Redeem Humanity thru Simple Acknowledgment of Those Who Are Suffering

CREDIT : Cort Fournier

I have always suffered from an unhealthy amount of empathy, or so I have been told; I would hear news of some atrocity in a distant place, or watch a Youtube video of an innocent, defenseless person being victimized, and I would become extremely angry, lose hope for the future of this world, and grow more hateful toward my fellow human-beings in general. STEEMIT has helped me with this, in that I see a large number of idealistic and aware people, expressing their fears and suggesting solutions about our world - it is very hopeful indeed.

In order to maintain a positive outlook, as sensitive person, you must to-a-degree ignore the fate of humankind, turn away from the growing body of evidence that, in the general population, the quality of individuals is declining, the degree of social cohesion is at an all-time-low, and the boundary that once prevented people from engaging in cruelties seems to have evaporated. Keeping this in mind poisons the spirit, it's just too much to carry with you through your daily life. Instead we should take it upon ourselves to think and behave, consciously, in a way that reflects the best qualities of our species.

The Road to Redemption Begins ..

Credit: Vienda Maria

Love Yourself and Take Care of Those Who Love You

The first step is taking care of yourself, and your loved ones - always the first priority. You are no good to anyone if you and yours are not healthy and have secured your basic needs. The trajectory the world is on, despite all the advancements and potential, makes it clear that we are all in grave danger - the scales are tipped in the wrong direction at this moment - economic collapse, real potential of planet-killing nuclear conflict, over-population and climate change - none of these things can be shrugged off once you become aware. Sometimes, people who suffer from weakened spirit, will see these things and lose hope, they do not believe anything is of any consequence, including real harm they do to themselves or others. Throw all of that away - love yourself, take care of your health, to improve your chances of witnessing the outcomes - if disaster is unavoidable, so be it - better to be healthy to meet the challenges .. face problems head-on, strong!

The key is GRATITUDE!

You can not love and care for others, if you do not love and care for yourself. The key to this is the highest human emotion/sentiment, and that is GRATITUDE. If you have people in your life who will miss you if you do not come home at night, if you have someone who would shed tears at the side of your hospital bed, then you should count yourself very lucky indeed, no matter what your other circumstances. If you do not have such people in your life, get some - the love of others, is the only thing that gives anything meaning.

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Next ..

Once you have seen what you have and are grateful, you will become aware of your potential. You will stop thinking of what you can not do, what you do not have, and begin to see that you have choices, resources, and worth. Now what to do with it? Do what makes you happy of course, is what you always hear - follow your bliss, and so on. Well, this is possible for the lucky few, to be sure, but for most of us we need to work jobs that exhaust us, are not at all fulfilling and which leave us little time to put into what we "really want to do". All I can say is, fight the exhaustion and keep firing! A recent post by @sirwinchester Ego Depletion - The Ultimate Secret of Willpower? is a great read in this regard!

Now that 'You' are OK, Back to the Horrors of the World

I remember being told by a teacher in Junior High School, about Tazmania, an island off the coast of Australia, and how early European settlers wiped out the indigenous population and much of its grandest lifeforms. Without detailing any of this ( you can imagine ), I thought to myself, this .. this right here .. could be what doomed humanity, and even went so far as to think .. AND SO IT SHOULD! Of course it was but one of an endless list of unimaginable evil, including what is occurring in Iraq and Syria today. What are we to do? What can we do? How can we make right, in any small degree, the absolutely horrific end of one young, entirely innocent girl at the hands of an Islamic State monster? Their mother ..their grandmother? It is a darkness that we should never enter, even just to consider how horrible it is.

CREDIT: Black History Studies Twitter

Well I believe something can be done, besides raising awareness about such things, and making historically well-referenced moral and ethical arguments as to why these things are happening and why they should be ended, without hesitation .. we can do something, here and now .. today, something real.

Neighborhood Nightmares

“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

CREDIT: Make the Homeless Smile - Los Angeles

In your very neighborhood, down the block, there is someone in pain - someone who has no one that cares at all about their suffering. A homeless person who last night was beaten at random by drunk kids, for fun .. an old woman who is desperate to get something from the corner store, but has no means to do so, and no one to do it for them .. people who are dying before their time, the disfigured the mentally ill, or developmentally challenged struggling through the day.

Hold up .. hold up .. what are you suggesting here!? I can barely keep my own sh@! together!

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or (fail) to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Credit: Emily Quotes

Fear is the Hope-Killer

We live in fear of that which we do not understand, and this includes the people I describe above - we don't know them, we don't know why they ended up in the place that they did, but we love to imagine things that make it easier for us to discount, ignore, and by-pass them. "Oh, he must have been an alcoholic wife-beating asshole.", or "She's alone because she chased her children away .." .. and so on. We will recoil and tell ourselves it is self-preservation - I care, but it's just the smart thing to do these days - they might attack you, they might be diseased, or they simply do not deserve anything. You can feel yourself closing, shutting down your deeper-self when you think this way - you could be at University writing a paper on social policy to meet the needs of the homeless, and on the train home turtle in disgust as one sits stink-ily beside you.

Self-less Self-Impoverishment is Foolish

Do not get me wrong, I am not making a case for you to give away your worldly possessions and dedicate your life to the poor and weak - because this simply adds to their numbers. This goes back to my first point, that you can do nothing in this world unless you yourself, and your immediate family, are strong. We can give here and there, and brighten someone's day, take part in charities and fundraisers, and so on, this is all good - but on a daily basis, we can not give away our time, food, financial resources .. this is too much to ask of individuals, most of us being in precarious situations ourselves, relatively speaking.

What to do then? The answer is simple!

Look upon them .. see them, speak to them, and speak of them.

I remember when I was a kid, an episode of the remade "Twilight Zone" serious left a profound impression - entitled "To See the Invisible Man", it told the story of a man, living in a future where being self-absorbed and generally a horrible person is punishable by a year of banishment. But instead of going to remote place to fend for themselves, these people are made to live among the people they previously cared little for - no citizen were to speak with them, or even look at them. By the end of the episode the man was begging people to look at him .. to say something. It is dated, but still worth a watch.

The next time you see a man or woman alone on a street corner, screaming angrily at the passing cars, do not immediately presume they are schizophrenic - perhaps they had suffered years of being shunned, like they were the walking dead - it could easily drive the most rational person to rage.

Small Acts of Kindness to Redeem Humanity

If you are a person who wishes to work, even in a small way, toward a better future for all people - for example if you are involved in promoting anarchism, then you must be even more aware of how you carry yourself each and every day. To behave other than how you wish to, in the future you hope to help construct, is disingenuous and self-deluding. If you wish to maximize the freedom and economic well-being of all people, you must acknowledge in a very real way those who are suffering under the current system.

Not by giving away what you have, but simply by acknowledging their existence and that they are in need of solutions, solutions that you can work toward, with your resources and talents. Some people may deserve their circumstances, but the vast majority do not .. recognize this, stop the disgust and the inhumane jokes - urge those around you to do the same - a look, a smile, a nod .. costs nothing.

“This life is for loving, sharing, learning, smiling, caring, forgiving, laughing, hugging, helping, dancing, wondering, healing, and even more loving. I choose to live life this way. I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, 'aw shit, he's up!” ― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

Just as I had felt, as a young man, the loss of the Tazmanian Tiger and the children whose thumbs were cut off to be used as pipe-cleaners, before they were killed, had rightfully damned humankind forever, I now believe that we can, each day, in small ways, together bring us back from the brink - and this goes not only for our individual spirit, but also for our collective identity - who are we, what are "we" trying to accomplish, where are we going?