What are we becoming? The world is at war with itself and we sit back and watch as though there’s nothing we can do about it. But we are the reason for the violence. We are the cause of the destruction, the death, and the hate.
We view other humans as different from us because of skin color, the accent behind someone’s voice, and religion. We forget that really the only difference between us and ‘them’ is what chunk of dirt we live on. We forget that all of these things that make us different are because of our own perceptions of the world.
If we viewed the world as one giant company, would the unknown be as scary? If a country represented a store branch, with the president of said country being viewed more as a General Manager, would we still be leery of the differences? On the broad scale of things, that’s essentially what the world is; one giant company with enough elected officials (managers) to help lead, guide, and protect us (the employees).
“But what about terrorists?” some may ask. Let’s look at it from a business perspective again. There’s always that one employee that everyone wants to strangle because they can’t seem to do their job. It’s no different than having one bad egg in a basket of a dozen. Does one bad egg mean that the entire basket should be thrown away? Absolutely not! That doesn’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t use caution when breaking the other eggs open.
I already know what you’re thinking. Yes, I just compared people to eggs but it’s the easiest way for me to express my opinion, which now days seems to be a pretty unpopular one. No matter what chunk of land we come from, no matter what color our skin is, and no matter which God we choose to worship, the cold hard truth is that at the core of all of us is a beating heart that looks the same as the beating heart of the person standing next to us. It looks and beats the same as every other man, woman, and child on this planet. It’s what makes us, dare I say it, human.
The real question is, what happened over the years that made us forget this important detail? What happened that made us forget that people are people? The answer should be obvious: Fear. Every problem humanity has ever faced has been centered around fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of differences, fear of failure, and fear of losing power. Every war, whether power or religion relation, has stemmed from some sort of fear. But, as a wise Jedi named Yoda once said “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate, leads to the dark side.”
Unfortunately, there’s no way to fix the problem at this point. No matter what we do, no matter how bad we don’t want to admit it, fear has been embedded into our everyday lives without us even realizing it. The only way we can even remotely begin to repair what has been broken is to reprogram our minds to recognize the fear that we feel before it turns into intolerance and hatred. Only then, perhaps we can get back to treating each other like human beings and begin to co-exist.