Maybe I love history more than others, maybe I have a different view of life and death than most people. Whatever the case, one of my biggest pet peeves is over-reaction to tragedy in the world today. Few things annoy me more than when someone says, "All of the terrible things happening in the world today. It seems to just get worse and worse, like anything can happen." REALLY? Now I've dealt with this exact sentiment so many times in the past few years, that I've come up with a solid argument against this kind of ignorance - and that's all it is, ignorance. Ignorance for the entire history of humankind, as well as the planet earth. If you can't take the circle of life into perspective, you are nothing but an ignorant fool.
First of all, all the terrible things happening in the world today? Really? I could easily point out examples in the last 50 years, but it seems like maybe that's "too recent" and could be included in this "worsening epidemic of evil." Lets go with the last 100 years. Anyone remember a couple little things called WWI and WWII? No? Doesn't ring a bell? Well, 16 million and 60 million people were killed in each, respectively, so I figured it wouldn't be something easily forgotten. How about the attempted genocide of the Jewish race in which a madman convinced an entire army to murder 6 million innocent people, or 2/3 of all Jews in Europe? What about the atomic bomb that literally flattened the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and killed around 200,000 Japanese civilians? Have you just pushed that to the back of your mind like a piece of fiction you once read? We have wars now, but nothing compares to what went on nearly a hundred years ago, as well as long before. The American Civil war was little over 150 years ago, and killed over 400,000 people in 4 years. This was fought over the threat of secession due to the American slave trade - a incredibly evil phenomenon in which an estimated 12 million Africans were kidnapped from their home, shipped like rats, sold like work animals, and treated even worse in the fields. Is that another piece of fiction you've stored in your brain? How about the Medieval period in Europe when royalty seemed to be on a routine rotation due to the ruling party being at constant war with their enemies, & more often than not, were murdered by such. Meanwhile, the common people lived in the kind of squalor & disease we can't even imagine. You think its hard to find hope now? Try living in a insect/rat infested hut with mud floors & a straw roof, where you take a filthy bath once a year, and eat stew that's been in the same pot for over a week. Oh, and you're probably in insurmountable debt and work land that belongs to someone else. Think you're not going anywhere in life, now?
Lately I've heard the argument, "well, they didn't have the scary technology back then that we do now." Oh yeah? Maybe you haven't read a lot about the history of torture, but I would rather be killed by our technology today than by any kind of primitive or evolving automatic weapon used any time before say, 1950. Gatling guns, cannons, swords, mace & axe, mustard gas, agent orange. Not to mention all the execution devices that have been outlawed as "cruel and unusual:" The guillotine, impalement, drawn & quartering, DISEMBOWELMENT. Geez. I would much rather go by the more precise methods of today. If anything, I'd say we've improved on our evil ways. Of course, right there someone could say, "innocent kids are being killed, terrorists are targeting tourists and innocent civilians, no one is safe anymore." You think we were ever SAFE? Again, if anything, I'd say we're more protected then ever. War is much less of a common thing than it was in the past, and when there is one, it is much less deadly. It has to be, because every country in the world knows that if anything gets pushed too far, there are weapons that could obliterate human kind.. and I'm pretty sure that even the crazy terrorist madmen wouldn't want that. So yes, innocent children were shot. I won't try to downplay that tragedy, but I will say that there are terrible things like child slavery, child soldiers, etc. still prevalent in highly populated areas of our world. So while we can ask (we have to ask out of bewilderment) why anyone would shoot up a school of innocent children, you cannot tell me that this is an evil that has just begun to emerge and has never been so bad. That in itself is ignorance to the natural evil around us.
Another thing I cannot stand is when a person takes natural disasters or illness reports, and tries to say it has never been so bad. REALLY? First of all, go look up "extinction events." Granted, there has not been one since the beginning of humanity, as obviously we would be exterminated, but it still shows that the world has been destroyed at least 5 times, if not several more. There have been meteorites, there have been massive volcano eruptions. Every year thousands are killed by tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. There were almost 900 students killed during the 2008 earthquake in China, in one location, alone. 900 STUDENTS. Can the American public even fathom that idea? Its an image I certainly haven't been able to get out of my mind in the last 5 years. So when a co-worker tells me she doesn't know what's going on in the world today b/c there was an overly active tornado season, or an earthquake in NY, I just shake my head. We live on a living planet. Mother Nature is a dangerous, deadly force. It just shows our ignorance created by our advanced civilization to think we cannot be harmed.
So what is the problem? Well, as I've said all along, ignorance plays into it quite a bit. How many student really pay attention in school to history lessons, and when they do, is it relevant enough to our society today that they even blink at the horrors of mankind? One thing I've heard from more than one teacher recently is that The Diary of Anne Frank isn't even relevant to their students anymore. Its not RELEVANT! Think about that, America. Our kids are reading a first-hand account written by a girl their age who was forced to go into hiding from horrible men who would like to see her entire innocent family killed, and after 2 years they are discovered & taken to hard-labor, disease-infested concentration camps where all but one eventually dies. That's not relevant to our kids today. To them it may seem more like a work of fiction, written to try and scare some sense into them. It just doesn't apply to their middle-class suburban lifestyles. Its a boring version of the video game they played last night. Perhaps schools need to begin having actual holocaust victims in to talk to these students. Perhaps we need actual Ugandan refugees to come share their stories. Would that make it more relevant, you snots?
You see, America is so far separated from global life that the everyday citizen doesn't seem to know a lot about the actual evil going on in our world. They don't hear about the absolutely horrifying civil wars in Africa anymore. They don't hear much of the archaic social systems in some countries of the Middle East. They don't know that until the 1980's, Aboriginal Australians weren't even considered to be part of the country's population. What we hear & see is what pertains to us. Is it going to affect America in some way? Yes? Well, if we have a stake over there, its suddenly important. How important was Myanmar to America? Sure plenty of people were concerned with the injustice of the riots, but was it even close to being a majority of our population? Was our media pushing images and new stories? If it was, I sure didn't see it. We hear about North Korea because it is a threat to humankind with their absurd ideas about nuclear weapons & world domination. We heard about the extremely juvenile riots in the UK because they are our civilized brethren. So maybe that's what it comes down to. We are only shocked by the evil in civilized countries, as if we've built ourselves up to the point that we are unable to be breached. We've callused ourselves to the point that we have forgotten evil is innate. It is not a way of race or religion. Whether it be in a 3rd world country where people only have crude ways to fight, or in a 1st world country where people can use advanced technology, there is always an evil presence. Utopia does not exist. Utopia cannot exist because of human nature. Mental health cannot be completely controlled because the minds of sociopaths work to deceive. We are constantly looking for answers to control the next tragedy, and all I can say is that it is not possible. As long as we're convincing the American public that we have everything under control, any tragedy that befalls us will create shock & hysteria. I say we teach to be kind, to problem solve, to always be aware. Always be ready for the next event, be ready to stand up & help, be ready to run. The next time could be right out your back door.
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