Hope Has No Place Here

There is something inherently vile about who we are as a species. There is an undercurrent of hate, anger and violence that flows unnoticed in the sewers below the civilisations we have built.

We have become so desensitised to violence and suffering that we can look at an image like 911 and see it as iconic as opposed to tragic. Comparing the photo of Marilyn Monroe to that of the young girl in Vietnam running naked from a Napalm attack. See a monk meditate on a street while he burns alive in protest, and yet not feel sorrow at his cause.

What has happened to us? What has made us become like this? Or have we always been this way?

The other day, I came across a thread on a popular forum which ran with the title ‘Photo’s that shook the world’. I have an interest in photography, although an amateur one I can still recognise that an image can make you think, can make you reflect and in truth, can make you learn. What I saw as I streamed through the various public submissions certainly shook me. In fact it left me with a feeling of defeat, of hopelessness. A feeling that no matter what we do, we are doomed whether there is a God or if we are the product of chance.

There were a couple of particularly striking images that cut right through me. The first one was of a small, starving African child hunched over on a dusty plain. The child could be no more than 3, and more than likely 2 years of age. Standing 10 feet away staring at the child was a vulcher. The bird was ever so slightly bigger than the child, and it was waiting.

Waiting to pounce on the poor faceless victim of circumstance.

I have no doubt in my mind that the child is now dead. Whether the vulcher got him, we will never no, but the condition his body was in and the fact that aid and food is so hard to get to these places can only leave a sense of death lingering above you when you look at the picture.

Another picture that was submitted was that of another African child, whose eyes we will never meet and whose eyes do not grace the picture. All that does is his or her hand. Stripped down of all nutrition, as similar to a crow’s foot as you will ever see, it is placed on the hand of a Caucasian. To see the difference in the hand that has been fed and the hand that has been starved is earth shattering.

And it makes you question; how did this happen? How have we as human beings let down these people? Forget your borders, your colour, sex or virtue; these are children, these are women, these are men who are being left to die because of the greed of so many.

This should not be happening.

There are no two ways about it. Mankind has the resources to help these people. To save those who have not already been lost. I don’t wish to sound like John Lennon, but war is not needed and the trillions spent a year on killing should be spending on saving lives instead. There is nothing complicated about it, there really isn’t. These people deserve a chance at life. And those that have must share.

You look at any war and question why? Some may argue that there are ideals to live by and if those are crossed action must be taken. But at what cost? Do you become a criminal to catch a criminal? The millions and millions and millions of lives that have been lost in battle.

Young man terrified on the front line. Dying slowly, painfully through injuries from a bomb or a bullet or a knife. Women raped and beaten for no purpose only through hate. Children killed, left orphaned, left scarred.

This is a photo of an American Solider smiling and laughing over the body of a dead Iraqi Solider. We don’t know the story behind it. This man could have killed her friend. Could have commited terrible crimes. Or could have simply been fighting for what they believed just like the American. Is it nessecary to take that picture? Is it really nessecary to smile above the corpse of someone who once walked this earth?

I mean is this us? Can the good the people are capable of outwieght the evil that has been done?

I’m not sure it can. I’m not sure it can because how can we not be ashamed at what we have done? Extingushed a life, a chance at life.

What have we become? What has it achieved?

Nothing.

Racism, discrimination and hate is still everywhere to be seen. We are no better now than we were a thousand years ago bar the soap. To say that we have progressed would be an insult to all those who have suffered. The simple fact is we haven’t progressed enough.

People are dying and there is nothing being done about it at a greater scale.

It begs the question; are we cut out to live like this? Should we not just return to the trees and hunt and fight and kill? Would that be much of a difference to life now?