Nearly every day of the year is marked by being a special occasion. Some days are made a lot of and others slip by hardly noticed. It seems there are always events tugging at us to respond. The latest atrocity, the most recent gross unkindness, the most horrific explosion. One day we are upset by this event and a couple of days something else demands our attention.
What are we to do? We cannot fix everything, we cannot change the hearts and minds of other people carrying out these acts of human destruction. Are we lost, always left with the role of victim, as these continuous streams of endless events attack our senses.
How have we as human beings come to this? What is it that drives us to such devastating activities; such murder and total destruction?
Is one person, group, nation, sect, class, religion more violent, more hostile, than the rest? What are the corrupting influences that turns people into having no regard for other human life. What is it in most of us that demands we have the best of everything and somebody else can have what is left?
What does it mean to be human? Does it mean that each one of us should be all powerful and the person that is not 'me' have less? Do we see that our upbringing, our education and our society teaches us this; whether as a selfish individual in order to be competitive, successful, or as a society and nation to protect one's way of life and interests. You see we have ended up thinking that being the most important individual in the group is good and so we strive for this individual excellence as if it must be attained at nearly all costs. We ignore the fact of the aggression and competition required to push other people out of our way as we strive to become important. Why do we strive so hard for this recognition? This sense of power without which we think we are unimportant.
What is it to be unimportant? Is it despair, to be cast forever as the victim, without hope, meaningless and in order to avoid these feelings we pursue their opposites so we think we can escape these feelings without understanding them. Perhaps being unimportant can open up self awareness, open one's eyes to seeing the world as it really is; to see the conditioning we have all been subjected to. For the first time perhaps one can see the fear and insecurities driving us all into this world of comparison, ambition envy and hate. Surely these are our attributes that lead us into the problems of the atrocities in the world. It isn't the 'bad' people 'out there' but the blind assertiveness we all have that states that I am more important than you, I am right and I am going to stop you by being more powerful, and by controlling what you can and cannot have I stay safe, because I fear you. I don't understand you therefore I don't trust you because deep down inside I fear you maybe the same as me and I do know that I want to be the most powerful so it does it follow that if I do not suppress you, you will do the same. Is this not the real reason we are locked together, all of us, in aggression towards one another?
Perhaps this will get us no where and we may then realise that true understanding of our enemies' desires, as well as our own, will lead to complete co-operation. Until there is a revolution in each one of us, which is not about condemning the other, there will be the same headlines flooding the media demanding our reaction and keeping us blaming an enemy we can do nothing about as individuals.
