“I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, Mother, what was war?”
Eve Merriam
This is what war does to children…
Can’t stop thinking about children suffering from war in places of my childhood where I felt so happy and safe as a child.
Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya… – this can happen to anyone 😦
Image from pinterest.
ENDS
War is evil
War is the devil
War is between politicians
War is about religions
War is destruction
War is not construction
War is depression
War is an obsession
War is fighting
War is killing
War is sorrow
War is no tomorrow
War is explosions
War is confusions
War is blood
War brings tears like a flood
War makes you cry
War makes you die
War is death all around
War makes you die on your own ground
War is fire
War is not to admire!
War is creed
War is between your own breed
War is cruel
War cost a lot of fuel
War is amputations
War is mutilations
War last forever
I wonder if it ends in Heaven
War is only release
For those who are killed
It means ‘PEACE’
Thinking of my dear relatives who got caught in the current civil war in Ukraine: some of them forced to leave their houses and all their belongings to move to a safer part of the country, others – stuck in the war zone, hiding in rural areas as all towns and cities are being shelled and bombed with lots of peaceful civilians (including women and children) killed or mutilated. A beautiful peaceful coal-mining town that was full of smiles and laughter when I was spending my summer holidays there as a child is now in the middle of the war zone full of grief, pain and tears. Still struggling to believe that… 😦
When will those who are still living get some peace? 😦
THE END
From https://www.azquotes.com/quote/355811
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India
2014
A few days ago, two Indian girls were gang-raped and murdered after doing what half a billion women and girls are forced to do every day – go outdoors to try to find somewhere discreet to go to the toilet. Those two cousins were just 14 and 16 years old.
“The father, a 45-year-old agricultural laborer from a low-ranking caste, said in a telephone interview that the two girls were last seen alive on Tuesday evening in a mango orchard, in the company of a man named Pappu Yadav. (The man’s surname is the same as his caste.)
The father said a relative saw the girls with Mr. Yadav and two of Mr. Yadav’s brothers and that, for reasons he did not explain, the relative tried to intervene between Mr. Yadav and the girls. One of the Yadav brothers pulled out a pistol “and put it to the head of my cousin-brother,” the father said, using a common term in India for a close relative. “He got scared and ran away.”
When he heard what had happened, the father said, he went to the local police station and asked that Mr. Yadav’s house be searched. But the police officers, who are members of the Yadav caste, “took the side of the culprits,” the father said.”
The girls were members of the Dalit community, India’s lowest caste once known as the “Untouchables”.
from Witch hunt in India
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Russia
1800s
One old nobleman, along with a band of spongers, moved to his countryside estate and took to hunting with hounds. One day, a peasant boy (the nobleman had three thousand souls there) accidentally hit a hound from the landlord’s kennels in the leg with a stone. When he saw that his Nalet was limping, the landlord became incensed and asked, “Who injured the dog?”
The kennel attendants had to reveal the little boy’s identity. They produced the boy. He confessed.
In the morning, the landlord ordered preparations for the hunt in full complement. They went to the field and took their places near the forest, the hounds were let out, and the borzois were held on leads. There they brought the boy. The landlord ordered that the little boy be stripped of his clothes and set loose in the field to run. Then they let out the dogs from all the packs to chase him—literally to hunt him.
The borzois approached the little boy, sniffed at him, but did not touch him… His mother got there in time; she had run through the forest. She clasped her child in her arms. They dragged her back to the village and again set the dogs loose until the little boy was torn to pieces. The mother went insane and died within three days.
From ‘A life under Russian serfdom’
From http://eco-trophy.ru
However don’t put all the blame on men. As history shows, women in power are as cruel as men. Take as an example Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, commonly known as Saltichikha who made her infamous mark with the atrocious killings of her serfs, mostly women. She tortured children and pregnant women to death by beating them, breaking their bones, throwing them out of the house naked into the frost, pouring boiling water on their bodies and many other vicious and bloody tortures. She enjoyed torturing and mutilating her victims.
She didn’t make a habit of killing men – only three accidentally – although she tortured them in a different way. She killed the ones they loved. One of her serfs lost, one by one, three of his wives. .
Saltichikha was the epitome of boyar abuse of serfs in pre-reformation Russia. She pleaded guilty to the murder of at least 138 serfs at her estate, and the torture of many more. The name Saltychikha became a synonym for bestial treatment of the peasants.
I wonder sometimes where such cruelty originates. Is there a template for cruelty laid down in the human brain? Is it something that is unique to our species? Why do human beings find pleasure in deliberately inflicting pain on other living things? And what can we do to stop it because…
“Not much we can do about that,” you might say.
I think we can. The stories presented in this post have one common theme: these cases are the product of certain beliefs (or memes) held in the society. The stories from Russia happened at the time, when surfs were not perceived as human beings – they were perceived as property and therefore their owners believed that they could do anything with them, including torturing and killing them. Russian writers and artists were the first to object that deeply ingrained belief. Book after book, painting after painting, they slowly changed that ‘meme’ and eventually serfdom, like slavery, has been abolished.
This clearly demonstrates that even the most deeply ingrained memes and beliefs can be changed. We just need to keep talking about such cases and spread positive beliefs to combat mind viruses and memes that cause cruelty and violence.
