They are not like us
Photo: Photos Hobby
It has been said that beauty and dirt are only creations of perspective, their existence and measure thereof only of relative significance to the observer. After all, what does the cockroach know of the beauty of man? To her, we are all just giant feet. And try as hard as they might, the gods can never tell us apart by studying the top of our heads. From up above we are all the same, dots moving on earth. The gods, just like cockroaches, may observe man only from one perspective; they cannot tell one from the other and so do not attempt to classify us. They cannot tell if man is beauty or dirt, but man can, and so he must judge himself.
Standing between insects and gods, man can see that he is more than feet, and there is more depth to him than a dot. But with full perspective comes the responsibility to curse as well as adore, to admire as much as rebuke. Now stranded on a rock, man must devise an effective system to lay such judgement. To make such a determination, he starts from the only truth he likes: “I am good.” Consequently, he concludes: “Those like me must be good too, and others less so.”
But the other side think the same, and now they are marching in the fields with machetes, and guns, and their cross too, to see who is right. And when they get tired, they hide all the evidence in the ground and shake hands promising to never repeat the crime. But history knows, they only live to fight another day.
They are not like us, they say in their hearts as they justify causing war and conflict. Although from their mouths, they speak of tactical resources, of divine right, of survival.
They are not our colour: that is how one man justifies enslaving another. Although with his peers, he speaks of economic benefits.
They are not straight: so, man decides they do not deserve equal rights. Although he pleads his innocence and says it is only God’s will.
They are not men: so, they are subservient and must keep quiet. Although this is no one’s doing, nature has created them inferior.
Man, in his infinite pettiness, seeks desperately for differences and identifies new reasons to create conflict. Everyone is warring to be better than the other and comparing who earns what per hour, their frazzled bodies and minds mechanised only by sheer will power.
Now there is rich, and there is poor. Oppressed and oppressor. They smile at each other in passing but harbour malice in the shadow of their eyes, and whisper to their cohorts thoughts of villainy and vice.
The oppressed survive each day in the hope that their subjugators may be no more by dawn’s birth, but the oppressors are merry. They eat and drink but refuse to leave the earth. The rich have won again, and they celebrate with the poor by dancing atilogwu on their head. Now every poor man wants to be like the one dancing on his head, so he is compelled to climb the head of another, and so it goes on like a pyramid scheme destined to crash bottom first.
Everyone is fighting for relevance in a world of irrelevance. We let so many die of hunger and thirst today, so we may fill our bellies with wine and steak tomorrow. All these possessions we cherish and hoard in a world we are only temporarily aboard.
As my feet dangle above the ground like pendulums on loose ropes, I reflect on the words of Carl Sagan, and so I “think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they can become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.” Maybe the gods have the right perspective; maybe we are just dots wandering on an irrelevant piece of rock, important only to us.
With each breath I struggle to draw, my vision is harder to unhaze, old memories are harder to forget, and life is as simple as letting a tree grow. Soon I will be with my ancestors, and I shall say to them, “I was born in a time of conflict and borders, a time of colours and accents, peasants exalting the rich, gods campaigning for converts.” They will bow their heads and retreat in silent shame for they lived in a time identical to mine.
About the author
Young lives and studies in the United Kingdom.