Ours, a sad world, but ultimately only we can change that

Rewritten by Ashley D. Mwanza (Original text by Karl F. Stewart, 2000)

WE all realize that the world we inhabit is far from perfect, right? Even on a good day, there are some things we would undoubtedly all like to improve. The guiding principle by which you live your life is to feel love in your heart for humanity. But in this our sad world, if you say to your friends that you hate humanity, they’ll sit there quietly and silently nod their heads in understanding. People can relate to hate. But our society doesn’t relate well to love. Many human beings have trashed love as a global human experience. If you express love for humanity, you are often viewed as living in a fairy tale world, as being unrealistic, as being weak or of even being a religious extremist.

Most human beings today see hate, and its consequence, suffering, as a natural part of life. How many of you believe living life is only real if we hate and suffer and that love is an illusion? I’m sure there are many human beings today who would suggest that without hatred and suffering, we wouldn’t be human beings, and that life would be boring and flat. Apparently human beings have grown addicted to strong negative emotions.

Consequently, we continually live our mass depression, and suicide, thinking that life offers no other possibility. We kill our dreams for a better life and a better world with our so-called realism that life equals suffering. And be careful of any human being who professes to love humanity.

But who could blame humanity for being sceptical about love? During the last 100 years, humanity’s more recent generations have only seen death and destruction as the guiding rule for life. I need not list them, the list is endless.

Apparently, because of our continuing human tragedy, we have become numb to humanity. We see life in its relationship to ourselves, but not to humanity as a whole. As human beings we no longer want to know or be held responsible for what our ignorance and indifference is doing to our fellow human beings. The world we presently live in today is a very sad world indeed. And is this the world many of us were hoping to prosper in? Look around at the world we’ve helped to create. Should we be proud of ourselves, of each other, of humanity for what we’ve created?

Most politicians throughout the world are obviously totally indifferent to humanity’s suffering – in the majority of cases they’re the cause of it. The so-called political elite typically worry more about helping corporate special interest groups and themselves, than helping humanity. As compensation they’ve had their egos inflated and received crusts of bread for their slavery. Will they ever admit their responsibility toward humanity and finally decide to help create a world of peace and love? Will they ever see the ghetto they’ve turned our planet Earth into? But of course politicians are nothing more than a mirror of the individuals they represent.

Until we as human beings start to rethink what it means to be a human being on planet Earth, we will only continue to reduce the human experience down to its most deprived elements – indifference, corruption, torture and murder.

One of the main characteristics at the turn of the new millennium was, and was historically anticipated to be, that humanity and life as we know it today would change. Many might not believe in that prediction, but the indications are all around us. Humanity today has definitely come to a fork in the road. And we can either continue to move forward by default or decide to make a conscious decision to shape what our life is going to be.

The sad thing is that most human beings are clueless to what’s happening around them. Most of the world has failed to acknowledge the tragedies. And this indifference could kill us all. Humanity’s ignorance of or indifference to the changes that are taking place in our world won’t make those changes disappear. Whatever happens, we have always had the power to change the course of our history.

Misery isn't just something that "happens" to us.  We create a lot of our own misery ourselves by what we do, how we think and feelings we habitually hold. The good news is, this means we can change it and end it!

As human beings, we have been a tragedy. We have failed ourselves as individuals and we have failed humanity. Are we going to continue along this road of self-destruction, or are we going to learn to love in life? The choice is ours and always has been ours. Where’s our courage to assume our responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth?