An Emotional Little Essay on Words that Begin with the Letter “E” by Val Matthews

I have recently been reading a few books on Evolution and this has lead me to consider human Existence on our tiny planet Earth with it¹s fragile Environment.. I am worried about our Expanding population and the increasing need for sources of Energy. It seems Elementary to me that we should try and use Energy more Efficiently because Expansionist policies of controlling Energy sources so often lead to conflict.

One of the Earliest words I taught my children was Escalation, as in “He hit me first, so then I hit him back, so he hit me harder.” And so on and so on. Hopefully that word still lurks in the back of their minds. In the adult world of nations that does not seem to be a familiar word -- attack follows attack, wars lead on to other wars, and so on and so on, without apparent End.

Then there is the murky question of Ethics. Even in war time it does not seem Ethical to me to drop a huge bomb on a city and kill thousands of innocent people. It is certainly not Ethical in peacetime to attack a building and kill thousands of innocent people. I struggle with the Ethics of the very personal act of killing by a suicide bomber and the seemingly impersonal act of killing by an unmanned drone operated from a faraway country..

There is an Elite club of countries who are apparently responsible enough to possess nuclear weapons. There are Enough of those weapons around to Exterminate our species many times over., not to mention Every other species as well. I wonder whether humans will Ever become Enlightened Enough, Ever be able to Educate themselves Enough to Eliminate war and its causes or are we heading inexorably to our End.?

What is good, what is Evil? Do I dare to Envision a time when that question will be set aside, because world leaders are Energized in an international Effort to plan for coexistence instead of Extinction?

I'm Val Matthews and I am an Elderly resident of Albemarle County.