I don’t know, but we may want to give it a try. There aren’t too many viable alternatives and as it has been put so aptly by others, no Planet B.
Why we are unable to live peacefully with one another is beyond me.
There is no need to “love thy neighbour”, even though that would be nice. But there’s also no need to hate them. And even if you hate them, there shouldn’t be the compulsion to want to rid yourself of them.
Especially when the feeling appears to be mutual and they want to be rid of you just as much and it ends up being a race to arms so I can get you before you can get me.
There is not a single person in this world I would say I hate.
There may be a few politicians that I strongly dislike and I don’t believe they should hold any kind of public office. There are those that I believe to be insane, because of what they have done, but that doesn’t mean I hate them.
How do you hate somebody you never met? You can hate what they have done, you can hate how it affects you or others, and you can hate how it changed the world for the worse.
But can I extend that hate to the person?
I honestly don’t feel that I can. Whatever misguided motives they may have had, they didn’t believe them to be misguided. They don’t consider themselves bad people. To them I might be the enemy even though I’ve never done anything to hurt them in any way, shape or form.
But if they consider me the enemy then they have reason to take action against me. In their minds anyway.
It’s a sad world where people think like that. Where there is hate for the colour of your skin and for the religion you chose to follow.
There will always be someone who will despise you for a single attribute that is part of who you are. And depending on how strong their convictions are and how much this one thing is offensive to them, they may decide to do something about it, which generally ends up being unpleasant for you.
It’s not just about dropping a bomb on you, because you were born on the other side of the border. It can be as small as teasing you for the freckles on your face and the ginger hair on your head.
It begins with unkindness. It ends with genocide.
And all of it just because we happen to be different from one another. Because a few differences seem to so much outweigh anything we may have in common. Like the species we belong to, which few people seem to consider something that joins us as one.
Leonard Nimoy’s tweet struck me, because he mentions two horrific incidents that happened in his country. Pearl Harbour, 9/11. Both changed the course of history for the American people.
Many other citizens of countless other countries have seen many more such incidents on their own soil. Central and Eastern Europe were bombed badly during WWII. The Middle East has not known lasting peace for too many years now. Is there a generation that has known a season without some form of violence or invasion?
We have Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia to think of. Many other countries living under the oppression of their larger neighbours.
Dictatorships in Central and South America, genocide in Africa.
Too many examples, too much hate.
Mr. Nimoy played Mr. Spock on the Original Star Trek series. A show and franchise that is loved around the world.
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
That is the universe we live in. Star Trek has been created inside our universe as a possible (mostly) utopian future.
Warp drive aside it is a future we should and could aim for. We don’t need a universe full of different species, possibly other humanoids. We have enough diversity on our own planet to deal with for now.
In increasingly infinite combinations, because the world is getting smaller and smaller.
Can we heal the world?
I don’t know, but by now you know me well enough to know that I believe we may yet have a chance.
How about we begin with kindness and see where that takes us?
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