The Most Difficult Thing A Person Has To Do...

...is to respond with simplicity and honesty to what is right in front of their face.

Moral confusion is the hallmark of the human race. Humans historically run away from responsibility. People make rational thought absurd by insulating themselves from real life, preferring fictions. Creating greater and greater fictions, they believe that these will offset their ethical failures. So what really is the point of international dialogue? The world today more and more easily sees the widening gulf between spurious good will and twisted bad results. In the end no one believes those who even suggest dialogue. As a global population we are well beyond being able to simply pause and to see the truth that we are all masked, that everyone's vision is self-obstructed, that our motives are all based on self-deception, and that our greed and hypocrisy and self-righteousness have done us in.

At the root of all war is fear...

- Thomas Merton