As youth of the 21st century living in western countries, we are extremely lucky. We don’t need to worry about food and shelter, have never experienced the horrors of warfare, and even have time & money to waste on pretty clothes and cosmetic surgery. While we are wasting time worshipping the rich people who parade their lives for us on TV, things aren’t so easy for the rest of the world.
I’m sad to admit that I’ve become one of those people who watch more reality TV than news. I was so surprised to find out about the escalating tensions in the Korean peninsula, with North Korea shelling a South Korean island, leading to the death of two soldiers. And don’t you tell me that it’s only 2 people – no big deal, right? Afterall, millions died in world wars 1 and 2. It’s far more than 2 lives that were destroyed – think about their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children…and all those other people who were there and will have nightmares and horrendous flashbacks… and if the situation gets worse, far more people will lose their lives.
We might have never lived through any wars, but from what I hear from my grandparents – it’s really not much fun. As humans, we are supposedly ‘intelligent’ animals, so we should learn from our mistakes. If Korean War repeats itself, with both sides now armed with better weapons, it will only mean prolonged bloodshed. And if North Korea does succeed in its obsessive quest to build nuclear weapons and both sides become armed with atomic bombs, it only takes one crazy Hitler-like persona for the predicted 2012 apocalypse to actually occur.
I wish for the days when we fought with fists and sticks, because in those days, to kill someone, we actually had to put our hands around their necks and watch their faces turn blue. Nobody except for psycho serial murderers can do that without feeling the slightest bit of guilt and regret. But nowadays, all we have to do is push a button – and boom, tens of thousands of people are dead. Do we hear their cries of pain? No. Do we see their scarred figures and feel awful for what we’ve done? No. Afterall, the pilot who dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima killed 140000 people and was able to ‘sleep clearly every night’ and die with ‘no regrets’.
Victim scarred by the Atomic Bomb
And because we’re all at home lounging around, watching celebrities with big hair and bigger boobs hook up and break up, it’s going to take us all by surprise when disaster actually strikes.
