Can we please stop hurting each other?

"davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com" (davesaddiction) 08/18/2016 at 09:55 • Filed to: None

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Powerful photo below of a young, injured child sitting up awaiting medical attention after being pulled from rubble after an airstrike in Aleppo. I have a son about his age; I can’t imagine my boy having to live through hell like this. His family is okay, but it’s more than likely that he’s already suffered more loss in his short life than many of us ever will. I apologize for bringing up sorrowful shit like this here, but I couldn’t not pass this on. My heart goes out to any Opponauts with family in Syria or anywhere in the world that is seeing turmoil (places here in the U.S. included...).

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetw…

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:02

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The rest of his family reportedly was rescued, too — his mother, his father and his siblings, ages 1, 6 and 11. They all escaped major injury.

“We sent the younger children immediately to the ambulance, but the 11-year-old girl waited for her mother to be rescued. Her ankle was pinned beneath the rubble,” Raslan, the reporter, told the AP.

Shortly after the family was rescued, their damaged apartment building collapsed, Raslan says.

The Dummy Gummy > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:04

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This is absolutely devastating. People literally just want to see the world burn for nothing but greed; from our war mongering president to the dictatorship in Syria that intentionally bombs hospitals.

It makes me fearful and sad for the future. Hopefully, we can all wake up and start protesting for real change.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > The Dummy Gummy 08/18/2016 at 10:13

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Sadly, in hindsight, it seems like the better choice for many of these people would have been to just leave a brutal dictator in power (whether it be Saddam, or Assad, etc.). It’s hard to say that as an American who loves and values his freedoms, but look at what trying to depose these leaders over the years has led to... It’s hard not to look at the current situation in some of these countries and not feel hopeless. Humanity is broken. It has been since the beginning of our time here, and I’m afraid it’s wishful thinking to believe that all people will one day live in peace with each other.

The Dummy Gummy > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:17

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Dictatorships are only replaced when they aren’t serving our needs. It’s a sad truth. The middle east is a battleground for unneeded proxy wars.

Bourbon&JellyBeans > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:18

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Men haven’t stopped hurting each other in tens of thousands of years. On the contrary, they’ve only gotten better at it. The truth is that it will never end.

Milky > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:20

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We’re working on it.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Bourbon&JellyBeans 08/18/2016 at 10:21

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...until we get so good at it that we kill ourselves off completely.

Ash78, voting early and often > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:23

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Offering unfettered aid to people in a humanitarian role can build bridges, but we’re all too concerned that 0.01% of those people might be terrorists. IMHO, failing to deal with the humanitarian crisis will create a lot more terrorists down the line. That’s just the practical side of it. On the personal side, I never want to see images like that again and would be perfectly fine inviting refugees to live in my neighborhood if I could make it happen.

MonkeePuzzle > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:24

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kids and war. like you, I too have kids this age, and when I see this sort of thing it gets me right in the feels! I simply cannot comprehend.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Ash78, voting early and often 08/18/2016 at 10:26

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I definitely agree. Here’s a response I made to someone else:

If there’s a fire burning and consuming thousands of fellow humans every year on the other side of the world and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it, what can we do? The only thing that comes to mind is to help as many people as we can who want to escape its path...

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Milky 08/18/2016 at 10:27

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Thanks for that shot of hope. I desperately needed that.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > MonkeePuzzle 08/18/2016 at 10:30

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Sorry for sharing the hurt this morning... I just sent my kids off for their first day of school; I’m going to hug them a little tighter than normal when I get home today.

crowmolly > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:39

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This is gut wrenching. The Syrian birthday video is hard to watch too.

But if it’s any ray of light it is 2016 and not 1916.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > crowmolly 08/18/2016 at 10:44

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Yes, far more people were living in hell in 1916.

I’m an inherently hopeful person, but it’s very hard to see the light at the end of such a deep, dark, long tunnel...

MonkeePuzzle > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 10:50

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no need to apologize, I watch the news.

I’m frequently surprised at how much deeper I am impacted by things now that I have kids I’m concerned about.

crowmolly > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 11:03

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Well, it’s hard to see good things when most of what we see in the media every day is negative.

DipodomysDeserti > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 11:06

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I too have kids this age. It was really brought home to me when I was in Paris this summer. In the tunnel underneath the Seine in what I believe was the Chatelet subway stop there are a bunch of refugee families begging for money. Many of them are injured and have kids with them. The pain on their faces was gut wrenching.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > MonkeePuzzle 08/18/2016 at 11:07

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Me, too. Maybe I should stop.

