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I was thinking about historical contingency the other day, actually. I mean everything is contingent from the Big Bang to this moment, but I think contingency is particularly salient when discussing WW1. I mean as things like the Palestinian Mandate and Balfour Declaration demonstrate, WW1 was really an inflection point, a rift in time to Thomas Mann, that shifted the world into another track of causality. I think the only other event in modern history that shifted human affairs onto another track was the French Revolution of 1789.

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Apr 25·edited Apr 25Author

Indeed, for both Palestinians and Jews, and tens of millions of others, the term Nakba is far more appropriately applied the events of 1914, without which we would never have heard of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and many other monsters.

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Zionism which led to the Nakba began in the 19th century. It was European guilt arising from the holocaust that contributed to the Nakba and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland. None of this would have occurred without the support of the United States. The Soviets had nothing to do with the Nakba. Lenin vehemently opposed the Zionist Bund from the outset. Lenin's maternal grandfather may have been a Jewish convert to Christianity.

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every moment sees the contingency of cause and effect, effect becomes new cause, cause and effect again goes to work… seeing it only happening twice in the modern world is just an aspect of unique perspective. but the fact of contingency is constant in the present moment for all things, animate and inanimate. some specific causes, thoughts and actions, stretch across years, human lifetimes, centuries and eons, even across big bangs or world systems” as its expressed in the teachings of one who understood Gautama Buddha. turning points are everywhere in hind sight or those awake to the present moment.

the war to end war which ends the world and its all of its causes and effects is ultimately a personal battle which we all must confront. the Buddhas just point the way, each person must comprehend and investigate for themselves, there’s no other path to transcendence, no political movement can achieve the end of greed hatred and delusion. it’s only ever a personal victory for one who has one forth and renounced all the violence, hated and greed in this world.

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