There is Something Wrong With Our World

There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. […] The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man’s soul. We haven’t learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

These words are some sixty years old. And they are valid though, and I believe that they have been valid from the moment we created what we call “civilization.”

I believe it’s a general feeling of uneasiness that the world is going to fall apart, that all our children will have left are some ruins.

Civilization is such a fragile thing. Societies are built on ideologies, on the combined effort a millions and millions of people, and they try to imagine into reality a future so great that we can brag about creating Heaven on Earth.

How do we learn to be just and honest and kind and true and loving? Do we have to be that all the time, to all people, under all circumstances?

Aren’t we just an advanced breed of monkeys who are terrified of death and do all that we can so we can forget about our own frailty and irrelevance?

Yet we hope. And we follow great men who want to make the world a better place, who want equality and freedom for us all. That is no vain pursuit.

But the world isn’t broken. There’s nothing wrong, even with the most terrifying aspects of humanity. The kind of darkness that we rarely speak about. It’s part of who we are, and trying to suppress it will do more harm than good.

We are just and honest and kind and true and loving because we can easily be the exact opposite. We can choose to be loving or we can choose to be fueled by hatred.

There’s both light and darkness inside our souls, and it is important to accept this.

This world is broken. It always was. And it will always be so. For man was meant to overcome tremendous obstacles and survive in the most difficult to circumstances. The injustice of the world makes it possible for great visionaries to be born.

Without tragedy, there would be no art.

Without pain and anger and heartbreak, we’d never know the pleasure of listening to the wisdom of great men.

Without oppression, we’d never appreciate freedom, and we’d never fight for the right to be free.

The fight is all there is. In this life, and all previous lives. The fight between the world as it is and the world as it could be.

There’s a bit of magic left in the world. You can see it in the eyes of a person whom the world has tried to break, over and over again, and yet they still speak of love and compassion and forgiveness.

It is probably well to remember that one can only be good when it would be far easier to be evil. When the world angers you, makes you feel your own heart boiling to the point of spilling out of your chest, and you decide to be kind anyway. And smile. And offer the gift of love to those who hardly deserve it.