Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s third law certainly holds true in the realm of classical physics.
Today, in an effort to understand the war on terrorism, people are overly concerned with the idea purported by Newton’s third law. Each group involved in the war on terrorism, on either side, has employed this idea.
For example, person ‘Z’ claims that persons ‘Y’ and ‘X’ have performed some set of misdeeds. Thus, Z feels the need to create a balance by retaliating against Y and X. Z believes it didn’t commit a misdeed because it was simply reacting to Y and X. Y and X can now react to Z with the same rational Z used to react to Y and X. The result is, unfortunately, a never ending cycle of action and reaction until someone, person ‘W,’ comes along and erases the blackboard to write a new equation with hope for temporary stability. Here we go again.
Our university is a microcosmic example of the differences we see in the people of the world. Person V might be a proponent of the Muslims around the world. He claims that Muslim tribes on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan don’t have the strength to rise up against terrorist extremist groups that roam through their lands. Persons U and T argue there was no apparent reason for the war in Iraq. Person T then reads an excerpt from his essay citing information from the one of several New York Times articles: “Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says.” Still, someone else tries to add to his class participation grade by summarizing the entire debate on terrorism in terms of derivatives and integrals.
This is the nature of international relations today. No one is right, and no one is wrong. Everyone keeps on fighting over the same issues without putting any real thought into a viable solution. People say whatever they want, even if what they say doesn’t add anything to the discussion at hand. Rather than attempting to see another person’s point of view, they only think about themselves and their own needs.
If people don’t open up to the world and become less narrow-minded, our world will become a very different place in near future.
