The Killing Fields

When the Chinese invented gunpowder in the 7^th century and used it for firework little would they know that their little invention for entertainment would become one of the biggest killers in the modern world.

Today, another bomb went off in Boston with more innocent lives claimed because of certain people’s selfish agenda. At the time of writing it is still unknown who the culprit was and what were the motivations behind the attack. Meanwhile during the same period, more bombs went off in other parts of the world, people got shot and there were continued warfare and disputes across the globe.

The human race pride itself as the most intelligent species that walks the earth but then at the same time it exhibits the most deadly and stupid behaviours across its entire history. The two world wars, the territorial disputes, the religious disputes, the family disputes etc. etc. claimed lives after lives and it just seems that this self-proclaimed most intelligent species had learnt nothing out of any of these tragedies.

For most species, they kill for food for survival. For the human race, sometimes they killed because they don’t like someone or disagree with some other people’s view. Without resolving to generalisation, and this is most certainly what I did not intend to was that, sometimes it amazed me that some people could avoid killing certain animals because of their beliefs but then at the same time find it ok to kill other fellow human beings also because of the same beliefs. Time and time again, we were horrified by these actions but then time and time again these horrible events made headlines in our newspapers and news programs.

Most of us have studied history. In the past I talked about that the purpose of studying history is a way to understand the past and hopefully learn from it to avoid repeating the same mistakes. As intelligent as the human race is, it seems that this purpose of studying history is just some thin air ideology that has a reflective value but with no reflective purpose.

Maybe I should blame the Chinese for inventing gunpowder (and this is not racist because I am Chinese) in the 7^th century but then gunpowder at that time was invented for purely entertainment purpose. It was for something that we use for celebrations of events. Sometimes I found it very ironic that something that is invented for celebration is at the same time being used for mass murdering. And to be more ironic, sometimes celebrations came after mass murdering. And for the Chinese, they paid their price when they fell victim to their own invention when their enemies used it against them later in hisotry. At this point I am quite confused about why do we invent new things such as gunpowder – to improve our lives or to wipe ourselves off from the surface of the planet?

If God did create mankind, did he intend to have mankind to extinct itself without any Godly intervention? Sometimes I think if everyone needs to be “reviewed” before they could go to heaven, the entrance to the Pearly Gate would be like a custom area during the busy holidays whenever a bomb goes off. Only that you might never predict when these periods are (or maybe God can, he is God after all).

I never stopped being disappointed by events like the recent Boston bombing. Why would someone want to put a view forward by killing other people? It just doesn’t make sense to me. The thing is, you kill off opposite views, then opposite views want to kill off their own opposite views and this goes on and on. When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, this was one of the themes – when does retaliation stop? When would mankind learn? Or to be more precise, would mankind ever learn?

With the intelligence we were bestowed over other species in the world, mankind has not been kind to itself or the environment around it. Different sectors always find an excuse to exercise their rights to purge those who are “impure” or “different” in their eyes. But the basic question is – why would these people think that it is their right to kill when the gift of life itself is not a power bestowed to them to begin with? This is a question I think I would never find an answer to as long as people continue to think for themselves and nobody else. I am sad today and I think rightly so. I might be pessimistic about this, but I do have a feeling that eventually it would not be climate change that extinct the human race but the human race eradicate itself because of senseless killing that were justified by senseless motivations.