Power to the People: Can We End Human Suffering?

Africans were colonized for hundreds of years. In the process they have lost their culture and religion. There are deep wounds in the collective consciousness of the African continent. Colonization has dismembered people’s culture and religion. Africans went through a lot of the suffering that has ever existed in this world.

Let’s put an end to human suffering and racism by treating each other with respect and dignity. UBUNTU: I am because we are. No individualism. Let history be our teacher. When countries and leaders are fighting over natural resources, when they want to overpower another country, this has a huge effect on the ordinary people on the ground. There is a proverb that explains this very well. “When two bulls are fighting, what suffers the most is the grass.”

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In the Christian religion, when Jesus insisted that the kingdom of God is within he was affirming that which is common amongst all people. We are identical within and there is unity in diversity. Why racism, discrimination and killing of people for their natural resources?

The beauty of a country is in the people, not what they have or do not have.  Oil, gold, diamonds, etc. will come to an end some day because their value is relative. It is ever-changing. On the other hand, the intrinsic value of  a human being will always be there. It’s absolute and it never changes. Only now, it sometimes gets overshadowed by the relative and illusionary world of wealth. What is happening in Darfur, Lebanon, India, South Korea, Zimbabwe India, Iraq, Iran or in the United States of America? It affects everyone, even those who turn a blind eye, because we are all connected.

Professor Earl Fluker from Morehouse College says that today’s leaders are caught up into the intersection where two worlds collide — the systems world and the life world. The life worlds refers to the commonplace, everyday traffic of life, where people meet and greet one another and where common values and presuppositions about order and the world are held. The systems world refers to the vast, often impersonal systems dominated by economics and politics (money and power), which are frequently at odds with the pedestrian traffic of the life world.

Most of Our leaders are not awake at the intersection; they are fast asleep. But we cannot afford to fold our hands and keep quite. Take a stand. Make a difference where you can. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “be the change that you want to see in the world.”

Photo credit: babasteve.

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