open mind and heart

Submitted by Anne (Canada), Jan 15, 2008 at 23:21

Surj,
"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone"

All through the ages human beings have been at each others throats. The greatest empires (Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Roman, British etc...) have a tremendous amount of blood on their hands, does this mean they had nothing positive to contribute to human culture and evolution? Hardly. Even knowledge of the commandment "thou shalt not kill" hardly made an iota of difference in reducing the blood shed.

The American continents were once people from shore to shore by native aboriginal...the British and Spaniards put a sure end to that.

What about Nagasaki, Hiroshima? The bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, roughly half on the days of the bombings. Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians. Did that make all Americans evil? Did it mean that they had nothing positive to contribute to civilization? No.

All of humanity is on a long path together and it's a bumpy road, there is no doubt about it. We are all in a process of learning to be the ideal human, to build the ideal society. We all have contributions to make, and lessons to learn.

In any event, as Viktor Frankl said, even after his tremendous sufferings at Aushwitz, "there are two races of men in this world, but only these two- the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people".

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