The world is a random, chaotic place in which most things happen for no good reason at all.
We are all surrounded by, and in turn make up, a living tapestry whose threads of joy and tragedy are ever woven, rewoven, pulled and torn before our eyes.
For some, this is the ubiquitous, looming ‘society’ figure that we’ve all used at one point or another try to forget that when we abhor the depravity of man, we all are still part of that man; for others, it’s the fabric of a reality that we can make little sense of, and one whose absurdity and cruelty transcend any notions of justice or order.
I first began thinking about this as I took several philosophy classes here at the University last year.
Since then, I’ve grown to increasingly question everything— from my faith, to my values, to the way I act and think and I’ve found that the more I know, the less I know.
That said, the fact that most of us will never fully understand much of anything is neither an excuse for apathy nor for misanthropy.
I’ve been walking down the street with my friends, or perusing my newsfeed on Facebook, or reading the paper or watching the news and every time I do one of these things, almost without fail, I see something awful that summons the phrase, “what’s wrong with people?” to my mind.
I’ve heard other people use this phrase or some variation on it, but it wasn’t until recently that I began to question its usefulness and its validity.
After some reflection, I think people are what are wrong with people.
When we talk about a despot like Bashar al-Assad who kills his own people, we often compare such men to Hitler or to Stalin; horrible men in their own right who committed unthinkable acts of violence and brutality.
When someone is tremendously gifted in the arts, we compare them to other great artists such as Mozart or DaVinci, but what separates these men is less than what one might think.
The seeds of good and evil are planted within all of us from the day we’re born and what we become depends on which seed we water, as it were.
But I think that we all would like nothing more than to forget that.
The idea that any one of us could be Bach or Hitler and everything in between is a scary concept, but it’s true and every time we look on in horror at the news at the latest school shooting, what terrifies us is that, really, that could have been any one of us.
A truth like this demands deep reflection and careful consideration, but what we absolutely must stop doing is writing these events off; all the while bemoaning how evil ‘society’ is.
We are society and if we want humanity to stop doing evil to itself, we must stop acting as if we’re above it somehow just because staring true evil in the face and knowing that we’re all capable of it isn’t comfortable or convenient. We can create a better world if we want to. We need only face the monsters and embrace the peacemakers with in all of us to do so with honesty, integrity and zeal.
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