Prioritizing Progress

Humans are an emotional bunch. We are volatile because we feel things very deeply and very intensely. When it comes down to it, though, I believe we all want the same thing: Peace and harmony. The question is, and always has been, how do we attain it?

            There are many ideas and many opinions surrounding what the primary priority should be for the future of humanity. Businessmen say we must focus entirely on the economy to ensure we have a future to look forward to. Environmentalists say we must take action to stop and reverse global warming. Social justice warriors say that we must focus most intensely on social issues and encourage people to treat each other with love, respect, and dignity, in order to move forward progressively. All of these ideas and opinions have merit—some more than others.

            Some of the most educated and intelligent people of our time will insist that climate change must be our first priority. After all, if we do not have an environment to live in, what kind of future are we propelling towards? Many organizations exist in the names of sustainability and reversing the damage already done by humans, such as 350.org (https://350.org/) and Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/). Evidence of climate change can be seen in the Arctic, where sea ice melts more every day, starving more polar bears. The climate change has bees dying in numbers large enough to seriously threaten the ecosystem—along with our pollution. Climate change is only one issue environmentalists face. Pollution causes far more damage than just heating up the atmosphere or killing off a species or two; pollution can be seen in the millions of disposable plastic items filling our coastlines and waters, choking and suffocating increasingly more aquatic life and polluting the bloodstreams of entire food chains. How will humans survive climate change if the ecosystem is destroyed by our thoughtlessness and apathy?

            Others believe we must focus on economic well-being. Without a good economy, they say, there is no point in having a good environment. People who view economic interests as a higher priority than environmental concerns believe that environmentalists and actions people encourage others to take to help the environment only encourage people to move backwards—to live simpler lives and to stop doing things. Corporatists and economists believe that environmentalists want to return humanity to a prehistoric era of caveman-esque living, such as hunting and gathering and essentially acting as any other mammal on Earth. Most economists believe that the environment is worth fighting for and saving, as they recognize that this is our one and only Earth and if we want to survive, we must treat it well. However, views as to which environmental aspects should be prioritized vary greatly among economists, as can be seen by the above graphic.

            Still others believe that social issues are of the utmost importance and must be addressed immediately. Gallup.com (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx) conducted a number of surveys to determine what Americans see has the most important issues facing the country. Such topics as the environment, politics, and the legal system were covered. Social justice warriors view social issues and political issues as the highest priority facing humanity because they think that there is no point in having a good environment if humans continue treating each other poorly—with excessive cruelty and abuse. If we cannot unite as a race, social justice warriors may argue, how will we ever come together to save the environment or anything else? Social justice warriors recognize the importance of facts and research. They do not deny the importance of environmental issues or economic issues. Instead, they choose to focus on that which they feel is closest to home and of the utmost importance: Society.

            All this can seem confusing for someone who sees the merit in every point of view. With so many issues needing solutions, how should we choose our priorities and act on them? How can we band together and create fast, sustainable, positive change? Those who have asked this question have come up with multiple solutions, though today’s most evident seem to be memes. It is important to be informed on all subjects when considering how to take action or what action to take. Personally, I side with the environmentalists, but as someone who recognizes the importance of every issue, I think that environmentalism can be marketed to all demographics. I believe that we, as a race—as a species on planet Earth—can unite as a whole behind the right cause and I believe the right cause is finding a way to live with nature in a sustainable way. I do not believe we need to eliminate much, if any, of what we currently do as a species; instead, I think we should change the way we do things so that we are more efficient. The greenhouse gasses we emit into the air can be captured and reused and put into the Earth as nutrients. Our buildings can be made to act like organisms and maximize the efficiency of energy and water usage. Using science, we have united the people of America before with images of our planet from space—unprecedented images that showed us without a doubt that our borders are imaginary and we are one of many life forms inhabiting Earth. We need another event such as what we had at the height of the Space Age to bring people together behind the causes that affect us all.

