Our Imperfections

At the moment I am writing this there is a couple who are getting ready to get married today, there is someone who just died, someone who was just born, there is a fight between a couple that just started which probably can not be fixed. There is an accident that just happened, there is a couple who kissed for the first time, there is someone waiting anxiously for the result of an exam that can change their life, there is someone who is unsure about running away, someone contemplating suicide, someone contemplating murder, someone contemplating proposing, someone who can not sleep, someone who just got fired and one who just got hired and all of that is going on at the exact same moment. That is the beauty of life. There is good and bad, birth and death, love and hate, high and low and without all this life can not be the same.

There is no doubt that life can be much easier if everything was not so complicated and we did not have so many problems but then life would not be so fulfilling and we would be so ungrateful. I don't agree that life would be boring without problems. I think that we will just become even more horrible than we already are. And yes we are a horrible species. We are the only species that kill each other for no reason nonwhatsoever. Did you ever see a white horse killing a black horse because of its color or a dog or a cat etc ? How about a Lion killing a zebra because it did not agree with its beliefs ? Ever heard of wars between lions and tigers for territorial gains ? Nope, there are none of that and these are animals who « do not » have our higher level thinking.

If you believe in God then you know that we are made to be on the image of God. But that is a relative définition because an image of something does not necessarily mean that you will look like it and even if you do what does that really mean ? Because there is nothing really Godly about us except the perfection of our body functions. There is no doubt in my mind that we are a species that have several faults and sometimes I do not think we should even exist. Allow me to shed some light on just the tip of the iceberg of our imperfections.

Inequality

We are a horrible species because of the vast inequalities that we keep forcing on each other for different reasons : sex, color, religion, nationality, social economic status, etc. We have first world, second world and third world countries even though we are all equal human beings. We have countries who are part of the G8 or the group of 8 or the great 8 who get to decide the economy of the world while the others are simply supposed to follow. We have men getting more paid than women, whites getting more benefits than blacks, etc. We have people who get paid by the millions by the hours and people who work all day for a dollar if not less. We have people who can afford a night at a hotel at the staggering price of sixty nine thousand dollars and people who spend years to get that amount. And all that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are far bigger inequalities that happen on every corner of this earth every second that we do not notice.

Dissatisfaction

But it is not only inequality that make us horrible. There is the simple fact that we are never happy or content with anything. If we are poor we lament our luck and dream of being rich and if we are rich we also lament our luck for being rich and wish that we were normal. If we live with a strict family we wish we had an easy going family and if we have an easy going family we wish it was strict. When we are single we are misérable and when we are married we are more misérable. Whatever position or condition we are in life we are not satisfied and this rarely changes.

Superiority

The only way we value our lives or feel better about ourselves, somehow it seems, is by bringing others down and that applies in every aspect of our lives. If we are financially poor then we say we are rich in character and when we are financially wealthy we are simply better than anyone. In America, it is said « America the great » or the greatest. Everything in America is great. Greatest army, great techonology, great democracy, etc. There is nothing wrong to be patriotic but what is wrong is dismissing other cultures or nations and I am sure every citizen of every country feels that. Superiority does not end there of course. It expands to our daily lives. For examply, if we go to a restaurant, we like to feel that we are better than our waiters or waitresses and same for every service industry. We like to feel that we are better than our cleaning lady, nanny, postman or woman, garbage man or woman, etc. We step on others to elevate ourselves just like we are going up the stairs and everyone is guilty of it.

Greed

Greed is one of the Deadly sins but that if you are religious. If you are not greed will definitely harm you in one way or another. I do not think however that everyone is guilty of that sin. I see it mainly in the United States while the rest of the world does not seem so greedy. This is due to the abundance of materials and the materialistic culture. We are bombarded every second to buy things. This only happened during the last 30 years where the U.S. changed dramatically to become this monster of buying stuff. Now, everything is about buying even the most holy of holies. You go to Church and you are asked to donate so the Church can buy a new air condition or a heater or to upgrade something. You go to school you are asked to buy items from the school store. You sit home, you get a télémarketing call to buy new Windows, upgrade your heater, buy new carpet, or get harrassed by the fire fighters to buy their calendars to support their cause. If you are crazy enough to Watch T.V. then goodluck if you can make it for a minute without seeing a commercial to buy something. All these messages gets into our heads and suddenly all we think about is buying stuff. We want to upgrade our cellphones that we got 2 months ago, then our computers, then our living room then maybe our car then our house and it keeps getting bigger. There is always something to buy and that is not even counting clothes or food. We became buying machines and when we finally realized that we are living way beyond our means our economy crashed but even then we still did not learn our lesson. I remember few years ago after 9/11 George Bush came out with the greatest idea ever : « keep America rolling » And how do we keep it rolling ? By buying stuff. After the tragedy of 9/11 the solution was to buy stuff. It was not trying to find out what happened or why the world hates us so much or not even trying to make our image better. No. It is buying stuff. I rest my case.

Blindness

Blindness may not be the most politically correct word here however I can not describe this phenomenon in any other way. I was just watching CNN where a question about China was asked. The question was if China is the new superpower of the world. One person answered that China is not a superpower because of the lack of care they show toward their poor. He is correct but what about the United States ? Because we are not far better. We have people dying because they can not afford healthcare. People not going to universities because they can not afford to pay for it. We have people go to war because they can not find a job and they chose to join the army because it pays them better. I am sorry but that is not far better than China. By blindness here I mean that why is it that we are always blind to our own faults ? We see what is wrong with others and we attack them for it but we refuse to see what is wrong with us. When the US was attacked in 2001, the George Bush administration blamed Clinton eventhough it happened more than a year after George W. became president. I wonder what would happened if, God forbid, there was another attack on the U.S. Would the Obama administration blame the Bush administration then ? Or would the republicans jump on the Obama administration at that point ? Because if that was the rule then it should hold universally. But on a more smaller scaler we all do the same thing on a personal level. We never seem to admit our own mistakes and keep blaming others. Politicians blame other politicians, lovers blame the other person in the relationship, students blame their teachers or that whatever they are learning is too hard, and on and on. We really need to start seeing what is wrong with ourselves before we start looking at others. We really need to start looking at more than just one point of view and look at many because only then can we start understanding people. These are not all the imperfections we have nor are they a rule for each one of us but they give a general idea of our human condition. Can we improve? I don't think because it is way too late. I think we can only get worse until finally we come to our extinction. Sure, it is a bleak look at the human kind but if you only look at the 20th century and see all the wars that took place and the millions who have died then look at the 21st century and see that we are not really advancing in our thinking but going backward then maybe you can agree.