When I Look at the World

When I look at the world, I see it as it is. I am not an unrealistic person who sees only flowers and daffodils where suffering and evil exist. However, I see how the world could be. I see such intrinsic goods, such potential for beauty and love in humanity. We have this gift for feeling the abstract, for taking what is intangible and unknown to the beasts, and actually feeling it, even to the point that we would die for it. We have the unique ability to empathize, to reflect on the situation of others and to put ourselves in their place, to feel their pain, to feel compassion. No other creature on earth can boast such a claim. And that compassion is our only saving grace. We have so royally fucked over our planet and each other, so terribly have we destroyed what is seen by so many as a divine gift, our duty and honor to be the care takers of the world, that without this saving grace I would deem our species a plague upon the planet, unworthy of our gift of higher intellect and capacity for reason.

However, we do have the ability to love. And not just romantic love, which I argue is often self serving and egotistical (I love him/her because of the way he/she makes ME FEEL, which is actually lacking in any sort of intrinsic quality in the partner which would inspire feelings of love and awe and devotion based on who that person is, regardless if he/she was still in a relationship, returned the feelings, was romantic towards/considerate towards, etc etc the person who is "in love." But that's a rant for another day).

What we have in addition to romantic love (both the false, self serving kind and the true kind in which two people become so emotionally and mentally intertwined that they bond on what seems to be a cellular level, and it becomes inconceivable that they should ever part, for they are bound to one another on such deep and spiritual levels of connectivity and mutual understanding of one another and the world and the universe that to lose one would be in essence to lose the self), we also have the capacity to love humankind as a whole. I realize that this is largely underdeveloped in modern society, and indeed even purposely suppressed by those who stand to make a profit at the expense of others and from the indifference of those in a position to stop that exploitation and inhumanity. However, it lives in us all, even if lying dormant under mountains of stuff and glittery distractions and advertisements and daily petty dramas. It is there, waiting to be unleashed and to heal the world.

Surely we feel compassion and empathy toward our family members. But in essence are we not all blood relatives? Are we not all part of one, extended family? Is it not pure chance that you or I were born into the lives we have been born into, and not born into brothels or child prostitution or extreme poverty or starvation? Is it so hard to see that person as your likeness, as someone who could be you? Someone whose pain it is in your power to stop? Yes, we can only do so much as individuals, but together we can begin a healing process to mend the terrible wounds we have caused to humanity and potentially save one another from the sure doom we face.

That doom can only arrive with the indifference of good people, who will sit comfortably and idly by while those in power send those without further into the miserable squalor and degradation of poverty, slavery, starvation, and suffering until it consumes us all.

"And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak up for me."