Don’t close your eyes to ‘Hell on Earth‘. As Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Related posts:
THE END
I’m not sure about paradise, but hell exists for sure –
it is here, on Earth. 😦
From Never Give Up Hope
My blog posts have been very positive and sweet lately, but there is a different side to my blog – stories from hell, real hell on Earth. I posted them for a number of reasons. Firstly, I believe that it is important to remember such stories and learn from them. Stories from hell bring wisdom. Secondly, I believe that only the spotlight of our attention can counteract the dark forces of hell. Don’t turn away – only our attention can stop that pain, only our attention can overcome that darkness. Thirdly, once we get to know real hell, we learn to appreciate all the blessings in our lives – and we do have plenty of those.
Blogging is an art and as such “should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable”. If you feel disturbed and need comfort, check out my Thoughts and Poetry & Songs sections. However if you feel strong enough to be disturbed, here is a new page on my blog – Hell on Earth.
( Chechnya.
Photo from the Russian website ‘No to War’ )
THE END
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
From Learning to be gracious in the face of anger
THE END
“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
Dorothy Nevill (British writer 1826-1913)
From How not to say the wrong thing
One of my followers raised some interesting questions regarding responding to those who are in pain or are going through tough times: what to do and what to say. As everyone reacts and copes differently, the worst fears we have is the fear of saying the wrong thing to the person who is going through very tough times.
A few months ago one of my friends posted on Facebook a link to an article on Los Angeles Times on the ‘Ring Theory’ of kvetching: comfort in, dump out. It goes like that:
Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma. Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma (parents, children, spouses etc.). Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order.
Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, “Life is unfair” and “Why me?” That’s the one payoff for being in the center ring.
Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.
When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn’t, don’t say it. Don’t, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don’t need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, “I’m sorry” or “This must really be hard for you” or “Can I bring you a pot roast?” Don’t say, “You should hear what happened to me” or “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” And don’t say, “This is really bringing me down.”
If you want to scream or cry or complain, if you want to tell someone how shocked you are or how icky you feel, or whine about how it reminds you of all the terrible things that have happened to you lately, that’s fine. It’s a perfectly normal response. Just do it to someone in a bigger ring.
Comfort IN, dump OUT.
Remember, you can say whatever you want if you just wait until you’re talking to someone in a larger ring than yours.
From How not to say the wrong thing
From How not to say the wrong thing
THE END
From Mother Teresa and the fatal love of suffering
Unfortunately, there is a lot of suffering in this world. What should we do when we see someone suffering? To me the answer is simple: Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world. Work hard for the positive change in this world by combating suffering. To me that’s the true nature of compassion and empathy, morality and spirituality. I could never understand why so many religious leaders and ambassadors refuse to take action, opting for prolonging suffering on this planet. Mother Teresa’s work provides an example of that approach.
From Mother Teresa Was No Humanitarian
The myth of altruism and generosity surrounding Mother Teresa is dispelled in a paper by Serge Larivée and Genevieve Chenard of University of Montreal’s Department of Psychoeducation and Carole Sénéchal of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education. These researchers collected 502 documents on the life and work of Mother Teresa. After eliminating 195 duplicates, they consulted 287 documents to conduct their analysis, representing 96% of the literature on the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity (OMC). Their findings were very disturbing.
“At the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. The missions have been described as “homes for the dying” by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. People coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, but were left dying without receiving appropriate care. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. The problem is not a lack of money—the Foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundreds of millions of dollars—but rather a particular conception of suffering and death: “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,” was her reply to criticism, cites the journalist Christopher Hitchens. Nevertheless, when Mother Teresa required palliative care, she received it in a modern American hospital.”
“Mother Teresa was generous with her prayers but rather miserly with her foundation’s millions when it came to humanity’s suffering. During numerous floods in India or following the explosion of a pesticide plant in Bhopal, she offered numerous prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary but no direct or monetary aid?”
How can people understand the compassion by silently witnessing suffering and refusing to provide any help? As David Hayward points out, “it’s one thing to suffer well, it’s another thing to invite it and then keep it long after it wants to go. It’s one thing to sit with others in their suffering, it’s another thing to let it continue when you have the power to change things.” Let’s get that right and stop prolonging the suffering on this planet. True compassion is an action.
From Expanding our Capacity for Kindness
THE END
From Tennessee Office for Refugees
Today I came across a beautiful article Portraits of Refugees Posing With Their Most Valued Possessions with the most amazing images of human love and care I’ve ever seen. These images were created by Brian Sokol – a very talented photographer with an eye as sensitive to human pain and suffring as his heart:
“The most important object Dowla was able to bring with her is the wooden pole balanced over her shoulder, with which she carried her six children during the 10-day journey from Gabanit to South Sudan. At times, the children were too tired to walk, forcing her to carry two on either side.”
“The most important thing that Shari was able to bring with her is the stick she holds. “I’ve had this stick since I went blind six years ago, she said. My son led me along the road with it. Without it, and him, I would be dead now.”
If you had to quickly flee both your home and country, what one possession would you make sure you take with you?
THE END
From http://glavred.info/
Otrazhenie 