Flood to Fire & everything in between

First the credit crisis of 2008/09, then the China earth quake, the Haiti earth quake, the volcanic ash, the BP Oil Spill, the Russian forest fires and now the Pakistan flash floods.

It seems that man and nature are hell bent upon proving to each other who is best at self-destruction. What is going on? Amidst all these tragedies, pretty much every one of which has done nothing but to impose more and more suffering onto mankind, one thing stands out - our lack of empathy for our fellow citizens of this world.

Take for example the recent uproar in US about the desire of a Muslim couple to build a Mosque a short distance away from the 9/11 site. Many people in the US apparently dis-approve of this saying that this is as insult to those who died in 9/11. I respectfully dis-agree. The attacks of 9/11 were terrorist attacks. They do not belong to any religion. If you want to take the line of argument that say's the terrorists were Muslims and therefore anything Muslim is an insult to 9/11 victims, then would it be fair to extend the argument to let's say Germans? i.e. Since all Nazi's were Germans, therefore anything German is an insult to Jewish sentiments? Therefore there should be no German establishment within half a mile of a Jewish home as that would be an insult?

Silly argument? Exactly.

I am not justifying the sufferings of the 9/11 victims or for that matter the fate suffered by millions of Jews. I am merely wishing to draw the line between what is right and what is wrong. I am scared of a world or society that makes a determination of whether one is good or evil based on religion or appearance. It makes us inhuman. It stops us from doing the right thing.

And what exactly is this right thing? The right thing is to realise that we are all childrens of this planet. To realise that that Nationalistic sentiments are there to provide a positive rallying cry to fight against bad times - like the time Britain needed it during the second world war or as it needs today to get out of the rut that it's in - financially. To realise and feel that suffering of our fellow mankind across the globe whether be it they are affected by the floods or fire or dubious financiers.

We need a collective sense of humanity. We need to get back in touch with our humanity.

So what stops us from getting there?

Time. Time to think. In this fast paced world of instant gratification provided by Twitter, Facebook and Smartphones, we as humans are fast loosing the ability of assimilate and understand information and events around us through our own moral compass and framework. Our thoughts and opinions are shaped and formed by the 70 character messages we see in Facebook updates or Twitter updates or on various blogs like mine. We are spending our time building relationships with technology tools. We should spend that time building relationships with real people.

We see or hear about an event and immediately we are bombarded with zillions of analysis, thought pieces etc, the writers of most of whom have not spent time as much time writing it as you are probably going to spend on reading it. Intellectual skimming is the name of the game - and it's dumbing down the world.

There is a very real risk that we as a civil society might loose the ability to think and form opinions and judgements based on our moral values. Such opinions and judgements tend to be well thought out and stand the test of time. What we are faced with a civil society whose opinions and judgements are 'frivolous and temperamental'. We are loosing our human touch. A civil society that is fast loosing its human touch is only going to find itself with no real friends in the future….good luck in that case with a call for plea in your Twitter or Facebook post.