A CHECK ON MAN'S HUMANITY AND CIVILITY
The depictions, descriptions, definitions, explanations, excuses are as varied as the wobble of the failing political gyroscope that spins and sends them hurtling about the globe, but their names are all familiar: bigotry, intolerance, racism, greed, war, death, famine, pestilence, torture, rape, murder, mutilation and genocide…all the premeditated failures of our species, because despite any varnish or veneering argument to the contrary, there are so many who do not give a damn who lives or dies so long as they prosper and consolidate their power, or are simply left alone in their comfortable personal life.
The faces of death and evil are many; their consciences and souls are black and void, their hands drip blood not only of their victims but of those yet unborn.
We are witnesses to mans’ inhumanity to his fellow being and we speak the words of well meaning hypocrites; the words that attempt to define man in terms of our hopes, our ideals and values spoken of a million times over in our churches, synagogues and mosques, in all the “Holy Books”, by theologians and philosophers and by our parents and teachers, while knowing full well the dark side of man that lurks within each and every one of us, that animal part of us that can kill or permit the most barbarous of torture and atrocities to be inflicted upon others while we simple conduct our everyday lives.
We are good at paying lip service to every great idea and ideal ever penned by human hand, but so few of us are any good at living up to them. We decry the human condition, lawlessness, violence and the dark depravity that resides within our species. Our inaction gives sanction to every dark impulse of humankind and there go you and I but for the restraints of fear born of man’s laws, at least those of us rational enough to know that it can be applied to us and that we are not of the privileged, empowered to live beyond its consequences.
We prefer to acknowledge our acceptance of reality in our almost devout adoration to “reality TV” but we cannot bring ourselves to either acknowledge or admit that the measure of great technological prowess and sky lines proclaiming our domain; dominion and empire do not measure our human civility. They do not equate. They never have and they never will, because after all we are merely the most highly (defined by us) evolved animals on this planet, but animals at our core.
Our planet is fragile, our existence fleeting, our desires never fulfilled driving millions to the anesthesia of alcohol and narcotics, and so many, our minds always a mere few footsteps from crossing “The Line”.
We define all things in our existence with words and we define ourselves by our actions and inactions. Need I say more in a world where we speak of man’s “Good Angels” turn our backs on the work of man’s “Dark Angels” and have permitted Death to become the Brother of Democracy? We know what we are. We prefer not to speak of that ugly truth as we kneel, bow or prostrate ourselves in prayer seeking ritual forgiveness for what we have done to another and shall do again, and under or breath we curse those who do not pray with us. Are we brothers and sisters in humanity or one another’s prey?
IRAQ
PAKISTAN
DARFUR
SAUDI ARABIA
LEBANON
AFGHAGISTAN
PAKISTAN
SOMALIA
ETHIOPIA
NIGER
GAZA
PALESTINE
MEXICO
CÔTE D'IVOIRE
CHAD
THAILAND
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
YEMEN
WAZIRISTAN
SUDAN
ARMENIA
BURMA-MYANMAR
RWANDA
TOMMOROW?
The faces of death and evil are many; their consciences and souls are black and void, their hands drip blood not only of their victims but of those yet unborn.
We are witnesses to mans’ inhumanity to his fellow being and we speak the words of well meaning hypocrites; the words that attempt to define man in terms of our hopes, our ideals and values spoken of a million times over in our churches, synagogues and mosques, in all the “Holy Books”, by theologians and philosophers and by our parents and teachers, while knowing full well the dark side of man that lurks within each and every one of us, that animal part of us that can kill or permit the most barbarous of torture and atrocities to be inflicted upon others while we simple conduct our everyday lives.
We are good at paying lip service to every great idea and ideal ever penned by human hand, but so few of us are any good at living up to them. We decry the human condition, lawlessness, violence and the dark depravity that resides within our species. Our inaction gives sanction to every dark impulse of humankind and there go you and I but for the restraints of fear born of man’s laws, at least those of us rational enough to know that it can be applied to us and that we are not of the privileged, empowered to live beyond its consequences.
We prefer to acknowledge our acceptance of reality in our almost devout adoration to “reality TV” but we cannot bring ourselves to either acknowledge or admit that the measure of great technological prowess and sky lines proclaiming our domain; dominion and empire do not measure our human civility. They do not equate. They never have and they never will, because after all we are merely the most highly (defined by us) evolved animals on this planet, but animals at our core.
Our planet is fragile, our existence fleeting, our desires never fulfilled driving millions to the anesthesia of alcohol and narcotics, and so many, our minds always a mere few footsteps from crossing “The Line”.
We define all things in our existence with words and we define ourselves by our actions and inactions. Need I say more in a world where we speak of man’s “Good Angels” turn our backs on the work of man’s “Dark Angels” and have permitted Death to become the Brother of Democracy? We know what we are. We prefer not to speak of that ugly truth as we kneel, bow or prostrate ourselves in prayer seeking ritual forgiveness for what we have done to another and shall do again, and under or breath we curse those who do not pray with us. Are we brothers and sisters in humanity or one another’s prey?
IRAQ
PAKISTAN
DARFUR
SAUDI ARABIA
LEBANON
AFGHAGISTAN
PAKISTAN
SOMALIA
ETHIOPIA
NIGER
GAZA
PALESTINE
MEXICO
CÔTE D'IVOIRE
CHAD
THAILAND
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
YEMEN
WAZIRISTAN
SUDAN
ARMENIA
BURMA-MYANMAR
RWANDA
TOMMOROW?
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