Sometimes
the actions of people can be very cruel. There is of course the obvious cruelty,
like the unfathomable cruelty of someone who is able to get into a truck and mercilessly
plunge into other people. Similar cruelty seems to be heightened nowadays.
People cruelly murder, rape and abuse others without remorse. I am so often
reminded of words that were told to me many years ago; “Human beings have
the ability to be higher than the angels and lower than animals”. I will
never forget these words, but it’s tragic that these days more often I can see
how human beings are giving in to our ability to be lower than the animals.
We would
like to believe that we are good people, we hide our cruelty in the wake of these
bigger actions of cruelty, and while this may be human nature, it hinders us
from improving ourselves. When we are not able to recognize the cruelty in
ourselves, how will we ever be able to change it?
I came
across an example of how we tend to be so cruel towards others without even
considering what we are doing, or the effects of our actions. My example is
simple, it may seem insignificant in the grander scheme of world events, but I
cannot change world events, I can only change myself.
While
browsing the internet I saw a link to an article about how some celebrities
have become “monsters” with time. Of course the article was referring to the
physical appearance of the chosen celebrities and how they have transformed
from “beauties” to “monsters”. The list included men and women, (I can’t be
happy that it’s not only women who are subjected to this kind of scrutiny when
such scrutiny in itself is horrible), but nonetheless, the list included men as
well, which is a change in the pressure that is usually placed on women to look
attractive.
Back to the
point, I initially looked at these images and had common thoughts like, wow,
what has happened to these people… Then I started feeling bad. Firstly, these
are human beings, and we can put forth the usual arguments such as they asked
for the attention and what not, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is
really cruel to be making fun of how people’s appearance have changed over the
years. Secondly, who even knows if the pictures we see are real. Thirdly, why
on earth does it matter!
This sort of
obsession with looks and appearance, the pressure put on all people to be
physically attractive, the teasing and mocking of those who don’t meet
societies standards of beauty, all of this is extremely cruel, is it not? Yet
most of us would like to believe that we are not cruel.
So I had an
internal reprimand to myself, how dare I look at these images and wonder things
like what happened to these people? So what if their appearance has changed? Doesn’t
that happen to all of us as we get older? How would I feel if people started
making fun of the way I look?
Like I said,
this may seem like something so insignificant. Indeed, in the wake of attacks
on human life, of attempted military coups, of displaced refugees and
continuous wars, of lives being lost in masses, in the wake of murder and rape
and abuse and torture, how does something like this even matter?
But it
does!
Because if
we allow ourselves to be cruel, no matter how minimal that cruelty may be, then
our levels of cruelty just increase, and before we know it the unfathomable
becomes fathomable. So we need to recognise the cruelty in ourselves, and we
need to stop it and change it now, because seriously, the world does not need
any more cruelty!
Image 1 from here
Image 2 from here