            It is easy for a Christian to demonize a Muslim due to lack of understanding. It is easy for white people to disregard the struggles of people of color by thinking, “It doesn’t affect me.” People imagine borders between countries as real things of great importance that protect their ways of life and their well-being and consider interlopers to be threats to their safety. It is easy to forget to be kind when others in your life have shown you nothing but cruelty. In order to reach the hearts of others, we must put ourselves in their position and look through their eyes. See where they’re coming from and meet them on their side of the fence. It is not easy, but it is worth it. Not every mind will be changed. Not everyone appreciates politeness, courtesy, or information. But it cannot be denied that more hearts are reached through kindness and consideration than through bull-headedness and rudeness.

Some Thoughts about Thinking

Thinking about thinking is hard and most people don’t do it. The Puppeteer runs amok and it seems that the majority of people, at least in the United States, are under Its power.

            The Puppeteer is all of the forces in the world which would have you believe whatever piece of information is presented to you, without question. For example, when the preacher tells you that God is omnipotent and loving because the Bible says so, that preacher is an agent of the Puppeteer and you’re a victim of that power if you don’t question what he says. How is God omnipotent? What evidence do we have that God exists, aside from an ancient text that has been poorly translated thousands of times? How many times has the Bible been translated? How many inaccuracies exist due to translators’ desires to convey cultural context over literal meaning?

            These questions are penetrating, critical questions that help us to think critically about religion and what the preacher says. These types of questions are what I am now exploring in my class through the University of Phoenix and I feel fortunate that I now have the resources before me to take control of my own mind in a way that I hadn’t previously considered needing doing.

            The Puppeteer is evident in Its work; we see It at work with the 2016 election, as we are flooded with information from the different sides of the race. We see Hillary blasted all over the television, Bernie blasted all over the Internet, and Trump slandered all over both. What information should we believe and what information should we toss as useless? The answers lie in the research.

            Yesterday, I did some research on Hillary Clinton. I discovered that she has a history of defending women’s rights and speaking against the big banks, Wall Street, and Big Pharma. I also learned that she stands by her decision in the 1975 rape case that is often cited as a means of “exposing” her as a “villain”. The truth is, she stands by the fact that she is responsible for the lightness of the sentence because she fulfilled her obligation as a defense attorney. Initially, she requested that she not be appointed to the rapist; when her request was ignored and she was thus obligated to defend the young man, she fulfilled that obligation, regardless of how it made her feel or what the result was in the end. She was a defense attorney and she did what all defense attorneys strive to do; she defended the man against his charges.

            Some things I already knew about Hillary are that she did nothing wrong as Secretary of State during the Benghazi incident and she has not been found responsible for any loss of confidential information through her emails. In fact, all speculation against her regarding Benghazi and her emails have been led by Republicans and those supporting the Republican Party, such as Citizens United. Smear campaigns against Hillary should not be any more readily believed than smear campaigns against Bernie; however, so many Bernie supporters are willing to believe that Hillary did something wrong with Benghazi and she lost confidential information in her email scandal. These are the same Bernie supporters who proudly tout that they’ve done all their own research and have all the facts to make their decisions.

            Why are so many intelligent people so willing to sit back and just absorb whatever information best suits them? Why are they so disinclined to dig a little deeper in their research and find the real truth for themselves? It’s been touted by Bernie supporters that they’ve all done their own research, but the more I think critically about the things Berners share, the more I realize they’re sharing false information almost as much as the truth.

            When did our society come to so value laziness and lack of critical thought?

A Chance to Start Over

I’ve completed my first week of training at Securitas and I’m bruised and sore. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world. I can’t believe how much I missed being bruised and sore from training—and by training, I don’t just mean my job training; in this case, I mean physical training, specifically hand-to-hand self-defense. Also, learning how to properly use handcuffs was a plus. I have bruises on the back base of each hand, on my left thigh, and on at least one hand; all of them are practically invisible but I expect they could turn color by morning.

            In moments like these, I find myself thinking pain is weakness leaving the body. I find myself wondering, why don’t I have this attitude towards running? I think the answer is, before today, I hadn’t a solid enough reason to run. Feeling sore and feeling bruises form on my body—particularly my hands, which I use so often—has me feeling like I’ve actually felt serenity again. This brings me to my next idea.

