What Has Happened to Us?

What a world we live in.

Consider these recent events in the news:

• In Spain, police beat voters in Catalonia who showed up to vote in an independence referendum opposed by the Spanish government. 
• The US territory of Puerto Rico, decimated by a category 5 hurricane, is visited by the American president, who complains about the cost of helping the devastated island recover. Meanwhile, the people continue to go without housing, food, water, electricity and medical care.
• In Las Vegas, a man possessing 49 weapons, some of them semi-automatic rifles converted into machine guns, fires for nearly 10 minutes on a concert crowd, killing 58 people and wounding 500 others. 
• In Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), half a million Rohingya, a Muslim minority, have fled persecution and attacks by Myanmar authorities. 
• The US Congress is working hard to remove designations that protect several national parks and national monuments, opening the areas to mining and other extractive operations that will destroy those areas.
• The Endangered Species Act is under attack by Republican members of Congress.
• Despite frequent mass shootings in the country, the Congress is so deeply in bed with the NRA that it refuses to even consider passing laws to help curb gun violence. This is not about taking guns from people, but rather, passing legislation to prohibit the sale of devices that make it possible to turn semi-automatic rifles into machine guns.
• Poachers throughout Africa continue to decimate elephant, rhinoceros and lion populations to satisfy the superstitions of the Chinese, Vietnamese and other Asian countries.
• A US senator who has received money from the NRA is now blaming the victims of the shooting in Las Vegas for not "taking precautions" and "getting small." What kind of precautions were these concert-goers to take, don a Kevlar helmet and bullet-proof vest? This clown is typical of the state of American politics. 
• Neo-Nazis and the KKK held a rally in Virginia, carrying Nazi flags and chanting Nazi slogans against Jews and blacks. 
• Scientists are warning that we are facing the sixth mass extinction of plant and animal species. 
• Increases in the Earth's temperature threaten low-lying coastal towns. The current administration's response? Label it 'fake science."
• A gunman with a semi-automatic rifle enters Sunday morning church services in rural Texas and slaughters 26 people, nearly half of them children.

Rather than being advanced in our thinking and in our stewardship of Mother Earth, we seem to have reverted to our pre-human ancestors' way of thinking. Take what you want, and when you are finished with it, just toss it aside. 

I have already lived the majority of my life, and for that, I am grateful. I do not like what our world has become -- overpopulated and lacking a moral compass. The only thing that seems to matter is money. We can't eat money when the farmland is gone. We can't drink money when our water sources are too polluted. We can't breathe money when the air is too dirty to breathe. We can't enjoy magnificent wildlife or forests when they are gone forever.

Aren't we humans better than this? Are we really willing to let greed and hatred take over our world? Have we not learned that there are ways other than killing to solve disputes and disagreemens? Do we still not realize that we humans are much more alike than different? Have we learned nothing from the centuries of war and destruction? Sadly, it appears we have not.