Boston Marathon Bombers and inescapable(?) human nature

 

When we see those Boston
Marathon Bombers, we start to wonder how could there be such a deviation in human minds
and behaviours. Those young men who committed the evil act (2 bombs resulting in 3 dead, near 200 injured, and about 10 amputations) had loving and
caring parents. They are not from broken families with psychological problems
during their childhood. They are the product of human hatreds out of religious
fanaticism.

 

I kept wondering what is the
religious fanaticism, the definition. Most of us are part of a religion. People
who believe in their own form of "god", may feel that they believe in
"true god", and most may feel that theirs is superior to other
"gods".      And here comes the difference. Most will keep the feeling to
themselves, because the religion is to heal one's own soul. There should not be
any comparisons with others. Why should you care? However, some will be more
vocal: loud chanting, persuasion of others that "you have been mistaken",
"repent and believe in our god", start calling others infidels,
pagan, or scoff with disdain, perhaps out of some feeling of inferiority deep
inside their own minds.    And, the religious extremism is the kind that put the
religious superiority into action and devote their lives to these actions,
hurting the other's soul or body.

 

Christian crudades in the past
continues into Islamic Jihad's terrorism in recent decades, the latter
probably mixed with some feelings out of jealousy of the Western prosperity, I
believe. Religious persecution has been going on for centuries in history.
Development of medicine has been hampered for more than 13-15 centuries because
of it. And behind all those religious superiority, there is the human ambition.
All religious leaders are humans and have the human instinct "to be better
than others", obviously or insidiously, consciously or unconsciously. As
long as we are human, we cannot escape from this "survival of the
fittest" instinct that came with the creation of the individualized life form.

 

However, there is still hope. We
have seen the amazing, heart-warming social advance during our lives. We saw
flagrant racial and sexual discrimination, and the discrimanation of the
physically handicapped, before 1960's, gradually disappear. The sympathy for the poor
and those stricken by natural disasters has been put into active
assistance by many organizations around the world. Though equality is not
universal yet, but it will be, sooner than we think because of the advance in
communicaiton technologies.

  

My classmate, dentist Johanna, has been working as a missionary in the underdeveloped part of Northen China for decades, soon after the passing of her husband, our classmate Francis.  She is one of the best models of unending human endeavor to do good for fellow human beings!  Hope for the future!

 

While we feel happy to be in the most advanced society in the world, we should help to eliminate this inequality in the world, bigotry of religion, as much as we can and as soon as possible.

 

 

To talk of models, here are the
Korean models competing to be a Miss Korea. Look at their pictures. You would
think they are from identical twins. Just cannot tell who is who. Though I feel
regret that they have lost their individuality, I can understand those ladies's
wish to have facial reconstrustion, which is so advanced in Korea. Which young
women do not want to look beautiful?

 

That is also a human nature.