boundaries of power do not sit well in any one arena of influence.

Splinter groups and factions, dissatisfied and power hungry people find voice in vehicles they choose to offer harmony as their goal and violence as their instrument. War follows as close as tempers and historic prejudice roam unfettered. The minds of many turn to salvation one way or another. And behind all this is an element so obvious, is it any wonder so many will turn and find solace in offering their lives for their cause. Suicidal behaviour and give their lives for their cause, in these terms, we have not moved one jot in hundreds of years. From ancient times to present day this world creates Martyrs as fresh and ready to expend their living for a cause greater than themselves. How is it that so many are willing to put their own life last and their cause first? How is it that we humans have made life so bad, that a person will offer it up for the sake of a cause?

How on this earth have we managed to make a virtue of not valuing life as precious and unique, worthy of living as long as nature and good care may endeavour. How has our world been so distorted by our own self will, so that we enable and make worthy deaths of those who are nurtured to give their life for believable causes?

Are we humans that intransigent? Are we humans led to war by inspiration? Most often inspiration and desperation go hand in hand in this big bad world. When what we see for today and the future, a life not worthy of living, we let the mind scream our for justice. We will fight to protect our way of life, we will fight to get a better life. We will all fight to remove oppression and in so doing often find our oppression as bad as before.

We forget the inequality of our own lot when the equality and values and principles we learn are challenged. And when our faith is challenged we will fight to the death. And when we are hungry, not for food, for our right to living as we might wish, we will go to extremes to reinstate and protect our outlook. That seems to be our nature and our lot.

Forgiving and mistakes, when the risks are so high. Mistakes more so these days in our perceptions and our prejudice. We are so prejudiced we don’t recognise our prejudice. And we find ourselves to be inflexible when dangers come knocking on our own front doors.

Our greatest mistake as civilisation will record, is our failure as nations to help and support one another, to make good the lot of human kind. Our world offers inequality as its master and equality as its panacea. We espouse great virtue in our charity and virtue, yet we driven by greed and fear, and especially loss. We are fearful of disadvantage. We make ourselves targets in our fat warehouses, and keep out and starve those who see their comparative disadvantage. We keep ourselves unsafe in our security, for we do not see forward far enough to recognise the consequences of actions which drive divisions and isolate millions of people across our world. And millions are not stupid, they see, they know, they desire a good life, and see their lives set in ruin as others enjoy their advantage.

We make these mistakes nowhere and everywhere in our blind prejudice. We see our folly when our societies breakdown and run roughshod over their citizens or other citizens alien to our way of life.

And we forget our citizenship of this world more than anything, when we seek our advantage in our own back yard. Our world, more connected, more than ever in chaos, more than ever realising that what held old orders and boundaries in place will not work in future. Old ideas, kept alive by new entrants into old thinking as the new admissions require their advantage as much as any old society. Emerging wealth covets its position more strongly, and keenly defends its inclusion.

Excluded Nations and peoples know their place, on the outside. And we from the old countries of plenty, we don’t see our prejudiced views, as our cake is shrinking and our resources are diluted and new players are taking their advantage as we plunder world resources.

Without doubt, distribution of well being will be the currency of mankind in the future. Distribution of wealth in physical and economic terms clouds our minds to our overall well being.

Those who understand and can deliver well being will eventually take position in this ever developing world. Those who are most likely to survive are those who, after long struggles establish equality and opportunity.

We are as far away from this as we ever were for the better part of mankind’s civilised existence. And as our existence is threatened by our impact on our world, Nature itself will be the arbiter, the final measure and reckoning, as we cannot exist without its preservation to keep us alive.

Nature, we all have one and are subject to it. Nature, that raw resource we squander will have its final say on our survival, and not Mankind, insignificant to elemental forces, so full of promise and not enough sense…