Shovels for Guns

No where is the duality of human nature on such stark display, as on the news sites I check every morning. I check simply to see if the world is still there. I wanted to keep abreast of situations in Pakistan, to see if the rescue operation there has been organized, to mourn the loss of so many lives. I wanted to check to see how many more people were killed in Iraq yesterday, a sickening tally of self destruction. I wanted to see if a decision had been made about what parts of New Orleans will be re-built, to see if they can stand another assault. I wanted to check to see if it had been decided who will play the next James Bond, and what exactly Angelina Jolie is up to, that little home wrecker.

It's a testament to the amazing adaptive skills we posses to find that we can only take so much death and destruction before we have to tune it out and stick our heads into the clouds of sitcom relief, worn out and tired by our own cruelty and helplessness, conversely. We will drop our guns to pick up a shovel to dig out our neighbors and when they are safe and warm we'll shoot them because of religious differences. This is nothing new, but the onslaught of nature's punishment for our ill conceived experiments seems to coincide with our own tendencies for murder and I am reaching a point where the crisis of the day are becoming mundane and repetitive. I look for relief from the strain in Steven Spielberg and the machine called Bruckheimer.

In a discussion yesterday it was concluded that, if I could find the answer to why we are so self-destructive, and I mean internally as well as externally, I could become a rich man selling the cure, but I wonder who would buy it. We thrive on being bad and acting tough just as much as we thrill in our compassionate embrace during times of trouble. The advice given me was to stop trying to know why, stop questioning our taste for blood and murder, stop looking for the reason we are our own worst enemy. The question might have an answer in faith, the catch-all for human failings, but it seems to me that that will just lead to another volley as we try to determine who's God is responsible for creating us with a self destruct button, placed so close to our hearts.