I passed this sign, “We are in an era of senseless accumulation of wealth & power” in the Maine countryside recently. It’s true, you know.

There has been Arab Spring. In some countries, leaders wouldn’t give up any freedom. In Syria, the fighting is relentless. Human Trafficking Awareness Day was this month. I think about the 223 remaining schoolgirls captured by terrorists. What daily terror do those girls experience since they were “senselessly accumulated”? Their plight has evaporated from the headlines, so does it not matter?

I think about militant thugs, how they embrace ancient conceptions of God and modern weaponry. Without modern technology — automatic rifles, four-wheel drive vehicles, cellphones — they and their rage would largely be ignored. We’d all be better off, save for the few innocents within their brutal sphere.

David Solmitz wrote very well in the Jan. 24 newspaper: Freedom must be accompanied by responsibility.

I could relay some of what has happened to six of the captured schoolgirls. It is senseless and sad indeed. It is “the way Prophet Mohammad treated infidels he seized.”

Instead, I’ll share information from the November 2013 National Geographic about the origins of Boko Haram, the terrorist group that took them. In early 2000s, Mohammed Ali, a preacher fed up with poverty and disorder, and his followers created a commune and practiced sharia. They clashed with local authorities, and Ali was killed.

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Yes, we are in an era of senselessness accumulation. I want to thank the people who post such signs and encourage enlightenment.

Here’s a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

Heidi Chadbourne

Manchester


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