Hero of War - Rise Against

This song reached right in and grabbed my heart in an ice-cold, numbing vice.

It left me in tears; tears over the things we humans are capable of, the atrocities committed in the name of truth, justice and religion. The lack of civilisation that is the direct result of the cruelty of war, civil war, genocide, hate crime, religious struggle, rape, degradation, torture, bullying, battering, and abuse in its many forms.

I honestly don't know how they do it; the soldiers who kill civilians, maim and torture innocent people. The guards in the Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad who degraded and humiliated the prisoners, the torturers in Guantanamo... How could they do what they did and still look another person in the eye? I can't believe that they actually thought, deep down in their hearts, that it was OK to treat another person like that just because it was an order, or because everyone else did, just as I can't believe that the guards and officers of the concentration camps deep down could justify what they were doing. They may be stupid and blinded by their leaders' bullshit about us and them, about how one people has a higher value than another, but deep down in their hearts, surely, they must have a sense of right and wrong. Don't they know that they are selling out their souls, their civilisation, their humanity, when they abuse and degrade another human being?

I feel things deeply, and I have often felt that the agony over the things that people are capable of is too much to bear; the despair over animal abuse, child abuse, and the atrocities of war grows so heavy that I don't want to live in a world where such things are allowed to happen (and go unpunished). I feel like the despair and hatred for the perpetrators grow so big that it's a matter of killing or be killed. I of course don't, but I feel it.

I want to avert my eyes and forget what humankind is capable of, but what would that make me? A silent accomplice? I believe that any sentient, intelligent, caring person has a duty to see, to witness, and to be the change that is needed. There may be precious little we can do, but any major shift of consciousness has to start from within each and every one of us. And we are able to change the world. Not at once, but bit by bit. We hold the power to live our lives from a place of love, not hate or fear. If we send out love in the world, there will be more love, and we can influence the energy of others by what we choose to send out.

In the words of Mahatma Ghandi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”