Welcome to the epoch of public execration, To the spectacle of inter-netted public approbation
Victims selected for society’s gleeful obsession
With prolonged and public denunciations.
A time when casual callousness rides the wave of fashion
And cruelty becomes the face we wear; no space for compassion.
This world, it seems, is not equipped to hold a person’s suffering,
Whether gently or securely wrapped in comforting embrace.
Who, like me is dismayed by this inglorious human failure and disgrace?
Is it only me enraged?
For pity’s sake look within.
And upon looking, then begin
To ask yourself the hard questions.
What is your relationship with interpersonal mercilessness?
Are you a part of the serpiginous lesion
creeping through humankind?
How might you enact your malice?
Does it serve you?
That desire to see others, often strangers, chastened and shamed?
Structural cruelties accelerate; new ones now accumulate.
And like a virus they’ll busily mutate.
The reality of our living is that multiple apocalypses are intersecting.
And here we are, in the midst of crises, consolidating.
Interpersonally, we must demand more of ourselves.
There is a higher road to take which leads to higher realms
It serves us not, that lower track, that’s paved with yield and despair
Gloomy pessimism and hopelessness
merely supporting what’s already unfair.
It doesn’t serve to despair,
to hide in offices, bedrooms or library; because the desperate are bound for callousness and self enriching savagery.
I do not ask for a broad approach to “kindness.”
But ask yourself how you might be contributing to the quiet and loud sufferings of others:- mindless?
Examine your own sufferings so they may best be tended to
so that they don’t echo outward, causing harm maybe unintended.
The magnificence of the internet,
with all its social media outlets
provides easy ‘low road’ access
To carping cruel unkindnesses.
The higher path requires a bigger step
Upward.
The words of Peter Akinwunmi (Peter Ak'i) 