            Humanity needs violence. Violence may not always be against other animals, including humans; violence is simply destruction and that also happens in art. Art, however, is not enough for me. I prefer a certain amount of structure, which I have learned from the Art Institute, but which writing has always held for me; I can use what I learned and what I know to illustrate the things I write. My plan is to begin the day I buy a new Surface Pro because my friend dropped the one I have and it broke, last year. I’m upset about the fact that it’s been broken, but I’m not angry with my friend; she held it by the tiny plastic thing and something happened with her body—maybe it was her bad hand she held it with—and it dropped. I didn’t have the case for it then that I do now and I hope a Surface Pro 4 will have the same measurements so I don’t have to buy new shit. I digress; while I love art and I am an artist, I also need discipline in my life and the only thing—literally, the only thing—that has given me the amount I need is martial arts.

            I have missed it since the day I left in 2007. I have certificates in my file celebrating every belt transition I made, all the way up to First Degree Red Belt. Then, before I could test for Second Degree Red Belt (1^st Degree Red is a red belt with a black stripe through the center, run horizontally; 2^nd Degree Red is a red belt without the stripe), Sifu came to me to have a conversation—which I found actually meant, to talk down to me and make me feel like shit.

            He told me that I wasn’t “giving it 100%.” I couldn’t fucking believe him, but I felt guilty. I felt like I was disappointing him, and he had been “Big Sweaty Guy” in the Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on Heat! I told him I was doing the best that I could, He, a 7^th Degree Black Belt (far and above black belt by an additional 6 level-ups or however it works after Black Belt) at the time, told me that if I (a 1^st Degree Red Belt, remember) had to keep up with him when he led class, otherwise he would bump me back down to White Belt. The very bottom of the belt hierarchy; he would start me over again from scratch, after all the years I had already put into the program and all the money my grandparents had spent.

            To give you a sense of what this meant to me, I’ll tell you the belt hierarchy, beginning with White Belt. After White Belt comes Yellow Belt; then, Orange Belt; Green Belt; Purple Belt; 1^st Degree Blue Belt; 2^nd Degree Blue Belt; 1^st Degree Red Belt; 2^nd Degree Red Belt; 1^st Degree Brown Belt; 2^nd Degree Brown Belt; and finally, Black Belt. I wanted so badly to make it to Black Belt and I was willing to do anything I could to attain it without going backwards.

            I freaked out and internalized everything he said. I vowed to keep up with him, caution be damned, and I got hurt. Sifu led us in lunges wherein we pretended to lift someone up; thus, while deep into the lunge, we had to lean back with our arms out like they were around another person. Looking back, I’m pretty sure this happened because my knee overextended my feet. Sifu had not properly taught us to lunge without overextending our knees. My left kneecap popped out of place—and right back in as I hit the ground like a screaming sack of potatoes.

            Everyone told me to walk it off—carefully. Everyone. It felt like it healed well enough, until I thought it had healed well enough to wear short but skinny heels to my sophomore year Open House at my high school. I had barely made it upstairs and started to stride down the hallway when my knee gave out and I fell again. It didn’t hurt as badly as the initial incident, but I limped heavily for the rest of the day and my grandmother finally agreed to take me to the doctor.

            They found that I’d broken some cartilage off inside of my knee and they opted for arthroscopic surgery, wherein they would remove the cartilage and create scar tissue in its place so that it would heal better. It was agreed upon and that’s what happened; I was on crutches for six weeks and I never went back to martial arts.

            I don’t know why I didn’t go ahead and drive to Prague regularly to take martial arts in Germany. I guess the place lacked the structure I sought—the structure that had been given at Lenderman’s Academy of Martial Arts. I felt that it was not worth a 2-hour drive to have no direction before grappling with another person. If I had learned nothing, how was I to defend myself? I saw myself then as I see myself now: starting over. The difference is, I believe I’m finally coming to terms with the fact that I truly am starting over; with my fitness level, I may as well know nothing. My soreness and bruises remind me of that.

            My self-assurance that I’ve come to terms with having to start over: I want to get started, rather than get back to it. Breaking my ankle the day before having Persephone—in addition to actually giving birth to my daughter—was like pressing the reset button.

