So, the World Did Not End After All

The world still exists today, December 22, 2012.  People were hoping for the end of the world because they do not want to face the consequences of our collective actions.  The problems faced on a global scale seem too enormous and impossible to remedy.  The problems faced in our own country seem insurmountable.  The world requires a new mindset from humans, her most problematic inhabitants.

Faced with the escalating slaughter of innocents by deranged men, the gun "debate" becomes a psychotic argument in the theater of the absurd. The NRA's solution to post armed guards in our elementary schools is, in a word, insane.  Anything to perpetuate their own argument and avoid their responsibility for the mounting terror and civil tragedy of gun violence seems reasonable to the NRA.  They actually believe humanity can be divided between the good guys and the bad guys.  If only the world were so simple. 

We are also seeing our national psychosis succinctly demonstrated in the current congressional dysfunction to avoid a needlessly self-inflicted financial crisis that threatens not only the recovering American economy but the world economy as well.  Want to argue one side or the other?  Convinced you are right and the other side is wrong?  We are our own government.  This is what our insanity looks like, feels like, and what happens when the pandering and posturing claims the human ego.  Apparently we have not had enough of this immersion therapy into crazy.  We want to ride it to the utterly asinine conclusion and suffer like the bastards we are.

I am not encouraged nor inspired by the news "in these generally wretched times".  Somewhere many years ago I read that phrase but do not know to whom it should be attributed.  I have never forgotten it because it perpetually sums up the current state of the world.  There is always something horrible occurring that humanity must face on the grand scale:  disease, ignorance, intolerance, inequity, injustice, inequality - the plague, Inquisition, slavery, the Holocaust, world wars, climate change, natural disasters, monumental political stupidity, ignorance, Fox News.  The list is endless.

I assume "we" are heading in some general direction as we collectively learn from our horrific and tragic mistakes.  Though there are still instances of slavery in this world, no government sanctions it.  We still need a lot of work learning not to imprison and torture our fellow human beings for ideological or philosophical differences.  It appears that women are rising up all over the world at last.  If we learn to grant one another respect and equality, we can perhaps grant the earth the same respect.

Cheers to social evolution.