Day: November 2, 2016

I see us. #ASMSG #IARTG #IAN1 #SupportIndieAuthors!

Sumo Sized Ginger Musings

I had to start this several different times, because every time I started to write it, it came from a place of anger, and that’s not the message the world needs.

I see us. I see us all around the world, just trying to get by. A single father doing his best to raise his daughters, a mother worrying over her sick child, even the young adult making his first steps out into a larger world. We’re all around, the ones who just want to live life. We don’t want to fight, we don’t want to argue, we just want to do what we need to in order to survive.

All too often I find myself shocked to find those people who were peaceful to each other just a short time ago at each other’s throats. We were ready, willing, and able to tackle anything the world threw at us, and we did constantly. We went so far as to invent threats that we have no evidence of in order to secure ourselves.

Does it really keep us safer? Does anyone really feel safer since we started the Drug War? The War on Terror? Does anyone really feel safer in 2016 than they did even in the middle of the Cold War at its worst? At least then the threats seemed to be from outside the nation.

It seems like there is more aggression and anger with one another than there has been in a long time, and I don’t understand it. From twisting someone’s words to paint them in an unfavorable light to just plain name calling, I don’t understand where all the animosity comes from. We live in what has to be the most prosperous time in existence.

Think about it, that phone in your hand has more processing power than the computers used by NASA to reach the moon in the 60’s! Yet, here we are, still arguing over imaginary threats that no one else can perceive except for the people on our side.

I’m not saying there aren’t social issues, I’m not saying people shouldn’t protest. I’m saying that we as a people are choosing to ignore the other person’s side, because it doesn’t conform with our ideals.

We have to decide, are we going to be a free society, where people are trusted to make their own life choices? Or are we going to be a society of selfish men and women, ready to insert our opinions into other people’s thoughts before they even have a chance to finish arguing.

There’s a poem I love from the end of the Second World War, because it espouses why I will never be silent. It’s called “First They Came…” and if you haven’t read it, then you should.

I find it empowering, and I have never had a problem listening to others speak up and defend their points of view, because of this poem.

But lately, as more and more voices come out of the woodwork, and I see people arguing and fighting and dividing ourselves along lines only we can see, I find myself shaking my head.

Is this all the farther we’ve reached in our evolutionary process? Even with all this technology and life saving machinery in our world, one that’s only going to become more and more technological as time goes on, are we damned to be nothing more than apes looking to smack each other in the head with cellphones, because we’re unwilling to compromise? Are we in too much of a hurry to respond to what people are saying? To actually listen to their words?

I’ve alway eagerly anticipated the advancing technology of our society, knowing the great things that can and will come as we implement the science into our daily lives for the betterment of mankind. I’m starting to wonder what I was so eager for, as it seems like the more technology we gain, the more of our humanity we lose. We’re communicating more than ever, and listening to each other less and less.

We seem to be falling into our own bubbles, ones that confirm our own biases whether they’re true or not. These bubbles divide us and keep us from uniting and fighting together. Now I have this long exposition on what I have seen and heard from society lately, but I still don’t have an answer to the one question I want to ask.

Who is the enemy? I hope things turn around soon, and we all start to #ChooseLove again. Make our great peaceful leaders proud to watch what we’ve become.