"Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but...." -Dennis Miller
Like everybody, there are quite a few things in this world which just annoy the hell out of me. I try not to voice these opinions for various reasons. I never want to hurt anyone's feelings, I appear bitter when I do, etc. Unfortunately, unless I voice my frustrations, they don't go away. The solution I've come up with, is this Rant & Roar section of my website. Every so often, I plan to vent my frustration, go on a rant and just plain roar about a certain topic that annoys me. I mean absolutely no offense to anyone in particular. This section is not an excuse for me to attack anyone. It's just me letting off some steam.
You can also check out my previous rants.
If you find the following rant offensive, then you can read the Jesusified version of it.
When I was younger, I used to think that war didn't actually exist anymore. I thought that after World War II, all the wars in the world had ended. As I got a little older and a little wiser, I knew this wasn't true, but I still believed that world peace was attainable and that we were close to it. After all, all we need to do is teach people not to hate others simply for being different. We could teach people to share the things they have with others, and these two things alone would be able to change the world for the better. These are lessons we learn in kindergarten, and they are lessons which can change the world. One month ago today, I saw my belief and my dream of a soon-to-be world at peace come crashing down. Peace never seemed so far away at that moment.
The U.S. is calling this war "a battle between good and evil". People should know by now that things are never so simple. The sad truth is that the people responsible for the death of so many thousands believed that what they were doing was right. Issues like politics, the U.S. posting troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, the belief that Western Society is corrupt, the trade embargo on Iraq and having religious fundamentalists who feel justified in committing horrors in the name of their religion make this issue more complicated than simply "good versus evil". The terrorist act on the 11th was an act of evil committed by people who believed they were doing good. The people that committed it were not sci-fi aliens or horror movie monsters. These were regular people, just like you and me, who were taught to hate, and were taught that murder was the way to make people listen. I don't know about you, but I find this far scarier than any monster that Hollywood could produce.
President Bush says that the best way to fight these terrorists is to try to resume our daily lives, but it's hard to do that when the safe bubble we've created for ourselves here in the Western World has been popped. Living in Montreal and not knowing anyone living in New York has given me a somewhat detached feeling from the whole event, and I'm not comfortable with that. This disturbing sense of normalcy in my life after the events in New York and L.A. make me feel hollow. Everything in my life may seem normal, but deep down, the dream that we might all live in peace someday seems dimmer than I ever thought it would. My petty dreams of being a writer are dwarfed in the knowledge that many will never get the chance to live out their own dreams. I refer not only to those killed in the attack on the 11th, but also to those who live in countries where they don't have the freedoms that I do. As we try to resume our daily lives after this attack, so must they, and for many innocent Afghanistan civilians, that is not something which will be easy. America needs to find and punish those responsible for the needless murder of so many, and I support that, but we cannot forget that this war will kill more people and elevate the hatred in the world, making this increasingly naive dream of mine even dimmer.
While my belief in the possibility of world peace is dim, that doesn't mean it has died. All it takes to change the world is to not teach the next generation of children about hate, or prejudice or religious intolerance. All it takes is for us to learn to respect everyone else and judge them for who they are as individuals and not as the group we label them as. So please, teach your children to accept instead of hate. Teach them that we're all equal, no matter where we are from or what we believe. We can change the world if we try.
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