you know, it really has been nagging at me again for days

There actually is no reason for this kind of suffering, except for the greed and arrogance of a few. That's it, the sum total of the problem. They never stop being born, and the masses never stop trending toward escapism. Or should I say trending away from doing anything about it? We come up with every excuse in the book. "To each his own." "Live and let live." "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." "I haven't got time for this; it's all I can do to keep food on my family."

Plus, whenever people do stand up and the greedheads are forced to cede ground, our leaders always end up getting their morals bought off them. Always. And then we're all right back to square one. We've been acting out this play for millennia. I think I'm going to die of contemplating all the times voters have been promised jobs and health care and a decent standard of living and safety nets to balance the cruel vicissitudes of our favoritism toward plutocrats, and it's not handled. And, bad as some of us have it here, I don't think there's a one of us a tenth as bad off as millions of people across the globe. Everybody thinks mankind is so advanced, while the most basic human predicament remains unsolved, continues to be the number one cause of death on earth. I can't imagine us having so many thousands of people dedicated to curing the ailments of humanity as we let the very worst cruelty not only continue unabated, but actually increase it so heartlessly.

I mean, with starving children in Africa, maybe I can see how that's a problem for us to wrap our minds around. They have been starving like that at least since I was a toddler and do-gooders have been shoving the pictures in our faces since pictures have been possible. We become inured to the sight of them. Unless we go there, they stop being real to us. I spared you the pictures of corpses in the ditches with huge hunks of flesh ripped out of their chests. I just stuck with the relatively easy to keep looking at... optimize your feeling of pity without turning your stomach so fast you have to run off to get some air. I don't think black Americans feel more compassion for them than white Americans do either. There's just too much distance and the complete inability to identify with such different conditions. Their basic condition is in actuality not different from ours, but that's one of those things you can say and everyone will agree completely, without grasping the reality of it at all. Humans tend to have to be face-to-face to catch their own waves of compassion for others.

You might recall I was grousing about our sociopathological aversion to population control the other day. I'm at it again. See, if we keep refusing to be intelligent about our reproduction, we will keep dying in our millions like this. This planet, weakened as it is, can still be Eden for all living beings if humans wake up and start doing the right things. We know what they are! How can they be worse than this mess?

They can't! They're actually wonderful, and make us feel energized and joyful and hopeful and free. But in order to get all that we have to face some really scary opposition. So, nope. We'll just settle for lives full of frustration and sadness and fear and guilt instead.

Hey, Einstein! That's you in the post below!