Sbusa’s Weblog

The Difference November 26, 2007

I hate when people ask what the reason for war or famine or genocide is.  There is always a reason.  I think if we are going to take this class, we really need to differentiate between the words “reason” and “purpose”.  There is a reason for everything, even if we don’t like it.  There is a reason that Bush went to war with Iraq, even if it was to finish what his father didn’t or if it was truly to find weapons of mass destruction.  There is a reason for genocide, and it’s hatred and racism.  There is a reason for famine, and it’s poverty and lack of resources and lack of people who care.  There is a reason for a child to die at an early age, and that is because he got hit by a car or because of a fatal illness he suffered from.  That isn’t to say that these things have purpose.

Sometimes people find meaning in things that others don’t.  I’m not going to get into individual deaths, but what about genocide and war?  Hitler saw the Holocaust to be very meaningful, I’m sure.  The crusades were meaningful to those who believed God was on their side.  Yet things like war and murder and hatred are meaningless, while peace and love are thought to hold purpose.  Why?  Someone who grew up in the ghetto joins a gang and hates the world.  He or she robs people and shoots people, and then gets killed in a fight, or maybe even lives out his or her life and dies naturally.  Either way he or she dies.  What makes his life meaningless next to the person who worked at a shelter in a struggling city and was never famous or anything and never had a lot of friends but made a difference to those who entered his or her life?  They both die.  The people they impact die.  Life cycles on and on until both are out of the picture.  Let’s take it further.  Shakespeare.  Why was his life meaningful?  Because he was one of the greatest poets and playwrights of all time?  Because his plays and poems still touch the lives of generations today?  Is life’s meaning based solely on how long that person is remembered or how many people allow that person to touch their lives?  What if I loved the boy from the ghetto and he touched my life despite his flaws?  Does that make his life meaningful because I loved him?

Life’s meaning is based solely on other’s opinions and people’s preference.  I know people who just hate Shakespeare.  To them, his life has no more meaning than the spider they swatted against the wall.  There is no meaning.   There is talk and opinion and stereotypes.  I could have worked my whole life towards an Olympic event and won it and then my country lost… what’s the point?  We find our own meanings, but no one can decide what is and isn’t meaningful because there is no one meaning.  Still, there’s always a reason.