Something I've noticed about our culture that really bothers me is how cavalier people can be about human lives. Let me give some examples.
During the course of most any discussion on foreign policy, a lot of people are pretty quick to go to the "bomb or kill them" option. Are people that desensitized to war and death to just blurt that out? It's not even just the countless lives we lose from our own armed forces, but the even bigger casualties where the conflict occurs. That's innocent people guilty of only being born in the wrong place.
I see it also with people who believe that some of the high-profile shootings of unarmed people by police are potentially justifiable. I can't understand that at all. People make this bizarre rationalization that because police are sometimes gunned down by criminals, it's OK to shoot unarmed suspects in the back. I can't figure that logic out at all. Human lives ending is tragic, period.
Again, I think a lot of it is just people making snap judgments from their computers with little to no stake in the situation. If it's far enough out of your bubble, it doesn't matter. Every once in awhile, you encounter something that causes you to think a little harder about it. In my case, a friend recently attended the funeral of a coworker who was murdered. We all know people who died, but cold-blooded murder is not something many of us ever really get close to. Two degrees of separation for me is close enough. It literally shakes your faith in humanity.
We are not civilized. That's the only conclusion I can arrive at. There are still people among us who believe killing each other is the right thing, using an "us or them" line of thinking. I fear it will perpetuate forever. As optimistic about the future as I generally am, this is one thing that brings me down. I hope I'm wrong.
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