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Depressive thoughts
Jul. 17th, 2002 11:08 amI have never despaired so much for the human race.
This entire entry (however it ends up) is my response to being extremely upset at an article I read this morning.(As a note: If you are upset by Animal Abuse, DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE! Just take my word, that it's very upsetting.)
And it brings me back to a just-as-upsetting article I read on the 13th.
Looking at these articles, all I can feel is pure fury at how these people can be so.. inhuman.
It's difficult not to believe in pure unadulterated evil when you read things like this.
Understand, I'm not saying we're ALL evil, but some of us clearly are purely terrible beings. Most of us are just everyday people trying to do more good in the world than evil. Sometimes trying to good can lead to bad results, but, that said, most of us are not evil people. But some of us... some of us seem to lack any soul whatsoever.
In fact, you could easily split the world into people with no soul, able to do terrible hurtful heinous things and those who do and have the daily struggle with their set of morals.
It takes a purely evil character to willingly and happily hurt total innocents, whether one or many.
Does our society foster this sort of soullessness? Do we breed these people unable to think in terms of good and evil? Or would these monsters exist irregardless of our society?
Unfortunately, the years I've grown up have been characterized by senseless and terrible violence. Terrorism, domestic and foreign, has risen to terrible new levels. Kids have gone into school with guns and shot up classmates and teachers.
And if that's bad enough, it seems, at times, that our sense of morals is corrupt. It seems no one's deserving of the trust you might put on them, not sports heros or musicians, not business, not presidents, not even priests.
So, maybe it is our society, going to hell in a handbasket that breeds these monsters and makes it easy for them to get their hands on victims and hurt them. And for these people, I truly hope there is a hell waiting for them to give them their just deserts.
As a note, I've always put alot of faith in the three-fold rule. What that is, for those who may not recall, is that you get what you give. (Officially, what it really says is that which you give, returns to you three-times, but I don't think the amount matters, what matters is that if you do evil, people do evil to you. If you do good, good is done to you.)
And for people like that, I hope they reap exactly what they have sown.
These people, these monsters among us, I've always thought, were one of the major reasons for why the furry movement is so popular. It's so easy for the rest of us to convince ourselves that these people represent the majority of humanity and that we are all evil monsters able to hurt without a care. I used to feel a need, myself, to seperate myself from humanity if this is what humanity was, to claim that I was nothing like THEM. And since I'm not one of these stupid, monstrous humans.. I must be something else. Looking around, perhaps I am a wolf or an eagle. Perhaps I am a childish and trickster pixie or a noble and dangerous dragon.
Maybe I'm totally off in the wrong direction. Maybe there really are dragons and pixies and all that in human forms on earth. But I strongly suspect that, if there are.. there are a hell of alot less than those claiming to be.
For myself, I need to be something else, not human. And looking around, the thing closest to what I wanted to be was a childish trickster, so maybe I tried to convince myself (and others) that I was ACTUALLY a pixie in a human body. But that's not what I am and the real me is getting farther from this once-ideal. What I am (and have always been) is one of the many humans trying desperately to do the right thing. Sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.
Ummm.. tangent aside, back to my point...
For the rest of us, who do have a soul, the unfortunate facts of life are that, sometimes (maybe even often), those who cheat and hurt prosper and do well. They do well by taking advantage of undeserveds, by polluting the environment and by other such not so good methods. And I've always needed to believe that SOMETIME these people will get theirs.
Because (and I think this is a question that all adults face one time or another in their lives), why else should you bother to live moral and good lives? What benefit does it give? I'm not saying there aren't benefits, there are, but they tend to be less tangible to those that you can get by cheating. A cheater may prosper, may get the promotion, may get the money, the power, the girls, the cars, etc... while the moral person may be left with less money etc.. but with the knowledge that he did the right thing.
Each person, at one time or another in their lives, has to decide whether the intangibles are equitable to the tangibles. Whether the fact that they've done the moral thing outweighs what they may have gotten if they hadn't.
The battle is always there. Sometimes we knowingly do the wrong thing and make it up for it later as we have more resources to do so. The road of most people is constantly tangled with these moral dillemas and the best we can hope is to make more better decisions.
