Saturday, October 06, 2007

Humans: Beasts Or Savages?

"When you stare into an abyss for a long time,

The abyss also stares into you."

Frederick Neitzche.

Friends, the photograph shows the body of a Buddhist monk killed by the Junta in Burma. It is not a pretty picture but what it clearly shows about the human race is even less pretty.

Of all the religions on earth, the Buddhist religion is the most peaceable, the most genuine. It is based upon revering all forms of life, upon hurting nothing and no one, upon caring, upon doing good, upon simplicity, frugality and humbleness.

Recently, Burmese monks bravely led a peaceful protest in Burma, a protest advocating democracy. The Junta of Army Generals, as the protest swelled, responded with brutal military force. Unknown numbers of deaths occurred but they are certainly in the thousands.

However, all over the world, terrible injuries and deaths like that shown above are occurring every minute: in the Palestinian Territories, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Sudan...in places we don't even know about. As well, men, women and children are being imprisoned, tortured, murdered, raped, sodomized, having limbs chopped off...

Please, I don't want to stare into the abyss any longer, to think about the immutable human condition, to consider the full extent of what humans the world over (Americans, Israelis, Australians, British, Burmese, Sudanese, etc) are doing to other humans, what it means, what it says about us as a species!

Sometimes our true reality is simply too confronting, too hideous, too much to bear!

Photo Link.

4 comments:

clare said...

I agree with what you have written and it is sad and sometimes it is hard to be a human and to realise all the troubles and attrocities we have caused or are about to. I also wonder if people realise who they can actually be at times and how can they live with themselves. However I also realise that there is alot of people out there who dont stand for this and are the opposite of what is being read here and that is a hard one to belive as not many peope get to see that or we hear about that. I could assume here that you are someone who struggles with human kind and how or who we are as a species and we dont always do much good or should I say our negative impacts hurt so many people.I also belive that is what makes us human and yes we have a horrible animal side but we also have a beautiful side there are people who belive in no harming someone just because there is no need to. I for one am not a christian and I dont belive in god or any kind of religion but I also belive in myself and I have very strong ethics and morals and hope to raise my children accordingly and to respect the world that they are in and the peopel that are in it, to be open minded and I also am aware that I am not alone in my thinking. I just hope many more people realise that humans are out of control and as a species we are lost and the order is out of wack we as a race need more guidence. I hope one day we find a balance and get it right.
p.s. I do like your blood spot good luck and look forward to furhter readings

Daniel said...

Clare, I suspect that there are fifteen percent of people who are innately good, fifteen percent who are innately wicked and cruel and the balance can quite happily be either.

Glad you belong to the first group!

Coffee Messiah said...

It boggles the mind!

Why? ; (

Daniel said...

Why? Could it be, Coffee, that humans, collectively, are natural killers who love to rape and pillage much as they've always done?

Are people like you and I aberrations?

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