The world today: Between constructive existence and destructive war

The Knotted Gun sculpture outside the UN Headquarters in New York. (UN photo)

Dr. Hassan Humeida

KIEL, GERMANY: Modern civilized man has succeeded in hastening death and inventing ways of speeding it. Is there a competition to win medals for the most effective and the fastest means of causing death through mass massacre and annihilation.

It is a poor world that gets poorer every day. A world filled with apprehension, fear and obsession. People witness it when they turn on the TV on a quiet day whether they are alone, with their families or with their little child sitting next to them.

Those not interested in macabre killings and ghoulish behavior, driven by their instinct to preserve their sanity, promptly switch off the TV and wonder: What world do we live in now? Why are such violent programs screened? Are they the result of development and modernism in today’s world? … There are no plausible answers to such questions for a person who loves life, peace and coexistence.

Moving forward from the “fabricated” world of TV and movies to the real world. Our world in which we live and hope to prosper … We watch the news, and there is almost nothing that warms the heart, pleases the ear or eases the mind.

News of wars, killings and deaths, almost all of them are caused by human beings. Bombs are exploding, missiles are killing, fires are burning… Here is a drone firing at people and buildings. Here is a bomb falling in a hospital yard or exploding in classrooms.

All this is all initiated by Man against Man. Death, under all its forms, is at the core of conflicts that, like wildfire, turn into wars that inexorably engulf large areas depriving them of security and peace.

Survival is linked with hunger, poverty, destitution, deadly diseases and terminal epidemics. Wars turn fertile areas into disaster zones and people are forced to receive international support and humanitarian aid. In the past, these productive areas largely contributed to forming a global and friendly trade and helped sustain the needs of millions of people everywhere.

This is happening because Man has gone too far in greed, avarice and selfishness and in using fellow people to remain in power and deprive countries of their wealth.

All this is happening in a world that is destroying whatever remains of nature’s gifts – water sources and seas, Earth’s layers, forests, green meadows and farms… The sad outcome is that nature and its splendors everywhere, are transformed into factories, cars and skyscrapers made of iron, concrete, cement and sand.

Man in today’s world believes he has succeeded when he transforms everything that is a green something dark, when gardens and pasture are transformed into solid buildings… This is the failure of today’s world to preserve tomorrow’s world due to human action.

We should contemplate the form of sustainable development locally in a country like Sudan, most of whose population is now displaced within their own country, and many of them are refugees in neighboring countries, often in an environment unfit for human habitation.

All this is happening with the open support of countries that are proud to be members of the Organization of the United Nations.

The organization that is concerned with ensuring democracy, human rights and justice among the peoples across the world and within its member states.

But horrendous crimes happening in full view of the world, which is aware of the demolition of kindergartens, schools, universities, hospitals, government institutions and places of worship of different beliefs.

How can sustainable development be a reality in the middle of Africa, in the absence of work, income, education and treatment for the people of a country with a strategic location in the heart of the continent like Sudan?

In today’s world, there are many and great threats to democracy as an ideal system of government. The rule that the people of Sudan rose up for in successive revolutions, has cost people, young men and women, who paid a high price with their lives and blood, so that democracy would have a place in a country torn apart by oppressive regimes like Sudan.

Suddenly, the great dream that lived in the imagination of every person who loved Sudan vanished. The regional transformation of the Sudanese war into a cross-border “pandemic war” is not a good sign.

On the global level, from afar, many people in the world see a third world war whose fire must be extinguished before it spreads. This shows us all that there is no living creature more threatened with extinction than man himself.

This requires that people find another way to solve their intractable problems, away from armed escalation, starting hostilities and launching wars, which will inevitably destroy everything, especially if they take on a nuclear character.

e-mail: hassan_humeida@yahoo.de