            But that’s no reason to give up. It’s just what I’ve been asking the universe for: A chance to start over.

A Letter to A New Friend

I care about you deeply. You are important to me because you are a good person, underneath it all. Underneath the needless apologies and automatic defenses; behind the walls you’ve erected to protect yourself from the people around you, you have a heart of gold and all you really want to do is help people. I resonate with that.

            All I’ve ever wanted to do—short of being an artist—is help people. Part of the reason for me to get a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology is because I want to help people; what better degree to pursue for such an endeavor? Naturally, I want to help you. The thing is, I’m not even sure you realize you’re damaged; or, perhaps you do, but you don’t know how to accept constructive criticism from another person because all you’ve experienced have been negative people who have nothing nice to say.

            You’re not trying to be mean. I can accept that and appreciate it. What I think you don’t realize is how you sound to those around you even when you think you’re being “just fine”. Your voice is so sharp—as sharp as the nose on your face, as sharp as your very chin, so is your voice—and when something comes unbidden from your mouth in an environment you don’t prefer while you’re surrounded by generally undesirable people, your voice is sharp.

            Tone of voice means a lot in communication, my dear friend. The very sound of your voice when you say something—your inflections, as in, the way your voice rises and falls during speech—including the speed with which you talk and the words that come out of your mouth are all parts of the communication process. I don’t think very many people think of communication as a process; I think people think it consists only of what is said, rather than how.

            It is clear to me that you pay attention to what you say, friend. Many people do, when communicating. What I’m not sure you know is the meaning of your words. I’m not sure you know the true message you send with your body language, the words you actually say, and the tone of your voice.

            It’s different with me. When you’re with me, your tone is softer. But even when you’re with me, you’re so defensive of yourself, like you think your defenses must be up at all times and like you believe that the best defense is a good offense. God forbid you should ever offend anyone, though, so you preface many of the things you say—things that are hardly ever offensive by any nature—with “No offense.” None offense is taken and I feel like there is a larger underlying issue with you that perhaps you don’t recognize, where you feel the need to disclaim yourself before saying anything.

            Anything I say is met with, “No, I know, but—” something. Do you realize that you always say “No,” first? The first word out of your mouth when we are speaking is “No,” when I have something to say that isn’t a general nod, “mm-hmm,” or silence in listening. I might tell you that, while I understand your point of view, I think differently about the situation. The first word out of your mouth is, “No,” but I don’t think you even hear yourself say it. You hear yourself say the following “I know,” before you continue with your point and your endeavor to make me understand what you’re saying—which I do, dear friend. I do.

            I want to help you, friend. I want to help all of my friends, but I think the struggle for you is internal. Perhaps it is something only you can work on yourself and I am so glad that your goal for the year—if not beyond—is to help yourself. My hope for you, dear friend, is that you are also sincerely interested in personal growth. Perhaps there is something subconsciously that makes you speak the way you do or even act a certain way.

            I want you to remember that I love you. No matter how hard it gets for you, my love for you as a friend remains. Remember, too, that when everything is a joke, nothing is, and there is always truth in jest. I recognize your jokes as a method by which you wish to be understood and communicate your true thoughts to the outside world, but you’re so afraid of ridicule or backlash that it cannot be said in sincerity. Or, so you think.

            Where is your fear founded? What kind of terrible past have you endured to make you feel so insecure? Secure people speak sincerely and unapologetically, my friend, and you do not fit the bill except when you’re with me. Perhaps it is my sincerity that helps you to relax every so often and if that is the case, I want to move with it. I want to spend more time with you to help you feel sincerity and know it for yourself. I want to wrap you in security and make you realize that it’s okay to have your thoughts, your feelings, your opinions, and it’s okay to share them, but there is a time and a place for everything and there is always a good way to communicate a thought, even if there is no good way it can be received. Fear not, my friend, for I feel that most of what you could say would be received without judgment.

            I fear that your religion gets in the way. Perhaps it is what keeps you going and helps you see the light in life. Who am I to judge your feelings? Better that you tell them to me, in due time, as you will. Just remember, my friend: I love you.

