Cruelty and desperation

Burma’s refusal to grant visas to aid workers ‘unprecedented’: UN I’ve actually been covering this cyclone thing quite thoroughly. It sickens me to think that in the insecurity of their politics, the Junta is willing to allow their people to rot and die. I know war is ugly, and that the only casualties of war are the people who have nothing to gain from fighting it. It than sickens, for there is no other word to use, when the government, or a pretense for one refuses help. When it is so clear for the world to see that they are failing to provide for their own. I cannot comprehend how any person, can be unfeeling enough to stand there and watch as people, children, mother’s, men trudge through poisoned water only to be met with the great equalizer, which is death. But even more incomprehensible, is that in the river of rotting flesh, there can be an authority who not only watch the people’s hope for a better government flicker away, but would actively stand in the way of those humane enough to put out a hand in aid. It is these things in life, that makes me doubt that humans are truly the most evolved species. The sheer cruelty. It renders all those beautiful concepts of man recognising beauty, in words, in poetry, in the abstract, art. Instead it is the pure propensity for the cruelty we are willing to inflict for our own ideals, that perhaps drive us to find external expressions of what we deem beautiful. But can a brush stained in blood speak of greatness? I come to wonder how it is, in perfectly good times humanity thrives on the ideals of chivalry, and propagate objects of beauty. How man can affect beau geste acts, and be applauded for his goodness. But when left to the primal instincts of disaster, raw power as deemed by the heavens, where man cannot effect, we just fall apart. Concepts of purity of heart, our good will is stripped. Because we fear we might lose more than what we want to give. We do not see we could be totally ruined in our need to control. It is this, this single minded pursuit of our own ideals that truly separates us from the other animals. In peaceful times, these pursuits inspire greatness. In others, we become devoid of the conscience we were blessedth with. In this trying times, I cannot see light in the rationale of man. It is to the Lord whom we need to turn to, and with whom I pray, that those blinded by grief, blinded by the calamity, will wipe aside the cracklings of desperation, and see that they push further the daggers of nature into their wounds. I don’t ask for perfect human beings, only because we are not. I ask for hope, that i am not wrong to believe that there is an innate good in men, just as there is clearly the innate evil that courses in our veins. Philosophy argues it should be one or the other, I like to think, perhaps the good in us, is yet awaken. When the good in us does shine, I think than and only than, may we claim superiority over the other animals.