Humanity is suffocating. Is it true and, if so, how did this happen and how do we stop it? Throughout human history, we continuously develop ways to live comfortable lives, usually thinking about only ourselves. And be it something real, physical or mechanisms in our mind, such as stereotypes, prejudices or any other kind of false idea, that will let us be more comfortable with the world around, we would rather have it grow on us, feed it, but rarely fight. We have been spoiling ourselves with this, yet, now we have the resources and power to change what we have done. To our home and everyone who’s home it is as well. Now is the time to stop, reflect, realise our mistakes and learn from it. But unfortunately, that is not in human nature. We do not learn from the mistakes of others, neither do we take the past of us as species too much into consideration. We just keep advancing, growing bigger, demanding more, it is our nature and it doesn’t matter for most of us that there is a limit . A limit for everything, human life, food, oxygen, animals, water. And those are just a few of other things we take for granted nowadays. It is true, before people had to kill and die for them, now we don’t. But who remembers and truly appreciates now the price we had once to pay. The slogan of modern human is “I care only if it directly involves me”. What does this mean for us as species? And should we really care? Well, the answer to that is simple. Look into the past .
The first example I want to talk about is the Second World War and its horrors. The most grotesque, yet real picture, painted with human blood. Why did this happen, how did we let it? Wars have been around as long as humans have. It would seem it’s just part of us, we need it. But that’s false. I will ask you, do YOU personally need a war? I know the answer already. And I don’t think it was any different for any other person since we knew how to talk. Except those, whose hunger for power is far beyond any logical explanation. It is them, who sat at the back and pointed in the direction of the way to death. And rarely anyone would stand up for their friend’s or their own life. People would go and blindly follow the orders. The importance of single human life has been slowly brought to nothing. Nazis during the war would gather people in concentration camps and suffocate or burn them to death. Millions of them . Life value of those 17 million was below nothing. Some would think, it was in the past, leave it there. But leaving it there is just supporting it. Least we could for those people, is to remember them. The Holocaust. We do not teach people in schools about mistakes of the past, nor do we educate them why things happened or reflect on the mistakes we have made. Less and less we talk about history. It is depicted as a book, a story, a life of a powerful human. But it is almost never seen as a story of billions of people, each having their very own, special story. Studying that could have helped us understand it better and learn from it. People make history, not the other way around.
In 1986, the Chernobyl catastrophe happened. Whose fault was that? Was it workers or was it the government regime, which at all costs tried to keep it hidden, denying until it was too late that anything was going wrong? All the radiation, which was thrown in the atmosphere, spreading so far that the level of it even in Sweden increased. In fact, it wasn’t Soviet government who reported the problem, it was Sweden. And by doing so they might have saved tens, if not hundreds of millions. Who knows, how long would have Soviets hide the accident and how bad it would have gone. Risking human life for the sake of keeping your country’s face is as bad as losing them in a war. What are the similarities of the two? A person at the back, giving orders down an incredibly long staircase of people below. People losing lives. And, of course, in both cases simple people on the other end, who don’t need any of this, nor war, nor winning the race for nuclear power, people, who will later be seen just as a grey background of these truly horrific events. This is a sign of unhealthy, damaging world organisation. Because we’re all humans, we are all the same. And no one has rights to be superior to others, let alone give orders leading to lessening the number of other humans. There is no justification for this.
How did we come to this? The answer is rather simple, people prefer to stay out or away from the problem for as long as possible, ideally to never face it. We all love comfort, don’t we? Unfortunately, that, actually, is part of our nature, unlike wars and killing each other. But this comfort is different. Staring away from horrors of the world will not make it a better place. In fact, it will make it worse.
