McCaine Killing Innocent Vietnamese

Everyone these days mentions Senator McCain and his heroic spell in Vietnamese jails. But nobody, not even one person that I know, not even one journalist, asks the very simple question: ‘Senator, why did you end up in Vietnamese prisons in the first place????’

Did they come to the US and snatch you from your cozy big house? Did they invade your country and arrest you while you were fighting against their invasion? Did they kidnap you from your military base? Or were you bombarding innocent civilians—Vietnamese children, women and men, when they shot your plane down and captured you as a war criminal? What were you doing over Hanoi? Were you defending democracy and human rights against fascism, or were you expanding American imperialism by bombarding the civilian population in Hanoi?

If I were present at one of the campaign speeches, I would stand up and ask these questions, instead of asking about what happened to McCain in the Hanoi Hilton.

I would pick up the mike and ask him, ‘Senator McCain, would you please explain to me what you were doing at the time they shot you down? Senator McCain, what were your feelings when your bombs burnt, maimed and killed innocent children and civilians? Senator McCain, as a practicing Christian, have you ever asked for God's forgiveness for the crime of killing these people? Senator McCain, have you ever, even once in your life, woken up at night sweating and thinking of the innocent people who were killed with your bombs? People who had not attacked US, who were sleeping and working in their own country, while you had invaded theirs!

Why we should not expect intelligent beings in the universe

One of the latest books I have read was “A Brain for All Seasons” by William H. Calvin (University of Chicago Press- 2002). It is about the evolution of humans. I want to share some reflections on this book,

It is interesting that in 4 billion years of history of life on this planet, intelligent beings, humans, have only been around for not more than 100,000 years, which compared to that long history is just but a second. By intelligence I mean the grasp of language and the production and understanding of concepts like Arts and Philosophy and artefacts and machinery.

Bipedal apes appeared in Africa around 5 to 6 million years ago, but up to 100000 years ago they were not much more advanced than chimpanzees and gorillas. Intelligence and a big brain with capacity for thinking, memorizing the past and planning for future, appeared in one small and isolated group of these mammals only by chance. Life can and could have gone on this planet for the remaining billions of years without any intelligent beings appearing on the scene. We humans are just a chance event, not a necessity.

Some say higher intelligence is necessary for the survival of the species. But that is nonsense. In the battle of survival, bacteria and cockroaches have been much more successful than most bipedal apes, bacteria have been around for more than 2 billion years, and cockroaches for around 300 million years, and nobody could consider these animals as intelligent and thinking. Even our closest siblings in animal kingdom, chimpanzees and gorillas, have been around as long as the humans and very successful in adapting to their environment.

What I want to point out here is that higher intelligence is just a chance win in a lottery and not a necessity in evolution. And from that I conjecture that intelligent life in universe must be extremely rare and sparse, not as some sci-fi fans believe, abundant. Even if by any chance another intelligent being has appeared in another remote corner of this universe, how successful can it be in the game of survival. Apart from all the environmental changes that can bring about the doom of the intelligent animals; in the millions of years before they achieve a civilization through a slow start, at the end, even if they survive and build a civilization, they themselves can strike the death blow. In our case, who knows how longer we human beings are going to survive on this planet. By piling up weapons of mass destruction(and I am not talking about one saddam Hussein here, but the real culprits, the sole superpower ) we might very possibly annihilate ourselves in a world war(and not only ourselves, but perhaps the whole planet), because our animal brains are still ticking wrapped in a tribal and herd level, while our weapons have come a long way from sticks and stones, and will be deadlier and more advanced by the day. We might destroy our own civilization and our own race in a world war, and this destiny can befall many other intelligent beings in other planets; if there are any out there at all. Higher intelligence, the one we humans own, most probably, is just a very rare by-product of evolution, a dead-end alley, a one in a million lottery win, and not a necessary stage or a tool for survival. Life has managed without it up till now and can manage to the end, when our planet is going to perish in the formidable glow of a dying sun.