Every day we choose what to focus on. Sometimes we will hear something early in the day that can affect our mood for several hours to come. Often this happens when we’re watching the news.
Although there are a lot of bad things that happen every day, there are also a lot of good. We just don’t hear about them.
There’s something about human nature that makes us gravitate towards watching or listening to news that is disturbing. This morbid curiosity is possibly a way of acknowledging our own mortality from a detached viewpoint, without actually dealing with it head-on.
When you hear about bad things happening to other people, there is a sense of relief that it isn’t happening to you.
There is also a strange desire to watch things that we find gruesome. That’s why horror movies are so titillating. Video games also are becoming increasingly violent and are gaining in popularity. The tamer ones just don’t sell.
We can blame the people that are selling the sensationalism, but the only reason they are doing so is because it sells. The market is there, and people are buying it.
Every time we spend a dollar, we are voicing approval for whatever it is we are buying. If you don’t like the focus on violence but you are buying your kids the latest video games, then your message is divided and you aren’t being clear about what you stand for.
As soon as we start to vote to see a different quality of media with our dollars, then it will begin to change. Until then, the market will supply the demand. It’s that simple.
How are we supposed to do this in a world that seems to have gone crazy?
The only thing we have the power to change is ourselves. If you want to see peace then you have to be peace. You can’t fight against things and expect them not to fight back.
War has never solved anything in the past, nor will it in the future. By nations trying to position themselves as better than others, or more deserving, or holier, they are committing violence on others. It is impossible to choose sides on this planet and not cause our own destruction at the same time.
As individuals, we are guilty of this too. We form groups and segment ourselves by defining what we do as “better” and what they do as “wrong”.
But when something challenges our very existence, we rally together to fight what is endangering us. We are told by governments who we should like and who we should hate based on whatever circumstances are happening at that time in the rest of the world.
And these things are always in flux. Who we are supposed to hate today isn’t who we hated 50 years ago and probably isn’t who we will be told to hate 10 years from now.
What if we stopped hating? What if instead we extended common courtesy to every other being in the world, living the golden rule in reality as opposed to just in theory?
How different would the world look then?
Imagine, for example, if suddenly an alien race from a planet far away decided to come and attack our planet. Would it be possible for all of the citizens of the earth to rally together to fight this external threat? It wouldn’t matter which country you were from, all differences would be set aside instantly to deal with the new enemy.
Isn’t it possible, then, since hate can be transferred at will from one group to another, that we could inflict peace instead of the more destructive emotions of hate? Is it not possible for us to be living in a heaven on earth where everyone works together for the common good of all?
It seems like such a complicated undertaking, but in reality if each of us were to be the peace that we are looking for in the world, the world would be a place of peace. There would be no exceptions to this.
You are only one person. But if every one person changed himself, the world would be a different place in an instant.
