You know how people wonder if there is intelligent life on other planets? I'm starting to wonder if we even have it on our own.
After walking around campus, I'm seriously starting to develop doubt in humanity once again. It's a chronic battle I fight with myself: My hopefully ideal that humanity is instinctively good, faced with the reality that people clearly are not. I want to believe that people are good, but sometimes it's very hard.
For instance: Today I saw a man who was sleeping on a couch in a study area. Not too uncommon... or was it? He was so overweight he was able to use his stomach as a pillow to rest his head on. Here I am, concerned that I should eat healthier, build up some muscle, and focus on losing my (ha-ha 3 lbs of) tummy fat, while in this study area this man I assume had no regard for his own health, and cannot be a productive member of society because he is too busy sleeping.
While I'm talking about people on campus... I've also seen the not-so-ghetto-but-I-like-to-think-I-am ghetto children all over the place here. They are so busy talking about "popping a cap" in someone's a**, and the latest rap CD, they don't look around and realize the real problems in Cleveland. They talk of "keeping it real" with their "brothers and sisters" and yet, there are homeless blacks and Puerto Ricans populating the streets. Stop spending time in your gang wars and try to make a difference in the community for once.
The valley girls and preps... They spend their parents money on classes, which they rarely attend because they are so busy squandering their own money on alcohol. They like to pretend there aren't problems in Cleveland, or maybe they don't even notice because they are too drunk or too busy playing with or cheering for the football team. Couldn't that money of their be better spent on charity for possibly the cancer society, or possibly here at home to help run the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, Art and History Museums, or maybe turn an abandoned building into a shelter for battered women?
I see so many wonderful things struggling in the world, and so many people who could help that don't. Is humanity actually good? Or are we just like every other animal, which run simply on the instinctive drive for survival and self-gratification?
 Rinimarie · Mon Nov 22, 2004 @ 03:43pm · 6 Comments |
