"The vast majority of all multitudes of minor sorts of organisms that have appeared in the history of life have either changed to forms distinctly different or have disappeared absolutely, without descendants."

- George Gayland Simpson (1949)

'Life' is said to be the single and most critical meaning that validates our sojourn on this mysterious spinning ball (earth). And to those of us who believe in something larger than life itself, something we collectively refer to as 'supreme being', we are here for a test- an examination of our worthiness or otherwise. To  those who advocate adventurism and some pleasure-for-life seeking poor souls, we are all here to live our lives to the fullest; to enjoy and to rejoice with or without compromising our dignity, good morals and respect (the end will justify the means). And to a very negligible few, life has no meaning, and that we are all here on earth for no other reason than to be here, period. The painful irony remains, thus, these negligible few are those managing and manipulating the rest in other to achieve their varying, though often times selfish goals, interests and needs; they are holding the rest of the world at ransom, instigating wars and rendering the poor very porous, defenseless and vulnerable.

Furthermore, the fear of 'death' or rather the fear of us vanishing from the face of the earth is as old as humanity itself. 11 ^th century spinelessness vis-à-vis death and destruction gave rise to thoroughly-walled cities and castles that men and women of today admire and respect for their monumental degree of exposure, superb architectural designs, unique artistic and aesthetic flairs and the inimitability of their hard-to-penetrate or destroy gates. But beneath all these lies fear of incursion, destruction and attack which can easily be translated into the fear of death. This single as well as simple analogy speaks volume of the value we all attach to life.

Why do we keep guns in our homes? Why do we build bombs and design missiles? Why do we erect walls and carve doors in our places of rest? Why do we panic when we are at war with enemies; to defend and to offend; to kill and to protect, of course as the situation may warrant.

In living there is wisdom; in living there is freedom; in living we experience love from dusk to down; it is also while living that we get to meet beautiful faces, see breathtaking places and mix with different races. Freedom from threat of whatsoever sort makes us feel like or rather make us assume we are kings and queens without crowns. It is the sense of freedom and freewill we are enjoying that is making us feel an unspeakable pain in knowing about death and in knowing that our days on earth are indeed numbered, and that the concept of immortality is only a state of mind, a frame of reference used to weight the purposefulness or otherwise of those who are lucky to have lead a purposeful and examplenary way of life on earth.

It is glaringly true and manifest that, human beings are the most delicate and sensitive creatures ever crafted by God. Reason, they are stupendously unpredictable, graciously intelligent and vividly blessed with the intellect and power to do and undo. Taking a cursory look at how the world is created, one can see vividly that the world is meant to be as peaceful and soothing as a white silk, as colorful as the peacocks' feather and as massaging as the chilly ocean breeze. Yet, the thinking man has turned the fertile earth into a battle field, a war zone of sort from where chaos, war and rancor are sprouting from.

Life to this writer has no gender; it is neither masculine nor feminine since the beginning of time (please spare me your philosophical explanations of life), hence little reason for us wasting our productive hours trying to apportion to it one. Also, life is life regardless of the religious inclination, political reservations, sexual orientation or races of its bearers or rather its carriers. One wonders much why the intellectually-endowed animal (man) has failed to either appreciate or accept this glaring fact, instead he chooses to depreciate its value and replicate confusions wherefrom it is reduced to that of a chicken.

Most of the wars fought in world history are those of thirst for conquest driven by the lust for unexplainable material returns and difficult to validate regime imposition. It is increasingly evident that the high standard of living enjoyed by the developed nations is causally related to the continuing poverty of the underdeveloped nations. This has been made possible in no small measure by the political-military conquest and control.

Even though Lebanon has boldly trailed the path of sustainable development and growth with its breathtaking tourism sector booming and bearing fruits of a lingering investment (foreign and domestic) it is very far from been classified as a developed nation, and referring to it as an 'underdeveloped nation' is a notion that will surely qualify this writer as a partial fellow.    But Lebanon is indeed a developing nation that badly needs peace to fuel its evolving economy. The events that unfolded some weeks ago have further render the country defenseless and its economy prone to elements and agents of backwardness and deterioration.

While the Israeli military forces are ramming their tankers and bulldozers into the homes of innocent Lebanese people in the name of fishing out Hezbollah elements whom actions is alleged to have sparked off the war, the West and the rest of the world hid behind one finger, faking to see no ill in the killings of thousands of Lebanese people, including women and children. What a shame?

It is glaringly evident to all that what sparked off the first Gulf War was the fact that a peaceful and almost militarily defenseless Kuwait has been threatened by Saddam Hussein's bullying military forces and that when it rang in the minds of those nations that are suffering from the thirst for Gulf Oil, a swift counter measures ensued, which translated into the formation of a coalition that fought Saddam's forces to their last breaths. But when Israeli missiles and bullets are pounding hard on Beirut killing innocent people and burying them in the rubbles of their collapsing homes, the West and the rest of the world did the unimaginable- they folded their arms and asked the United Nations to intervene, shamelessly shying away from rendering a helping hand to defenseless Lebanon. Of particular interest is the action or rather inaction of the US whom in the heat of debating kicking off the second Gulf War in 2003 flouted UN Resolutions calling for a more diplomatic resolution to the WMD inspection issue. But for the applaudable boldness of the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the dead toll in Lebanon could have doubled.

The world has seen enough bloodshed. The lives that perished as a result of man-made wars are evidently irreparable and if we are doing this to tame population explosion in other to balance population and growth/development, then this is not a wise approach. There is no substitute for life. Imagine the 800, 000 plus innocent people that died as a result of an avoidable war in Rwanda (1994); what about the thousands that perished in the Somalian war of 1996; not to mention the number of lives lost in the Sierra Leonean,   Liberian, DR Congo's, Ethiopia-Eritrean, Iraqi and Cote-d-Voen wars. Now that Darfur is burning profusely wiping out homes and snatching away lives from children and women, we can only recall with pain the souls that melted in the month old war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The developed world would have to reconsider its materialistic inkling in the interest of world peace as even a petty social anthropologist or rather an armature political scientist can attest to the fact that the reliance of the developed nations upon military strength to maintain international inequality is hazardous for all of us. The threat of war will not be removed until international inequalities in standards of living are abolished and a system of mutual security based upon internationally supervised disarmament is achieved. By 'internationally supervised disarmament, I mean not a lopsided supervision as in the case of Iran and North Korea where America and her allies are ignoring red flags and wavy smokes in Israel and instead are confusingly allowing emotions and not reason to shroud their judgment as to the worthiness or otherwise of the above cited duos to own and put into good use, nuclear know-how.

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"What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life."
-- Emil Brunner