A Year and a Half Later and Has Anything Changed in the World?

(originally journaled Aug 11, 2014)

It has been a depressing round of news this summer. Starting with the teacher strike in May/June, which could now extend into Sept/Oct); all the wars in the Middle East, mostly with Muslim extremists taking over big areas and beheading children and forcing young girls into marriage and forcing FGM on girls and women and killing Christians and other kinds of Muslims etc. en masse; and the civil war in Ukraine and the Malaysian airplane shot down with almost 300 dead (and the other Malaysian flight that went missing over the Indian Ocean a couple months earlier); and the foolish stuff that media spends big time reporting on, while they totally ignore way more serious stuff (because ratings are important of course; and also because of who the media are run by, both corporations and government); and all kinds of horrible environmental issues, like the ongoing pipeline disputes; and this past week the big mine tailings disaster up by Likely, BC.; and on and on and on. And it all makes me feel just sick.

I probably should just "ignore it"--but how can I? I just cannot understand how human beings can be so evil. (I've started reading through the Bible again, and it seems that the world has always been a cruel, cruel place. And yet there have always been pretty decent people--but the bad ones generally rule the roost. It seems like in the "western world" I was "privileged" to grow up in during the second half of the 20th century, there was a brief time of relative peace and calm (I think the atomic bomb and 2 world wars kind of scared folks for a while). But really, even during this seemingly peaceful and calm time there have still been lots of horrible things happening--Vietnam, Middle East, Rwanda, Congo, Sierra Leone, the Balkans .... Maybe we just managed to ignore it since we've been pretty "safe" here in North America (until 911 anyway).

But meantime our own country is being torn apart environmentally for the sake of $$$$ for big multinationals who don't care about anyone or anything except their own  base profit line. And when people do try to rise up (Idle No More; the 99% vs the 1% uprising, etc.), how can we really fight big government and big corporations? Watching some documentaries on Auschwitz last night--and wondering how much longer till we ourselves fall into that kind of evil? After all, it's happening in places all over the world right now, especially the ISIS (or IS Islamic State) in Iraq and Syria.

There are people who say that the elites are happy about it, supporting it, so that large populations can be wiped out and the elites can have even more control. But control over what? Who wants to be in control of a devastated planet, with the few remaining "regular folks" in dire circumstances? I've heard the elites are buying up all the remaining decent lands and plan to set up their own little enclaves and let the rest of the world just die (and yes, what about climate change and all the other "natural disasters"? Earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. Are there really more than in the past? Is this different than before? Is "mother nature"--and/or God!?--rising up in judgment?

Why, why, why do people want to be so rich? What's with that?

I am sitting here looking at all my learning supplies. I want to give free lessons. I still would love to live in an intentional, cooperative community where others could make whatever minimal amount of money is needed to survive--while I could be "grandma teacher" and help with gardening, etc.

I read all the comments on the news items--there are so many good, caring people, people who want a world of justice--but there are also so many rude, crude, racist, selfish, ignorant people out there.

How can anyone continue to support the neo-Con policies of Harper and Christie Clark--and, south of the border, the American Republicans and Democrats, both?

I wonder if President Obama had any idea at all what he was getting himself into? Did he really have all those dreams (or was it just political rhetoric)? It's been just--what? 6 years or so?--since he first became president, and he looks like he's aged 20 or 30 years.

And whatever happened to "democracy"? What we have now certainly isn't democratic in any traditional meaning of the term, and it's getting farther away from it day by day. (And Christianity isn't "democratic" either, despite what some politicos and their followers seem to think...)

(And "free market capitalism" is so not Christian, despite what a lot of "Christian" politicos--and their voting followers--claim. It's all about greed and destruction and power ... evil!)

Okay, well ... I just had to get that out of me.