There is light; but then there is darkness. To the extent
that we believe that darkness represents something bad and light represents
only good, it seems to me that humanity’s entire existence has largely been a
battle to suppress darkness in myriad forms - darkness in our physical lives,
our spiritual lives, our personal and/or professional lives, our family and
community lives...our national lives. Every time it appears that light and its
purveyors have won, darkness comes sweeping egregiously to the fore, aided by
people and circumstances that give it roots and nurture. So, it becomes very
hard for mere humans to understand and make sense of the dizzying realities of
a life and world that they hardly understand.
We are all subject to the vagaries of life and none is free from
them; nor does any know what afflicts the other better than he/she who is
afflicted. However, even for the afflicted, a presence of self is often
required to be able to see clearly through the haze of darkness that tends to
accompany many human experiences.
The 19th Century philosopher, Jacques Rousseau summed this up
perfectly when, in the opening statement of The Social Contract, he wrote that “Man
is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. If anyone has ever
considered those words quaint, time-constrained or anachronistic, the world in
which we have lived over the last century has proven that what is indeed
anachronistic and shortsighted is the very idea that anyone may have that
Rousseau may have looked in the wrong crystal ball.
Hunger, poverty, strife, disease, fraud, deceit and bigotry are
ravaging societies around the world. We are destroying our environment,
oppressing the less privileged, stealing from others and selling them the false
idea that they can only experience light if they give the little that they have
to increase the already-saturated bank accounts of their oppressors.
Elected officials are taking earned privileges away from ordinary
citizens that they are supposed to protect and some of us maintain cheerleading
roles for those officials despite knowing in our hearts that they are wrong. Therefore,
we side with dishonesty at the expense of honesty; with theft instead of
recompense; and with hate instead of love. These are all representations of
darkness and the fact that they are spreading like wildfire concerns me greatly
- and I am not alone.
It seems to me there is a pall of darkness hovering over our
world. How else does one explain the ascent to power of so many dictators
who have no regard for human life? Why is our world currently experiencing the
rise of bigoted and xenophobic people in so many corridors of power? Why
do we keep quiet when so many women and children in our world are in constant
danger of injury at the hands of people who ought to protect them? Why are
houses of worship serving as auction houses for the clerics who lead them?
Why are wicked, unconscionable and lying bigots taking over the reins of
power in countries where that was previously unimaginable? Why is violence
being increasingly perpetrated in immeasurable proportions while the powerful
watch from their glass houses and do nothing to remedy the situation? Why
is it that people who once told us that some behaviors were wrong now tell us that
the same behaviors are right? Why do people who once preached love now practice
hate? Why is lying now celebrated above truth telling in high places, even by
people who put themselves out as arbiters of morality? Why are humans so
increasingly judgmental even at a time when one would imagine that we know much
more about each other and should understand the value and power of acceptance?
Why is “otherism” a growing phenomenon when mutual understanding and tolerance
should predominate? I do not know the answer to any of these questions but it
seems to me that across and within this disheartening trend lies a common
denominator that can be summed up in one word: darkness
Despite my lack of answers, however, I think about these things
because I want to understand them even as my mind tells me that I cannot
because I am only human. Yet, although I am conscious of my fallibility
and frailties, I am also concerned about the world in which my grandchildren
will live. I am concerned that our world is getting darker as hope increasingly
fades in the minds and projections of those of us who want very much to think
that the world about which we dreamed may not have been utopian but was at
least possible. As we destroy our environment, hate one another, kill the
idea of selflessness, embrace religion while we abandon even the spiritual
foundations of the religions that we profess, turn our backs on our mirrors and
close the windows into our hearts, I am bothered about the future of this
otherwise beautiful world.
Even now, I am bothered by the fact that I live in a world in
which darkness in so many forms has increasingly taken residence but I am more
bothered by the fact that too many people are silent at best, while many others
that one once considered to be advocates of goodness have become complicit
trumpeters of hate as our world marches toward doom. Hate, dishonesty and
oppression are not virtues by any standards and nobody is a paragon of virtue
whose character can be described by any of these characteristics, regardless of
the status of that individual in any society. Those who are complicit in the
expressions of these characteristics are just as guilty in darkening our world.
For God’s sake, let us take a breath and re-evaluate what we are
doing. We need to be messengers of good, carriers of love and agents of
light to halt the powerful force of darkness and assure the triumph of light in
a world that so desperately needs it.
