Wednesday, February 29, 2012

I'M RECYCLING MYSELF


 I wrote this for my university's newspaper, for a column entitled 'Gribble Dribble'.  I'm well aware how bad that title is.
   
      There’s been a lot of news lately about death and destruction.  Last week, in a Cleveland Ohio adjacent high school a student opened fire, injuring five and killing three classmates.  Furthermore, 13 people died in storms that struck the Midwest.  Though, it isn’t all bad news as North Korea has finally agreed to conclude their nuclear testing, which means we no longer have to worry about that particular country bombing and killing thousands of our citizens. 

     The point is that the potential is there for too many people to be dying.  Natural disasters notwithstanding, there are no excuses for human beings to die for any reasons other than disease or famine.  We are technically animals, and other species do not kill one another unless it is over a territory dispute or for nourishment.  As long as we’ve all declared ourselves as a non-cannibalistic people, with well defined national borders, there should be no reason for one man to even think of killing another. 

     I’m not saying that these three groups didn’t have what they considered to be good reasons to do what they did.  Maybe the Ohio student was a victim of bullying, which made him pull the trigger.  Maybe North Korea felt threatened by other nations which spurred them to researching bomb making.  Maybe the weather felt threatened by mudslides and brushfires, and wanted to show them whose boss.  I have no clue as to why anyone or anything would choose to end a life; I just know that it has to stop. 

     Whatever happened to live and let live, or the golden rule, or cliché’s of the like?  When did we decide that we have the power to make these decisions?  Not to play into religion, but I’m pretty sure we are not intelligent enough to be making these kinds of choices, on who is or is not allowed to live.  And, sure natural selection is partly at play, but I think that all of us are mentally fit enough to decide that we do not want to perish.  So, why should it be that anyone else gets to end your life?

    We need to get the guns off the streets, and out of the hands of children.  We need to get the plutonium (or whatever those crazy terrorists are using to make bombs these days) off of the black market.   We need to get stronger Doppler radar and storm shelters.  We need to stop dying for needless reasons.  We need as many people alive as possible in case we do revert back to that whole cannibalism thing, because groceries are expensive. 

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