Genocide
Nuclear war
Rape
Torture
Cancer
Tsunamis
Tornados
Obviously, the list is long. Much longer than this. The world is full of horror, almost as much horror as wonder, it sometimes seems. We shouldn’t have to understand these things, because no one should ever have to experience them. Some of these things are not entirely within our control. We don’t have cures for all of the various maladies that exist. Although we are impacting the world’s climate and increasing the incidence and severity of storms, we can’t stop weather events completely.
All of the really loathsome things, though? They’re all on us. We created them and continue to perpetuate them. Genocide wasn’t foisted on us by some sort of outside force. We kill our neighbors for our own twisted reasons. We go to war. We torture people–in time of war or sometimes just for sexual gratification. We rape, and kill, and are generally not very good human beings a lot of the time. We even invented weapons capable of killing tens of thousands of people at a time.
No one is forcing us to do it. It’s our choice.
What the fuck is wrong with us?
How is it that the same species who sculpted the Pieta’ and built Notre Dame de Paris also invented Ricin? We can write books that inspire people, that make people laugh or cry or think–but some of us also decided that it was OK to throw acid in a girl’s face if you think she disrespected us. How is it that we had a war that killed so many millions of people that we decided that the best possible way to end it was with a super-weapon that wiped out more than 150,000 people? Who decided that it was somehow OK to wipe out all of the world’s Jews, homosexuals, Rom and “political undesirables?” How can we be so sublime and so hellish at the same time?
I am looking out my window at yellow flowers, green grass, and a beautiful maple tree with the blue sky peeking out behind the leaves. The roses are in full bloom. The strawberries are getting ripe. There’s a warm breeze. Little girls are running up and down the sidewalk laughing. Cars passing by are slowing down to wave. My neighbor is washing his boat. It’s about the most peaceful scene imaginable.
How does that get reconciled with what happened at UCSB, or Newtown? Or my own High School? Dahmer/Bundy/Gacy? Or the girls raped and then hung in India? Syria? Boco Haram? Rwanda/Darfur/Kurdistan/Congo/and on and on and on? Half a million Iraqis?
Or can it get reconciled?
The vast majority of us would never rape or mutilate someone, but we support government policies that provide money to regimes that do.
Question of scale? If each of us contributes just a little bit to the military industrial complex that kills hundreds of thousands of people is that the same as one person raping and murdering a little boy? Is it worse? Is it different?
I don’t know, but I think it’s something we need to consider before we feed the machine.
For now, though, I think I will go have a glass of wine on the porch and enjoy the peaceful evening in my world.