One World?

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

Continuously looking at the young and old, men and women and children; all of them trying to find a safe place to stay, to just get a drink of water and a meal, staring simply at the cameras that are trying to make news of their misery, driven away from their home, and now simply without any destination.  It is not their fault to live where they were born and be who they are.  They did not commit any crime or do anything to deserve the forced relocation to nowhere.  With communications getting more and more constant the human suffering is getting is also being played out constantly for the rest of the world to become a part of the destitute.  We think we are looking at someone out there being forced to run away from their home, but we are one world, and it can happen to us, wherever we live.  We are watching human suffering played out on television, and that’s exactly what we are doing, just watching our race being decimated, for what?  There is so much written about race and religion, and the national boundaries and individual beliefs, but what have these people done to deserve such suffering?  The image of a small child washing ashore, dead on a beach could have happened to anyone and any place in the world.  It is really tragic, not dramatic for the world to react to.  What have we done to ourselves?  Why do we simply spend so much time and money on defending ourselves, but let the world become a place of carnage?  Does religion promote creating hell on earth so that the people creating the hell here can go to enjoy heaven?  Who has an answer to the killing in the name of religion?

Is the image of the little child lying face down dead on a beach the trigger this time for the world to become one world?  How many more hundreds of thousands have to be killed, and how many more million need to be thrown out of their homes before the world takes interest in helping?  We keep watch television and constantly monitor the news; hundreds of thousands continued to be displaced from their homes for simply being there.  They have been there thousands of years.  Still all of a sudden they are refugees.  Homeless.  Landless. Penniless.  Simply with nothing.  All of their fate simply tied to the whims of religion and other humans, and nothing else.

We humans are older than any religion.  Every religion and its founders have only preached love and tolerance and peace and coexistence.  There is no religious scripture that depicts hatred and killing.  But we interpret otherwise, and along with religion we have never stopped killing in the name of it.  Killing in the name of religion has been as long as what we call religion existed, and with growing time and populations, the killings have become a way of religious life.  We invoke the name of god and religion as a primary reason for inhumanity, which ends us it is towards our friends and neighbors.

From the world wars, the 1947 India’s partition and separation, the east-west war between Pakistan, the Afghanistan crisis, the continued strife Russian federation, the middle east and African crisis, the carnage in Syria and Iraq, the Palestinian battles, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and African unrest, somewhere in the world we can’t live as one people, and in the name of religion.  There is no end to killing and destruction.  The world continues to experience the misery live.  For some reason the media and coverage seem to encourage the carnage.  All of a sudden the carnage has a worldwide audience, and the behavior getting more and more violent.  We are not just killing each other, we are also destroying civilizations; old and new, without regard to heritage or humanity.  The utter disregard to women and justifying the atrocious behavior in the name of religion has become a common practice.  For some reason or cause, we forget all of us humans have a mother, and she is a woman.  God himself had a mother, and there is no scripture that asks to ill treat your own mother.

The killer’s get no glory for their deeds.  They have no state.  They have no home.  They have no family.  They just have hatred and in most cases all they end up with violent death.  The typical fate for hatred is the same fate they inflict on innocents in the name of religion.  There is no glory in death, especially when god doesn’t prescribe it.

The destruction of nations and communities and their natural and physical resources, along with generations of humanity and history, makes one wonder; is this one world?

There is no cause, however great and important to be used as an excuse to kill innocents.  Nothing more is important to the world than its history, civilization and humanity.  We are supposed to be the most evolved living beings with superior intellect.  Our superior intellect continues to be overshadowed by barbarian within.  We are not just getting smarted, we are also getting more intolerant.  While the world becomes more and more interconnected, it is also promoting the graphic and barbaric acts of the few, making them more exploitative in using the medium to promote horror.

We really are not one world.  We keep turning a blind eye on destruction and intolerance.  We don’t like to help or comfort.  We spend more money on weapons than education.  We love to watch TV and listen to commentary, but have nothing to offer to our fellow beings.  We really are not one world.  Simply live here in indifference and nothing else.  Oh yes; we certainly use religion to justify what we do.