Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The human loss

Reading the story of the sad demise of Captain Omerzeb over at Pak Tea House made me somber. His tragic demise on the birthday of his fiance made my heart heavy. The bonds of love that bind us together can so tear our existence apart when they are snatched away like that.

While we glorify and praise all those who die fighting for Pakistan, it is very easy to de-humanize all those who we perceive to be the 'other' in such a situation. While I am not a bit sympathetic to the cause of the Taliban, that shouldn't make us forget that they are human too. Their deaths send very similar waves of agony rippling through and tearing apart their families. Then there are all the civilian casualties in this unfortunate war on terror. So many lives have been so adversely affected because of it; so many ties of love have been so ruthlessly broken apart.

While religion is only one of the sources that has fueled human conflict through the ages, it has been one of the sources nonetheless. It almost makes me very angry at all those supposed prophets of God whose teachings formed the basis of all this hatred, deceived so many and provided fodder for conflict for so many years to follow after them. How irresponsible of them.

All this makes one pine for a time when we will learn to resolve our differences through dialogue and discussion instead of mindless use of force and violence. It makes one pine for a time when human life wouldn't be so cheap and readily expendable.

9 comments:

  1. I think such a time is coming.

    Don't ask me why :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your faith never fails to put a smile on my face :-).

    ReplyDelete
  3. :P

    Usually I get yelled at for being irrational ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. We do seem to be moving toward some sort of human synergy -- mass immigration, mass communication, mass networking. Look at these massive cultural changes that are taking place everywhere. Surely humanity will outgrow its ignorance some day ... we seem to be at the beginning of such a leap but we may just make it if we keep our heads straight.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Agreed stumblingmystic. Our growing interconnectedness and increasing lines of communication and understanding make one hopeful and confident that we might just be able to make it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. There is one thing which we dont even pay attention to and that is massive compaign of promoting lies. Every type of media contains more more lies and very less truth. So how can a person in this global village of mass communication and mass networking differentiate between wrong and truth. Everyday we get overdose of information, info which we have no idea what to do. we cant say anything for sure about it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's a very real concern A. Media has been (ab)used by those in power all too often.

    I am rather hopeful that the monopoly on information of the relatively few media outlets should diminish with time. The meteoric rise of the blogosphere in the last few years is a promising start. Things should only get better from here.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Media is only a part of problem i am talking about all the information which we get through different sources; we cant seem to judge what is truth. Sometimes we use truth to justify false and vice versa. It is like we are hearing alot of noise but we cant find the source of it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. That's true. I don't know whether we will be able to solve that problem in its entirety. Getting information from varied and independent sources can at the very least prevent the masses from being brainwashed by any single portrayal of events.

    ReplyDelete