There used to be a God-forsaken piece of land kept away from people of the civilised world. It was too harsh and too hostile to human habitation. The climate was intense, and the terrain was unyielding. So it became a haven for people who wanted peace and to be left again.
With trust in God and faith in their physical and mental strength, they labour, innovate and improve. When chocolate gained popularity around Europe, the Swiss became creative in churning milk in steam-powered mixers to rebrand the drink of the Mayan Gods to the civilised world.
Unlike their neighbours, who were actively hunting each other, the Swiss were not powerful enough to resist. So, they claim neutrality. Promoting peace and non-partisanship, they showed their mantle during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when the 80,000 over-defeated French soldiers and refugees were nursed to health. They remained neutral in the First and Second World Wars.
Left to their own devices, they focused their effort on precise machinery. They became master clockmakers and marvellous engineers building funicular trains and hydroelectric dams.
The injured and refugees of the 1870 war Seen in Bourbaki Panorama
When the challenge against the orthodoxy of the Church by believers who wanted to understand their religion in their mother tongue became vogue, the Swiss became the nice guy supporting the underdogs. The Swiss took the image of going with the oppressed and clamoured themselves as working for Reformation.
Their selling of impartially went overdrive with the introduction of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations (UN). The idea of having the main office of FIFA is to highlight that this soccer body is fair and unbiased. We all know how it went.
The Reformation Wall
The ICRC paints an altruistic image of itself. It sells itself as a purveyor of humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters, wars and other tragedies. Again, you know that hidden hands control their budget and activities. It is common knowledge that financiers from the West siphoned off money to the Bolshevik revolutionaries to establish a communist regime under the pretext of sensing humanitarian aid.
UN also has lost its lustre. Perhaps it was a facade for the powerful nations to appear to be just to appease the not-so-economically vibrant ones of the world. The UN is often threatened with non-payment by its mighty members, especially the veto-wielding superpowers. Someone aptly referred to the UN as a toothless tiger, a talking shop in the daytime, and a pub at night. It has become a social platform for self-aggrandisement and to stay in the limelight.
Nevertheless, Switzerland shines to the world by exhibiting its natural beauty, the comfort of Swiss hospitality and its clockwork precision of public amenities and engineering. They remember to remind the world of their neutrality in dealing with world conflicts.
The coveted FIFA World Cup, despite its tainted governing body.
The endowment of clean water and a powerful supply of Alps glaciers provided energy and milk.
Rights for non-human beings too?
Nature's playground - Geneva
Isolation, introversion and introspection have their advantages. Seen in CERN, Geneva.
A problem then, a problem now! It is ironic that Freud at one time advocated cocaine for alcoholism.
United Nations - still relevant?
Matterhorn (14,692 ft)
Chur Alstadt, Switzerland
Serene countryside
After losing their mojo, they chose neutrality.
Even a non-believer becomes a believer.
The question is of what - one bearded man who keeps
a tab of your follies and brownies OR an undefined
force that maintains the balance of the orbit, gravity
and the secrets behind figure 108.
P.S. A line from the film 'The Third Man' comes to mind about Switzerland. Orson Welles’ character Harry Lime says, “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
