April 27, 2016 7:04 AM

Our fortunes cannot be built on the misfortunes of others...because we're all in this together

It seems we live in a time when so many are so intensely focused on separating themselves from other, “lesser” beings that we’ve lost sight of the reality that we humans have far more in common than things which separate us.

When you get right down to it, we’re all blood, bones, skin, and brains. Of those, only skin is a variable, coming in numerous shades. We’re all born, we all eventually die, and the processes that characterize the human experience- growing up, aging, declining- are surprisingly similar regardless of who we are, where we live, or what we believe. Yet over the course of human history, untold millions have been slaughtered by those who believe, among other things, that

  • Their Superior Being represents The One, True, and ONLY Faith ©, and that anyone who refuses to believe that is deserving only of death.

  • Their ethnicity makes them superior, and others who hail from different ethnic groups are “less than,” and/or subhuman…and deserving only of death.

  • Their skin color confers upon them to rule those who look differently, and to believe them to be less intelligent, capable, and/or worthy. In too many cases, possessing the “wrong” skin color means one is…yes, deserving only of death.

  • Those who adhere to the dominant political ideology are the only true and rightful heirs to power. Those who refuse to fall into line behind those who think correctly are- you guessed it- deserving only of death.

  • Those who live and love differently, who believe that love can’t be contained by a narrow definition defining those whose sexuality differs from the “norm” as defined by the majority power structure to be abhorrent and “less than.” Too often, those whose only “crime” is loving someone of the same gender are condemned- in some cases by good, God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians- as evil and deserving only of death.

I could go on…because if there’s one thing humanity excels at, it’s the destruction and murder of those who refuse to fall into line and follow the proper religion, ideology, and/or whatever other artificial division happens to be in vogue.

The late Rodney King was known for one famous question: “Can’t we all just get along?” Most laughed it off as the meaningless, plaintive rant of a criminal of little account and even less value to society. In retrospect, I think it’s perhaps the single most important question of our time. The way in which we choose to answer it may well determine what our future holds…or even if Mankind has a future.

Can’t we all get along? When you strip away all the artificiality, the hatred, and the bigotry, we’re far more similar than we are different. That should be cause for hope…right??

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on April 27, 2016 7:04 AM.

She seems nice.... was the previous entry in this blog.

Things could be worse; there could be Bolsheviks in public restrooms is the next entry in this blog.

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