Yeah, I’m with you there. My oldest is 9, and is still for the most part sheltered and shielded (like the younger two) from all this stuff that goes on, but I know that very soon I’m going to have to start pulling back the veil and showing him what the world is really like. I’m dreading it. Kind of makes me want to sell everything and buy a place in the country or mountains with no cable or internet.

jariten1781 > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 11:10

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War Before Civilization by Keeley is a really good read if you want a little perspective. Extremely eye-opening and way under-read.

Wiki can give a bit of the taste, but it's worth reading through. It's a relatively quick read and can be done in a dedicated weekend.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Befor…

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > DipodomysDeserti 08/18/2016 at 11:13

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I can only imagine how hard it was to witness. At least they got out and have the potential of a better life like so many immigrant families before them in the West. It’s much easier to empathize with refugee and immigrant families when you put yourself in their shoes. Would I do pretty much anything in my power to protect my kids and try to give them a better life? Yes.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > jariten1781 08/18/2016 at 11:29

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Thanks. I know that we’ve been at this for a very long time, sadly...

Ash78, voting early and often > crowmolly 08/18/2016 at 11:52

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After cutting the cable almost 2 years ago, we occasionally use Roku to stream local/national news (forget cable news, it's all opinion and sensationalism). How depressing it all is after you've been away for a while.

jariten1781 > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 14:59

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Yeah, wasn’t in any way trying to imply you didn’t...it’s just incredibly astounding how we (big We, humanity We) have become so much more restrained. The weapons available now are significantly more devastating yet the % population taken by violence is vanishingly small. The pre-history folks with stone axes would regularly lose 50%+ of their population to war...that’s just unfathomable. There’s other interesting tidbits like agrarian societies being more likely (and more devastating when they did) to participate in warfare than nomadic ones. The other thing that's really surprising is that societies with interdependent trade tended to war more often than those who did not trade. That's very much opposed to our 'gut feel' about how things work and something world leaders need to be cognizant of.

Not trying to say we're 'good', per se, but we're so much better (or alternatively, things could be monumentally worse...all about perspective) and need to keep doing the things we've done since the early 20th century to stay on this trajectory.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > jariten1781 08/18/2016 at 15:44

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Thanks for the hopeful thought. I hope we can keep an upward trajectory and that we haven’t hit some plateau where our peaceful future doesn’t include these perennially warn-torn places. As we’ve seen with al-Queda, ISIS & others, the world is much smaller now and the natural borders that once protected us don’t mean much anymore, so peace and security for most will not be found until we have peace and security for all.

The main difference is, back in the day, when you went back in your hut after a long day of hunting and/or gathering, you didn’t have to see how badly other humans were treating each other in so many different places all over the globe.

And I guess we don’t have to either... Click.

jariten1781 > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/18/2016 at 17:09

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To the last point, and somewhat tangentially related, Gallup does an analysis on perception of crime vs. actual crime rate in the US. Prior to 2001 those tracked as well as polls could.

Crime dropped and perceptions of crime dropped. Since 2001 they’ve greatly diverged. Crime continues to drop yet public perception is erratic and always significantly higher than the crime rate. Initially folks believed it was 9/11 (good theory) but because it remains that way to this day the new leading thought is that it coincided with the maturation of internet news sources and the penetration of the internet in homes, businesses, and schools. We used to have set times to consume news and it was from a curated set (editors would select from hundreds of wire stories and pick one or three for single paragraphs on page 8 in the international section) and now we can click-click-click and read an article about a random murder in whatever po-dunk newspaper that was literally not consumable 20 years ago.

Again, we all (seems to be a human condition) have a hard time keeping it in perspective. People are literally 3x less likely to be a victim of violent crime today than they were when I was growing up (early 80s kiddo). Does it feel that way? Not really, even though I intellectually know it to be true. Like most things, I blame it on the internet.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > jariten1781 08/18/2016 at 17:26

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Well, that makes me feel a little better about not having an alarm system on my house.

As to the “curated set”, while I do read a lot of news on the internet, I also record and watch the national nightly news. Based on the commercials that get shown during that half hour, they think I’m an 80 year old man...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jariten1781 08/19/2016 at 17:25

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And wouldn’t all that killing mostly have been one-on-one? One axe blow, one sword plunge or swipe?

jariten1781 > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 08/19/2016 at 18:12

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Majority was hand to hand, but there was other stuff like like mass burnings or drowning of captives.

bubblestheturtle > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/19/2016 at 20:00

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No, we canot. There is always that guy that NEEDS to be the most powerful, and is willing to kill all the things to make it happen.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jariten1781 08/19/2016 at 20:25

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Mass drowning of captives? Ew.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > jariten1781 08/19/2016 at 20:26

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Sounds like ISIS read that book.