Hey, today's post is a guest one in light of March For Our Lives. This is a piece written by a friend of mine from an online community, who goes by the username of Toxic.
We’re Screwed, But Not Beyond Repair Please don't be a bystander We the children are standing on the front lands of a war zone with no weapons and no defenses. We have been conditioned to be protected, always to be protected, by those who are older than us, yet these unwavering defenses are further from being presented than they ever have been. Children are being used as balances and tools, as showstoppers, as trump cards. We are faced with problems such as bigotry, starvation, poverty, war, murder, drought, climate change, discrimination, hatred, cowardice, and fear. Nothing we learn in school can serve to protect us from these inevitable flaws held within our current society because children are supposed to remain untouched. Yet we are not. We children are no more spared by these issues of inequality and mistreatment than the firsthand victims. In a sense, and in many cases, we children are the firsthand victims. This planet belongs to nobody, truly, but as supposed ownership is passed down the ranks, it is the mess of cruelty and pain that is placed into our supposed ownership. We children have no choice but to take responsibility for these mistakes made by our parents. And we try our hardest to undo the damages caused by the prior greed, but we are discouraged. We are discouraged as we are told of how little we truly know, as our gazes are shunted towards the futures that we should rightfully have. And some children can go ahead and keep reaching towards more ideal aspects of their lives, but I cannot. I see myself swamped in atrocities, confronted by the nauseatingly prominent tools that are put towards the destruction of my future and I cannot consciously sit by and watch them occur. Not when they all feed into each other, not when my dreams and my loved ones are on the line at the expense of the adults who are too selfish and too cowardly to try and make an effort to change. It isn’t my fault that the world has been dug into this hole, and I shouldn’t have to be out fighting, but at the same time, everybody should feel obligated to be cleaning up this shitfest. I look around me and I see consumerism, rape, suicide, ignorance, monopolisation, corruption, power imbalances, racism, depression- I cannot stand by, idle, when there are so many problems in the world. How can I contribute to this endlessly growing cycle of disgusting mannerisms and be able to point out my reflection in the mirror without disgust strewn across my features at everything I am seeing? I’m only fourteen, yet I’m as old as fourteen and I’m just now beginning to notice the mess of a society that I have been contributing to. The world does not just have the capacity to be a better place; it has the necessity to be a better place. Not for my sake, for our sakes, for the sake of each and every individual. Every person who has ever wept, every single person who has ever laughed or smiled or loved or felt, felt anything substantial or felt anything unsubstantial, or anything at all. People who brush hands on the subway, people who sing along with the radio, people who cheer for their favourite artists, people who rise and fall and laugh and cry and hope and fear and live, for God’s sake, live. Every single component of what we consider to be beauty revolves around the need for things to improve. It’s the beautiful and hideous truth of humanity, it keeps trying to get better. It keeps fighting to get better. And in some areas, things are getting better. Women are going to drive in Saudi Arabia, people are out there working to protect their children. But at the same time, things can be getting so much worse. President 45 is out looking at wall prototypes while children in schools are being shot dead. Seventeen deaths are being mourned, these seventeen human beings from Parkland. But the death toll is much larger than seventeen. Why is Parkland the outrage? Even one life lost is an atrocity. Newtown was 26 lives, but 26 wasn’t enough. 50 in Las Vegas was not enough. Numbers are numbers are numbers and in a massacre, in a war, that’s all they are. “The fight went well today. We only lost a few.” A few what? A few lives, a few hunks of meat? No, you lost a few thousand counts of potential. Dreams, hopes fears. Those few men you lost could have changed the world, had they not been out fighting like expendable foot soldiers. Every single being has the right to live, to dream and to exist. The right to be who they are, to chase after that impossible perfect world that humanity is always inevitably striving for. Humans are beautiful, and creative, and they have limitless potential that could have been seen and experienced and appreciated. But human life is worth so little to some people. Human life is underrated, today. Modern media depicts violence as a source of entertainment: The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, Divergent- how many stories profit off the concept of extinguishing those precious little flames that can depict human souls? Why is it that honesty is interpreted as rudeness? Why am I told to lighten up because I see the world for what it is? How can wars and suffering be so consciously glorified? War is disgusting. Pacifism and mercy are not weaknesses, they are strength. Veganism is not pretentiousness, it is loyalty. Virtue is not the act of being holy or arrogant, it is simply having motals. I refuse to allow myself to sink down to the level of a selfish profiteer. Society is corrupt, values and decency are misconstrued as edginess or a lack of optimism. It isn’t people that are fundamentally flawed, it is the way we view them. The sin, really, isn’t to unwittingly make a mistake. The sin comes into play when you figure out that you made a mistake and do nothing to amend it. Murder is a crime, correct? Yet war is not? First degree murder is planning to kill another person, then doing so successfully. In war, people do just that. No killing in war is manslaughter, that is murder. Our society glorifies murderers. People are judged on their abilities to effectively take another human life. If a normal person kills, for whatever reason, they are punished. Yet if the killer has a gold star, they are seen as a hero. Is that fair? (Note that I am by no means putting veterans and army generals on the spot here as everything wrong with this society. Society treats people who fight for their country as heroes, so of course people get put into the position where they are forced to kill. Some people enlist in the military because they can’t afford college otherwise. Joining the army is an act of bravery, yes- especially given the emphasis that our society puts on being a hero by means of murder. God forbid you kill people who actually deserve it, though. Just those damn Muslims. They asked for it by having beliefs that resembled those of some terrorists. Just like all Christians are actually Hitler and all Russians are communists.) And what about animals? People can go around destroying animal habitats and then exploiting that destruction as a means of profiting off of that bloodshed. It’s one thing to take only what you need and to give back as much as you can. It is something completely different to take, and take, and take in the name of greed, and not stop until that resource is bled dry. Extremists will ask how hurting a wild animal is different than hurting your pet, and often they will be mocked, but I think it’s a completely valid question. Don’t wild animals and domesticated pigs have the right to joy too? Why should any living creatures be viewed as lesser? Because they look different? It’s bullshit and we know it. Humanity has no right to name itself judge, jury, and executioner when animals’ lives are at stake. We should only take what we need and give back just as much. Our home is not to be possessed by any one person, but to be shared by everybody. This planet is not the sort of thing that any one person can own. It is everybody’s, and it is nobody’s. Do any of us truly have the right to keep it as our own? Does it stop us? The beauty, I think, in all these flaws and weaknesses, is that we can all work and put our hearts into changing them for the better. We can all do what we can, do better than that, even, because we have each other. Life’s toughest problems aren’t to be solved by hatred and by blame, but by love and accountability. The thing that we children can do better than any generation is forgive, and that we will. It doesn’t matter who you are, it matters what you will do with the insights shared with you by a fourteen year old. You could laugh them off, sure you could. You could choose to ignore the fact that we live in a society predominantly ruled by fear and cruelty and bigotry. But another wonderful thing about us kids is that we are so bad at that. Hope isn’t lost for us; people have the potential to be beautiful and kind and generous because they can recognise when they're doing something wrong. It’s hard to be a hero, but harder to be a villain. Because to be a villain, you have to ignore your morals and hurt others. I may not know everything about the world we live in, but I know enough to know that it needs to change. When we charge into the heart of this battle against the fundamental flaws in our society, the children will still be on the front lines, but we won’t need weapons, because we’ll all be armed with love and trust. |
AuthorTeen living in the United States. Categories
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April 2020
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