Sorrow

Sometimes, the world makes me sad. Maybe not the world so much as the people living in it. The things we as humans do, to each other and the world we live in, are disheartening and disturbing. We (the ensemble that makes up my theatre workshop) have been assigned to research a disaster/catastrophe and present it to the group. (More about why and what we're doing later; it's gonna be awesome) And if I believed in a god, I would be praying like crazy now. I look at our history, our present, and our future, and I see bloodshed, violence, pollution, war, genocide, terror. I cannot comprehend these things. I know they happen, and while my cynical self says "of course we go around killing each other," my hopeful side wants to cry.

Even as a country, our nation has been involved in and/or the cause of so many wars. I know that some of these wars have been deemed "necessary," and without them we would likely be a British colony. If we weren't, we would probably be two separate nations. But war makes me question, do the ends really justify the means? While I understand that Hitler needed to be stopped, and WWII needed to take place for that to happen, I also look a little farther back and think about how maybe it all would have been avoided if, in the aftermath of WWI, we as the winning nations had stopped to consider the consequences of blaming everything on Germany.

Do the ends justify the means when it means the death of millions? Do the ends justify the means when ending the war with Japan meant dropping two atomic bombs on cities? Not military bases, and yes I understand there were military there, but the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are two events in history that I will never agree with. Yes, we "gave them a warning." We told them that ultimate destruction would await them if they did not surrender. But, must I say it, duh? In war, isn't that kind of the point? Destroying someone until they give up? "Ultimate destruction." Those two words were not fair warning.

The "war on terror" is another issue, one that I won't go any further into than saying this: war is terror.

We destroy each other, cruelly. Guns and bombs and gas. Torture. I can't help but grieve for the human race. We are doing this to each other. All the time. What's more, we're doing it to the environment we live in. I don't care if you believe in global warming or not. I really don't. What I do care about are the animals dying because of our actions, whether they be overhunting, polluting their homes, whatever. No other species produces garbage, waste, like we do. People say that it's our prerogative as the most intelligent species, but I say bullshit. You cannot justify the pollution that we produce. The homes we destroy.

On the cynical side of things, if we as the collective human race continue acting in the patterns defined in our past, there will be no us, no earth, no anything, in the future.

But with darkness, there is light, and so there is hope. We have to stop doing this to each other. It's hard when we think about how we are "just one person" but we can make a difference. It starts with us and spreads from there. We have to change and evolve and start being more balanced. Wage peace, not war. Revolt with love. Retaliate with forgiveness. I know from experience, it's easier to fight fire with fire; it's easier to take revenge than put something at ease. But we have to try.

Cheers,

-T.A.D.