Why Does Mankind Still Fight Wars And Live In Poverty?

Perhaps the first part of that question answers the second part of that question. The horrors committed in the world, from prior lives is Karma. I understand this and yet I cannot accept this, for acceptance would require me to look the other way while this horror show of wars, poverty and ignorance continues.

If I can look the other way, what kind of person am I? Shall I focus on personal gratification, enjoying all that money will buy for me and all the acclaim I can attract? If so, I will be living the empty life of ego and not one of spiritual growth.

Recently, I watched an Oprah show where she was in Mumbai, India with a family of five, a mother and father and three little girls, who lived in abject poverty. The father had a job and his paycheck put food on the table and provided approximately a 10 foot x 10 fool living facility, packed in among many other elbow to elbow like facilities.

The family sleeps on the floor and when the day begins, they put away their things in tiny cabinets. The shower is non-existent. There is a tiny communal room in which people carry a bucket of questionable water, the same water they drink, and they wash themselves with it.

The toilet is also communal and people squat over it and a pour a bucket of water in when they finish. The contents are almost surely dumped in the gutter or a nearby stream. But this family is fortune because unlike poorer people, they have electricity and can light their tiny space at night, read and watch television. The little girls are bright and the family sacrifices what little they have so the girls can get an education and make something much more of themselves.

But as bad as Mumbai is, I can easily find several thousand people living on the streets of Los Angeles just a short distance from where I live, all of their belongings in a bag or in a shopping cart. And some of those homeless people are children.

Yet I live in a nation that spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on war, including producing weapons of mass destruction, fighter jets, tanks, ships, drones and with military bases nearly everywhere on earth. It feels so strongly about war spending, that it is going bankrupt to do it, as incredible as that might sound to you. All this despite many Americans calling this a Christian nation.

So in faith and in gratitude for all the love, joys, comforts and personal growth in my life, I pray for others less fortunate, understanding I too carry some baggage from past lives. And I anonymously donate money to help people in desperate need and I took to the streets, having held 303 peace vigils over 6 years, until earlier this year.

I firmly believe mankind is intelligent, compassionate and has love within its DNA and is far better than this self-destructive path. Eventually the light will go on and mankind will take action to make this a far better world for all living things and for all generations to come.

Dick