Think of a Country Ruled by Death, Fear and Lies

Think of a country where the citizens have become the three monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil; where numerous teenagers, women and children die everyday, but the rest of the citizens don’t even notice or feel grief about this; where life is veiled with so much darkness that the abnormal is normal, where death is inured. A country where consciences are muted, where otherin’ is the norm, and screams can no longer be heard. It is so difficult to explain these dark days, the absurdities have become so ordinary… starting each day hearing about deaths, getting through each day with lies and trying to end each day adapting to new limitations and mentally dealing with this. Of course, our minds would fail to register.

Think of a country where the guiding religious body makes the statement that “fathers desiring their own daughters would not damage the marriage,” and those who spread or discuss this are the ones accused of blasphemy, and not the ones who stated it; where people die from bomb explosions but the media has no freedom to report it in the news; where journalists are detained before appearing in court just because of the news they reported; where a TV show presenter is summoned to court for supporting terrorism because during his TV show he asked his live audience to applaud the woman who called the show and said, “no children should die.”

Think of a country being ruled by fear, hatred, and anger; where pains blow instead of winds, bullets fall instead of rain; where children grow with fear instead of laughter; where people are hopeless, without any expectations and are filled with worry; where deaths are ignored and lies are widely accepted; where nobody likes to hear the facts. A country where speaking the truth is seen as a reason to be accused of treason and manipulation; where people are seeing one another with suspicion, becoming more and more withdrawn; where tension is constantly hanging in the air; where the children have to hold white flags in order to go out on the streets to buy bread. Think of a country where women are humiliated, accused and facing growing pressures every single day; where something innocent  like young people holding hands in public is sinful and reported as such in the news; where inquiring, asking questions or criticizing is a crime punishable by law;  where unconditional obedience is applauded. Think of a country rapidly tumbling down a dark cliff while its future is getting darker with each passing day.

While you are reading these sentences, citizens of that country are continuing to try to live their lives… getting used to the deaths, lies, infidelities, cruelty, accusations and, most painfully, seeing the dead bodies of children. To live is as difficult as it is to think in that country. While you think of all this and feel sad, nothing is ever going to change in that country or in any other similar one.

While you feel sad,  humanity continues to become more dehumanized in that country. Influential men around the world continue to sit on their expensive leather chairs, wearing their $10,000 suits, and  holding their thousand-Euro pens, signing ostentatious agreements for more oil, weaponry and power in order to earn even more money and to become even more heartless. The easier it is to think and produce ideas from far away from these countries, the harder it is to change the living conditions there determined by violence and hatred. And while you think, the true meaning of freedom, fellowship, peace and sharing is slowly but surely disappearing from our world and being replaced by the rule of brutality, submission and injustice. And while I write and you think, without acting, about all the lifeless bodies throughout that country, the darkness of despair continues to spread everywhere.

Editor’s Notes: Photograph one by 16:9 Clue; photograph two from the archive of Michael Dawes; photograph four by Wolfgang Sterneck; and photograph five by Marco Carrubba.