Cabletow 4th issue - GM Ebdane - Grand Lodge of the Philippines

The Cabletow
The first to be disunited and disharmonized because of violence was the family
of Adam and Eve itself. The first heinous crime – murder – was committed in their
family when Cain killed Abel. The murder broke the band of the first family of man
and since then man has never experienced the blessing of unity.
I must say that Masons have not lost sight of this blessing; for early in our first
degree, we have been taught to put our trust in God as we travel through the rough
and rugged roads of life.
MW Puno then explained that since the murder by Cain of his brother Abel,
history has been marked and marred by violence, citing authorities in the process.
Listen:
Jacques Ellul, an authority on the psychology of violence, teaches us that the
first law of violence is continuity. He warned that “Once a man begins to use violence,
he will never stop using it, for it is much easier and more practical than any other
method.”
History sustains Ellul’s thesis that violence inevitably breeds violence. In the 20 th
century, we witnessed with awe how man did leapfrog to an unprecedented height
of achievement. He was able to fly the airplane, walk on the moon, and even land
on Mars. With Einstein’s theory of relativity, he split the atom and uranium nucleus.
He deciphered the structure of the DNA and completed the cell map of our being. He
had started cloning mice and sheep. Unless banned, he could clone man and create
either supermen or monsters.
Within the new millennium, it is confidently predicted that the average human
life will be stretched to 140 years. Be that as it may, as man’s brain becomes bigger,
his hands become more violent, more destructive, more divisive.
Rene Dumont, a well-known French ecologist, decried the 20 th century as a
“century of massacres and wars.” Untouched statistics validate his lamentations.
Facts and figures reveal that the casualty in World War I was 13 million people. In
World War II, the death toll was 50 million people. Add to this grim number another
100 million people who perished in the pograms and purges from Stalin’s Gulag
Archipelago to Pol Pot’s killing fields in Kampuchea. The world has yet to discover
the number of victims of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Checknya, and East Timor and
the less publicized wars in Africa.
British historian Eric Hobstrown stated that the 20 th century started with the life
expectancy of 37 years and ended with the life expectancy of 67. But he stressed
that the tragedy is that unending violence did not allow man to enjoy his average
life expectancy.
41 Cabletow