No Saving Grace - or Tom, or Dick, or Harry

Human beings are not my favorite things. There is nothing new in this. I’ve always harbored a deep distrust and disdain for humanity although the necessities of reasonable living have enforced a sociability and affability for the totality while reserving exemptions for specific individuals. Having been raised as the lone wolf cub to another lone wolf with a long heritage of lone wolfdom and a far more sociably tamed yet stubborn she wolf, my proclivities are self explanatory.

Nothing that has happened on the world stage over the last decade or more has given me any reason to change my assessment of people. Quite the opposite, in fact. The actors on that stage have underscored the wisdom of my natural reclusiveness. Although singularity does not exempt me from responsibility for my own contributions to the human condition on this planet, my preference is to be of the world if not in it, and yet I still wage consistent, if losing, battles to better it in line with my own conscience.

Reading about and looking at pictorial proof of what madness has sprung from the warped hearts and heads of humans most recently leads again to the eternal question of “why bother.” It’s obvious that I am not alone in this feeing. Dissent and protest against corruption, deceit, lies, war, poverty, bigotry, genocide, abuse, inequality and all other evils has steadily declined, as though we humans now arrive in this world equipped with blinders and calluses around our souls. We seem more and more willing to step back, sit down, and let someone else do ‘it.’ Perhaps it is no wonder that little is accomplished to advance the basic human condition beyond brutality.

The past two weeks are a case in point. We’ve seen the overly exalted leaders of the G8 countries (those who’ve designated themselves as the most powerful economic forces on this planet) in their annual summit meeting, this time in Russia. If rhetorical hot air from human gas bags could be collected and disbursed as energy, the problems created by the growing scarcity of oil as fuel could have been solved in one afternoon, scratching one item from the meeting’s agenda for all time, and coming close to solving the threat of global warming. Alas, all that gaseous obnoxiousness simply wafted out into the ether lost for all time unless it returns to haunt us because it creates a new hole in the ozone.

Another supposed agenda item was the question of balance of trade. Simply the name of that item is one of many malapropisms we all foster, because until the more advanced countries belly up to the bar of justice and cease underwriting things like subsidies of their own farmers, the poorer countries will never achieve anything close to parity, nor will they ever be able to fully feed their own populations. One wonders how much those stomach pains attributable to hunger affect the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, or the genocide in Darfur, or the extended empty bellies of children in Africa.

Then there are the photographs and the realities of a besieged population in Beirut, a once beautiful city destroyed by years of occupation and war only recently turned to democracy and rebuilt from rubble to be again turned to dust and shards and broken concrete by U.S. made bombs from Israel, another nation constantly threatened and besieged because of religious differences. Is there any person or nation of peoples or religions created by men free from blame for the centuries old turmoil in this region?

The inactions and actions of people and nations created Israel, Hezbollah, al Quaeda, Hamas, Iran and its militant fundamentalist government, Syria and its covetous government, the quasi dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Dubai, and the war torn and presently occupied and unhappy country of Iraq. The thirst for oil and power among the G8 countries, but especially the limited mentality of the USA in its current costume of cowboy boots and military desert camouflage with its sticky and itchy grasping fingers meddling in cultures it chooses not to understand, have all been large contributors to the grief stricken faces and broken hearts among the area’s less privileged.

Humanity. Does it contain anything humane? Are human beings truly capable of intelligent thought? Are they capable of empathetic feeling? Do they not see what is being wrought in their name? Or what they themselves create of the negative feelings they harbor for others of their species?

I have a very low opinion of human beings. It’s doubtful that will change.