A mystery of life: man's inhumanity

Makes countless thousands mourn!

The Scottish poet Robert Burns penned those words in 1786, but we still have no better understanding of the reason for "man's inhumanity to man" than he did more than 200 years ago.

If anything, Burns was wrong on his numbers -- millions now mourn, rather than thousands, in our contemporary world.

Despite our technological advances, and what would seem to be evolution in education and civilization, the 20th Century and on into the present days have seen no apparent decline in the inhumanity noted by Burns.

In fact, it certainly could be argued there was more inhumanity manifested in the 20th Century than in any other age. Hitler and Stalin (and their willing henchmen) are, of course at the top (actually the bottom) of the list, but other events range from the killing fields of Cambodia to the genocide of Rwanda and the atrocities in the Sudan.

Conventional war sometimes is a necessity, but we are speaking here of the systematic brutalization that leads to the deaths of innocents. And those atrocities occur for what seems to be for no other reason than pure hatred for those unlike ourselves in one way or another.

But even cultural or religious differences cannot explain such events as the terrorist siege of the school in Beslan, Russia, in 2004 in which 350 hostages were killed, more than half of them children. Reports indicate many of the children died of dehydration, injuries and some of sheer fright.

It is hard to fathom what type of subhuman mentality leads to a situation in which children are made victims for some religious or cultural conflict that has nothing to do with them. It is the ultimate example of the fallacy of the end justifying the means.

Many of the worst examples of inhumanity in today's world largely go unreported in the media because of the nature and location of the events.

The Reuters Foundation recently polled humanitarian activists and came up with these three conflicts as the biggest "forgotten emergencies" in the world:

--War in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has claimed 10 times as many lives as the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

--Uganda's 18-year war ranked second. Nearly two million people have been made homeless and hundreds of thousands have been killed.

--Civil war in the western Darfur region of Sudan continues as one of the world's greatest tragedies.

Concerning the Congo war, "it's the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust," said John O'Shea, chief executive of the Irish relief agency GOAL. "The greatest example on the planet of man's inhumanity to man."

"The human suffering is mind-boggling," said Lindsey Hilsum, international editor of Britain's Channel 4 News, in speaking of the war in Uganda. "The wickedness and cruelty of the armed men who kill and maim and rape defies belief."

We have seen examples of terrible inhumanity in events relating to the Iraqi War, ranging from stories about Saddam Hussein's tyrannical reign to present-day murder of innocents throughout the nation.

While we firmly believe that, in essence, the United States has been on the side of freedom and democracy throughout its impressive history, we must guard against using tactics associated with those who do not value humanity and civilization. When we stoop to that level, we have lost our moral compass.

Throughout history, there have been those courageous souls who have stood up for what is right and denounced the inhumanity around them. One of the most notable is the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had an opportunity to remain in America and "sit out" the Holocaust in his native country, but instead chose to return and oppose the inhumanity of the Nazi regime. He eventually was executed for his moral stance and his belief in the dignity of man under God.

His life (in comparison to many Germans around him) exemplified the truth of this statement by Martin Luther King Jr. -- "Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good."

We remain perplexed and saddened by the continued acts of brutal inhumanity in the word around us and there is a tendency to grow frustrated and feel impotent in the face of its scope. Perhaps all that can be done is to take an individual approach and realize the truth in the words of Alan Paton -- "There is only one way in which we can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man."

--REK