A Letter to An Old Friend

Let me start with your husband. The man is a piece of white trash. I see the photos you post of him. I see him on his ass, his fat gut protruding from his unattractive body, his unattractive face stuck in some perpetual expression of apathetic lethargy. Sometimes, he contorts his hand for the camera; he’s showing off what I can only assume is some kind of gang sign. This, coming from a fat white guy, reminds me solely of my older brother, who once ran with a gang and continues to occasionally speak like he’s still part of that lifestyle. Not that I actually think he ever was. I’ve always thought he was all talk and no walk. But that’s another story.

            I loved you. I love you, still, in my memories. Do I love you now? I’m not sure anymore, if I’m completely honest, but honey, you will always have a special place in my heart and I will continue to look on your status updates with a fond eye, even if what I’m seeing is visually offensive in some way (see above about hand signs). I do not love what your body looks like, now. I do not love your double chin or your sagging breasts or the gut they barely cover. I do not love your poor spelling or poor grammar, nor do I love your choices in life. By the time this letter is finished, perhaps you will have concluded that I do not love you. For all I know, while I write this, I may convince myself of the same. All that remains for me now is to write it, and see.

            I admire your fortitude. I admire your dream job and I want to help you reach your dreams, but the life you want is now the life you have and I know I will never bring you away from it, no matter how much I so desire. You wanted marriage and kids and now you have a husband and a baby. Your primary hobby is also your dream job. It looks a lot to me like your life is moving in precisely the direction you always wanted. I’m glad things are going your way, sweetheart, I really am. Yet, I feel certain sadness when I look upon it; I recognize that now as disappointment in the fact that you are not living your life to a standard I have somehow set in my own mind. That isn’t fair to you, honey, and for that, I am sorry. Perhaps there is an imaginary scenario in my mind that I have clung to for far too long; now is the time to let it go and look on your life as your own, rather than some extension of mine.

            I want to see you get healthy. I want to see you be happy—truly, toothy-grin happy. I’ve never seen you upload a photo in which your teeth show when you smile. All of your smiles are close-lipped, barred, like there’s a wall within you that prevents you from letting go and letting the world see the light I know burns within you. I think that a large part of the sadness I feel for you is sadness in the knowledge that you have never had an orgasm. While you have not lived your life in any way like I thought you might, or like I’ve imagined perhaps that you should, you have not experienced the one thing that can bring a significant measure of peace and serenity to your life. For that, I pity you. I pity you greatly, because I experience an orgasm somewhat regularly and I believe every man and woman should. I want your life to be a fairy tale and I know it never will be because your husband looks like disappointment personified and your child has the pointed chin of Rumplestiltskin or Peter Pan.

            It should not have disappointed me when you asked about the crowd we used to mutually know, before you left. I should have felt happiness at the fact that you wanted to pick up right where we left off, as if all the years between had never even happened. That’s what good friends do, isn’t it? Best friends? We’re best friends, aren’t we? Yet, I felt disappointment because so many years had passed. I wanted to see a woman who had grown and learned, maybe even been educated, but ultimately who spoke like an adult. What I felt I was met with was a bloated teenager and that’s not fair to you because you are so much more than that. Maybe that’s the kind of thinking that leads to disappointment. So be it. So be it that I believe you are a woman who could do so much more than that to which you limit yourself.

            May you see this, my love, and know it is for you and you alone. May you know that I still love you, the way you were and even the way you are now. You are a woman who has achieved her dreams and continues to pursue them because some are still out there, waiting to be taken by the horns and forced into your repertoire of success, while I am a woman bereft of dreams because one of my greatest fears was realized instead of a greater desire and I suffer greatly from a depression that keeps me thinking, believing, even, that my dreams will do nothing but fail. You are a woman who lives a simpler life than I do and for that, perhaps I envy you.

Humans are Actually Terrifying

                Many blog entries have been made to illustrate the scariness of nature. Usually, these entries revolve around animals and how terrifying they can be—and many of them have similar themes. You’re afraid of spiders? Here’s a list of the 10 largest/deadliest/scariest-looking spiders we can find pictures of and information for. You like cats? Here’s a list of the most unsettling facts we can possibly find about the feline world. Wait, you think these particular animals are scary? Let me tell you all about the animals that eat them.