Anyways... I think I talked myself out.. so I'll post.
This entire entry (however it ends up) is my response to being extremely upset at an article I read this morning.(As a note: If you are upset by Animal Abuse, DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE! Just take my word, that it's very upsetting.)
And it brings me back to a just-as-upsetting article I read on the 13th.
Looking at these articles, all I can feel is pure fury at how these people can be so.. inhuman.
It's difficult not to believe in pure unadulterated evil when you read things like this.
Understand, I'm not saying we're ALL evil, but some of us clearly are purely terrible beings. Most of us are just everyday people trying to do more good in the world than evil. Sometimes trying to good can lead to bad results, but, that said, most of us are not evil people. But some of us... some of us seem to lack any soul whatsoever.
In fact, you could easily split the world into people with no soul, able to do terrible hurtful heinous things and those who do and have the daily struggle with their set of morals.
It takes a purely evil character to willingly and happily hurt total innocents, whether one or many.
Does our society foster this sort of soullessness? Do we breed these people unable to think in terms of good and evil? Or would these monsters exist irregardless of our society?
Unfortunately, the years I've grown up have been characterized by senseless and terrible violence. Terrorism, domestic and foreign, has risen to terrible new levels. Kids have gone into school with guns and shot up classmates and teachers.
And if that's bad enough, it seems, at times, that our sense of morals is corrupt. It seems no one's deserving of the trust you might put on them, not sports heros or musicians, not business, not presidents, not even priests.
So, maybe it is our society, going to hell in a handbasket that breeds these monsters and makes it easy for them to get their hands on victims and hurt them. And for these people, I truly hope there is a hell waiting for them to give them their just deserts.
As a note, I've always put alot of faith in the three-fold rule. What that is, for those who may not recall, is that you get what you give. (Officially, what it really says is that which you give, returns to you three-times, but I don't think the amount matters, what matters is that if you do evil, people do evil to you. If you do good, good is done to you.)
And for people like that, I hope they reap exactly what they have sown.
These people, these monsters among us, I've always thought, were one of the major reasons for why the furry movement is so popular. It's so easy for the rest of us to convince ourselves that these people represent the majority of humanity and that we are all evil monsters able to hurt without a care. I used to feel a need, myself, to seperate myself from humanity if this is what humanity was, to claim that I was nothing like THEM. And since I'm not one of these stupid, monstrous humans.. I must be something else. Looking around, perhaps I am a wolf or an eagle. Perhaps I am a childish and trickster pixie or a noble and dangerous dragon.
Maybe I'm totally off in the wrong direction. Maybe there really are dragons and pixies and all that in human forms on earth. But I strongly suspect that, if there are.. there are a hell of alot less than those claiming to be.
For myself, I need to be something else, not human. And looking around, the thing closest to what I wanted to be was a childish trickster, so maybe I tried to convince myself (and others) that I was ACTUALLY a pixie in a human body. But that's not what I am and the real me is getting farther from this once-ideal. What I am (and have always been) is one of the many humans trying desperately to do the right thing. Sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.
Ummm.. tangent aside, back to my point...
For the rest of us, who do have a soul, the unfortunate facts of life are that, sometimes (maybe even often), those who cheat and hurt prosper and do well. They do well by taking advantage of undeserveds, by polluting the environment and by other such not so good methods. And I've always needed to believe that SOMETIME these people will get theirs.
Because (and I think this is a question that all adults face one time or another in their lives), why else should you bother to live moral and good lives? What benefit does it give? I'm not saying there aren't benefits, there are, but they tend to be less tangible to those that you can get by cheating. A cheater may prosper, may get the promotion, may get the money, the power, the girls, the cars, etc... while the moral person may be left with less money etc.. but with the knowledge that he did the right thing.
Each person, at one time or another in their lives, has to decide whether the intangibles are equitable to the tangibles. Whether the fact that they've done the moral thing outweighs what they may have gotten if they hadn't.
The battle is always there. Sometimes we knowingly do the wrong thing and make it up for it later as we have more resources to do so. The road of most people is constantly tangled with these moral dillemas and the best we can hope is to make more better decisions.
Anyways... I think I talked myself out.. so I'll post.
