Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Saving Gaza is about more than saving Gaza. It’s also about saving ourselves.
Saving ourselves as individuals. Saving ourselves as a society. Saving ourselves as a species.
Saving ourselves from what we’ll become if we just watch this happening right in front of our eyes without doing everything we can to stop it.
Saving ourselves from what the sociopaths who rule over us are trying to turn us into.
Saving ourselves from the way the propagandists are trying to twist and train our minds.
Saving ourselves from the kind of future humanity will have if our rulers can get away with such a brazen act of extreme depravity.
Saving ourselves from the other horrors that will be unleashed upon our world if this kind of thing becomes normalized and accepted.
Saving ourselves from the dark dystopia we are plunging into at breakneck speed.
Saving ourselves from a world where journalism is dead and dissent is forbidden.
Saving ourselves from a world where the bastards will do the worst things imaginable without even having to hide it, and just stare us in the eyes daring us to do something.
Saving ourselves from a world where the powerful have decided to respond to the public’s widespread access to information and raw video footage by just committing their evil deeds right out in the open and forcing us to get used to it.
Saving ourselves from this relentless push by propagandists and politicians to amputate that sacred part of our humanity which screams “NO” to all this.
Saving our hearts.
Saving our compassion.
Saving our tenderness.
Saving our children.
Saving our humanity.
Saving our world.
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I have to keep listening to music and looking at beautiful art to keep wanting to save myself. I have to keep looking at the squirrels and listening to the birds sing. And I have to be around other people who do not accept this brutality as normal.
One reason I like your articles so much is because you frequently comment on how our actions can corrupt our souls. To speak that way doesn't necessarily imply a belief in an actual soul or in a divine being who created us all, but it is a way of addressing what evil does to us psychologically as well as physically - I am reminded of The Picture of Dorian Gray; you cannot commit sins without a mark being left, if only a numbing in the sensitivity you feel toward injustice and cruelty. Thank you for the person you are, you do help the rest of us.