Cracked.com's Scariest Animals

                Other blogs have gone the other direction—posting information in order to convince us that nature isn’t scary at all and the world is really a wonderful place full of beauty and mysticism. Such articles include things like the top 10 largest holes in the ground, largest lakes, most strikingly-colored aquatic life, etc.

                A news article covers the “ten scariest animals in nature,” an article that seems to debunk the scariness of some animals while illustrating that others are scarier than we thought.

NBC News's Scariest Animals

                Popular images when one Google searches “scary nature” include deep-sea life and tremendous storms, along with the occasional image of nature eating something like a street sign.

                Still other blogs like to simply post information with no hidden agenda. The best example of that, in my opinion, is a video series by zefrank1 on YouTube called “True Facts About...” The videos themselves are highly amusing and great fun to watch, yet they still cover facts that are, in fact, true (imagine that!).

                However, how often have we taken the time to look at humans as a creation of nature? Religious people like to argue that we are created by an almighty, omnipresent, omniscient, benevolent, just, jealous, vengeful, mysterious “God”, when the truth is that nature “created” us, just as it created every other mammal, reptile, amphibian, sea creature, and plant on the planet. The truth is that evolution is a fact, whether you decide to believe in it or not. The greater truth, as I have come to know, is that humans are by far the scariest creatures ever to come from nature.

                “But what about the box jellyfish?!” one might ask. The box jellyfish minds its own damn business and won’t hurt you unless you mess with it—intentionally or not. Now, let’s focus on what I’m actually saying, please.

                Humans are the only creatures to unintentionally cause serious harm to the environment. Wikipedia hosts a lovely list of nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents (actually the name of the page, if you want to look it up yourself), organized so that you can jump to one category in particular if you’re so inclined. Their list of nuclear meltdowns is one that I find particularly compelling for illustrating my point.

Nuclear Radiation Accidents and Incidents

Images of Nuclear Accidents:

                Those are accidents. Those images and the lists on Wikipedia don’t address what humans do deliberately to destroy the planet. A lot of people think explosions are cool. The Myth Busters are famous for blowing stuff up in nearly every one of their episodes. I have a number of friends who think explosions are really cool-looking; these are also friends who advocate firearms and are great fans of what Americans like to call “air power”. Now, don’t get me wrong, explosions can look cool… but…

                I’m sure we’re all aware of the attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Here’s a look at those explosions.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima

                Those are pretty nifty, aren’t they? Nuclear explosions are famous (or infamous) for their mushroom-shaped clouds and, conveniently, Google has a nice collection of images in stock! But this post isn’t about the explosions. It isn’t about weapons or war or firepower of any kind. This post, I’ll remind you, is about the scariness of humanity.

                Consider, for instance, the aftermath of any given explosion. If you’ve seen images on the news after Hurricane Katrina, you may have an idea. But Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster—not something done to the planet by humans.

                We agreed that those explosions looked pretty cool, didn’t we? Sure, we did. We like looking at pictures of explosions. What we don’t like looking at is the aftermath. Take, for instance, the aftermath at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

                The rubble and people made homeless don’t look like much, especially when placed side-by-side with pictures of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The woman’s face, even, could be worse, couldn’t it? Images like these should be far more compelling than they are, but radiation itself is invisible (unless it’s glowing in the dark). We can’t see the danger floating in the air that we as a species created. What we can see, however, are the effects of that danger.

                You may still be asking yourself, “How are humans the scariest creatures on the planet?” to which I respond, “We destroy everything.” Not only do we destroy the planet in every creative way we can imagine, we destroy each other. People are all too happy to be terrified of being bitten or eaten alive by piranhas or sharks. What they don’t seem to be afraid of—as they should be—is an attack from a fellow human being.

                The irony of this is that humans attack people far more often than any other animal in nature. It’s in the news every single day—a school shooting, a serial killer on the loose, sexual predators possibly living in your neighborhoods and preying on your children, a mother who has killed her baby, and kids who have killed their mother. Why are we not more afraid of humans? Humans are unpredictable, dangerous creatures! They come in all shapes, sizes, appearances, rendering judgment by appearance impossible!

