At the top of this list: The cruelty, abuse, and indifference of humanity toward all other animal life. A pathetic few make small efforts to try not to be...myself included. The problem is so huge it overwhelms me. It also severely diminishes my respect, patience, and compassion for humanity. Even indifference toward domestic animals and wildlife breaks my heart. Animals DO NOT deserve our cruelty to them. Life is violent and cruel enough for them and for us. Why do we make it worse?
But we, with our "intelligent" but non-compassionate brains, use and abuse all animals that share this planet with us. We are the only ones who kill for pure pleasure...or greed...or to fulfill or fill some empty need or part of ourselves. We have pets more out of love for ourselves than of love for them. Oh, we love them but we love more what they do for us. They fulfill a need in us that we cannot fill any other way. This is not always beneficial to them.
We use them as prey in hunts. We use them as display in zoos and aquariums to earn money. We use them to exercise our god-like desires in control and genetic engineering in breeding them. We use them in experiments to produce products that benefits only us. We tell ourselves we're helping them, we're conducting research in order to save their species, we're imprisoning them in tiny cages (zoos and aquariums) to educate people in order to save the animals, we force them to live unnatural lives by using them as pets or work animals. We justify all of these inhumane human behaviors in our minds. We pat ourselves on the back for our ineffectual and insignificant efforts on their behalf, we earn money and bolster our egos by forcing them to perform for us for our pleasure. We do not give them the respect they deserve as fellow animals sharing the same planet. We elevate our own needs over the needs of any and all animals.
Second on my List: Humanity's cruelty and irresponsibility to humanity. This is the only world on which we can live. For all we know or will ever know, we are the only living things in the entire huge universe. There may be other life "out there," but for all intents and purposes, we will Never encounter them. Our species, our world and all we know, could very well be long gone long before we ever know for sure.
Why then, in this short existence of life and our planet, do we practice such cruelty and indifference to all life on our planet? Nothing is safe from humans--not anything we can see, hear, touch, smell, or sense. If we can destroy something, we'll find a way to do it and a reason to do it. We'll even destroy other humans. We'll do it all even if it means we are also destroying ourselves. It seems as though our (humans) only reason for being is to be pleasured today in any and every way we can think of.
Why are humans so selfish and blind? We are at our basic level extremely selfish. We put our desires and needs above all other. We even include many of our desires and wants as Needs in order to satisfy our greed for ever more pleasure and material possessions. And to bolster our meager unimportant egos. We pursue and try to fulfill all of our desires in order to give our lives some kind of meaning.
We will NOT accept that Life Has No Meaning. Life just IS. We should enjoy it and share it with all other life. We should not use life in order to satisfy our own insatiable greed for pleasure. All life is here for only a VERY short time. We should learn and strive to make life pleasurable for everyone and everything--not just our own insignificant selves. We are NOT more important that other lifeforms. We are no more nor no less important than the bee that stings us...or the tree that shades us and provides us with the oxygen we need to survive. Why is our Arrogance so apallingly ferocious. Why, above all, do we use our brains to think of and justify our violent and negative actions toward each other and our world?
Third heartbreaker on my List: Humanity's need for dominance over each other and violence toward each other. Our history is filled and overflows with extreme violence. Throughout our entire history, we have killed each other in the hundreds of millions. We garner our identities as individuals and as nations and we garner our heroes from acts of extreme violence! We always have, we always will. Our species is TOO WEAK and we lack the desire and determination to fight this desire.
That's why every nation has a military force. Deep down, we are afraid of each...we want to dominate everyone else. As long as there is a military presence, there WILL NEVER BE PEACE. As long as there is a military presence, we will find reasons and means to have yet another war. There has never been peace among humans. There have only been respites from wars. We use these respites to build up our military and weapons, to wait for the next opportunity to declare war on each other. Our greatest heroes throughout history are the men and women who have been the most efficient or voracious killers. We justify their actions and reasons for all their killing. We call them patriots, defenders of the realm, heroes. But the bottom line is that they were killers, they were prepared and willing to kill on command. That is the ultimate mission of any and all military forces--to kill on command and without question.
Fourth on my List: Humanity's inability or lack of desire, conviction, and honesty to learn to enjoy and share life and this planet without violence. After many thousands of years and with all of our brash talk about it, we are no closer today than we were in the beginning to learning how to live peacefully with everything and everyone. We pride ourselves on all the things we've learned to do and accomplish. BUT, we've failed in the one thing that means anything: We have not learned to live peacefully; we have not learned to stop hurting each other and everything else. In all the thousands of years we've existed, the one thing we've always done best and with great gusto is to DESTROY. What does this tell us about humanity?
No comments:
Post a Comment