Irecently watched a 30-second video that nearly brought me to tears. It was a video of a dog getting hit by a truck while crossing a busy highway. But following behind him was another dog that dodged the traffic and risked his own life to drag the wounded dog off the road. I don’t know that the injured dog survived, but it was a touching video of an act of courage and compassion that we don’t see in humans too often.
It made me think of the recent Black Friday incident where hoards of idiot shoppers trampled a maintenance man to death to get to that cheap Mr. Coffee or whatever useless junk they were looking to buy. Where was the compassion there? It’s a simple question without a real answer. The guy was just taking the hinges off the doors so the cattle could squeeze through and fill their carts faster when he was stomped to death. Why didn’t any of those tools have at least the compassion of a dog to stop to help their fellow man?
I’m not the most embracing and huggable person, but I do have that nugget in my brain that makes me empathize with another person’s pain. I don’t understand how people can watch the videos that circulate around the Net of people getting killed in accidents, people getting executed and morons torturing animals. I don’t get that. I had to read the back story and several comments about the dog video before I could watch that. And I definitely don’t understand people committing or allowing those acts to happen.
On a much grander scale and a much grander WTF, there’s war, genocide, terrorism, starvation and a whole laundry list of worldwide heartbreak. CNN recently aired a 2-hour documentary by reporter Christiane Amanpour titled “Scream Bloody Murder” that details personal stories of genocide around the world. From Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur, the documentary details horrendous stories of people being wiped out by the hundreds of thousands and not by some strange disease or biblical prophecy. It’s just person to person murder. Reasons can be offered up to the root and how all these incidents happen, but I just personally can’t fathom how a person can pick up a gun and kill other people based on some ancient struggle or religious belief.
When I see stories like this I think of a family in pain at the loss of a loved one. I think of what my own personal consciousness would endure in those situations. I think of my stepfather who passed away in September after a long battle with cancer. I wonder why so many people assume that it’s preposterous that we came from some ape-like species when it’s apparent many people are still only half conscious. Stories like these are very revealing that the human race is a work in process and that sometimes we could take a lesson in humanity from those who are less human.
Happy Holidays.