                One terrible fact that I, and many others I know, have come to notice is that people are immensely guilty of “bystander syndrome”—an inner voice that tells you, “Someone will take care of it,” accompanied by a feeling of non-involvement and non-responsibility and, perhaps, a twinge of guilt—whenever they see something that they know, ultimately, is wrong. Take, for instance, a man falling down in the street and not a single person stopping to help him for well over an hour, then by the time someone finally does stop, it’s too late. He’s dead. Or, perhaps there’s a situation you see at a bar where a man is hitting on a woman who is clearly drunk; you know the woman doesn’t want anything to do with the man but you do nothing to separate them and ultimately he rapes her.

                There are many things we tell ourselves as bystanders and we are all guilty of bystander syndrome at one time or another. In the situation with a man falling in the street, we may look at his shabby clothing and unshaven face and think to ourselves, “He’s probably homeless,” or, “If he’s really sick, I don’t want to catch his disease,” or, “I don’t know anything about him and I don’t want to put myself in any kind of danger.” We are conditioned from a very young age to think, when we see a stranger, “You never know who someone is.” The problem with this conditioning is that this inner talk is almost always negative toward strangers. We don’t stop to offer aid to a homeless man on the sidewalk because we don’t know anything about him. He could have been a largely successful man before he lost everything due to circumstances outside his control. Or, as we are more prone to assuming, he could be a drug addict just looking for his next fix. In the situation with the man and woman in the bar, we are likely to think to ourselves, “It’s none of my business,” or, “I don’t want to fight that guy,” or, “I don’t know them; I shouldn’t get involved.” We are conditioned from an early age to think that what others do is none of our business and we should never get involved in the affairs of others. We put blinders on, stick our heads in the sand, and mind our own business for fear of altercation with another person, or fear of judgment.

                More than those things, however, we laugh things off that are not funny and should not be made into jokes. The word “rape” is thrown around so often now that fewer and fewer people take it seriously and therefore are less likely to do anything to prevent a rape from happening—due to the idea that it “isn’t a big deal.” It is a big deal. It’s something that the US military is focusing on very heavily, along with drunk driving, to eliminate—and, with it, bystander syndrome, so that those around people who are drinking or making advances on drunk women are not driving drunk or taking home unwilling partners.

                Bystander syndrome may well be the scariest trait of humanity. After all, while there are rapists, pedophiles, and murderers out there—and usually you can’t identify them by looks alone—think of this: There are more people than all of those criminals combined who sit back and do nothing while these things happen. Think of Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors, who smelled the rotting corpses of his victims and heard the sounds of his tools while he went about cutting them into bits—yet who did nothing to investigate. Some called the police, yes—and good for them for doing so, I’m certainly not saying they shouldn’t have—but the police, after very brief questioning, went on their way and thought no more about it. Or—even worse than Dahmer’s neighbors—think of the two cops who went to his apartment with one of his last victims, a teenage boy, after finding said boy trying to run down the street naked with blood on him from being anally raped—a boy found by two girls who called for help and knew something was wrong, girls who did something and were not bystanders—and after brief questioning and absolutely no background checking, the cops left the boy with Dahmer in his apartment and went on their way. Bystanders are literally the reason Jeffrey Dahmer got away with murder so many times.

                What I’m trying to say is this: Rapists of all kinds…

…serial killers…

…and drug addicts…

…might scare you. They might make you nervous. But I have to ask you…

                What about your neighbors who will stand idly by and watch a drive-by shooting destroy your house? What about the people filling a restaurant so that nobody can get in without a reservation, turning away as you choke on a piece of your food? What about the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in the streets, walking right by you as you fall over, coughing, in desperate need of medical attention on your way to the hospital—and not a single person stops to ask if you need help while you collapse to the ground and cough out your final breaths among specks of blood?

                It isn’t just about what humans do to destroy the planet. It isn’t even about what humans do to actively destroy one another—such as with war.

                It’s about the fact that we do nothing to stop it, and we are doing more and more of nothing every single day.