There is a television advert that poses the question, “What would make people want to leave this planet and go to Mars?” It is just an advert batting for an anti-allergy brand. But not totally trivial.
When dealt with the shocking reality of chemical weapons being unleashed upon displaced families and children in Syria by misguided humans, suddenly everything loses its meaning. We struggle to make sense out of these desperate times. How do we even propose to ignore the brokenness that evil has wrought in this world that we live in? How do we go about our own existence as though what has transpired in the forsaken town of Khan Sheikhun is of no consequence? For most certainly, in the intricate way that all beings are interconnected, Khan Sheiktum will impact the unaware in even the deepest forests of the Philippine Cordilleras and the remotest deserts of Australia. If we didn’t know this yet, past ignorance offers only temporary bliss. When suicidal humans decide to engage in chemical warfare, to which ends of the earth can everyone and their children take refuge?
So yes, it is fair to wish there indeed existed a parallel universe to where we can be transported. Yet, if an iota of possibility even exists to be discovered at any point in future time, then we must be careful to conceive that where that universe does exist, hopefully the soul of beings would be more gentle and more reasonable, less self-obsessed, less jealous, more compassionate, less greedy, more caring, less battling. For if not, what for? We would just then have moved to a new place but bearing the same destructive nature. And it is Earth all over again: the Garden of Eden turning into Blazing Inferno.
It is painfully difficult to admit, but human civilisation has not progressed through the ages. Humanity may have reached new heights, breadths, and depths in scientific, technological, and material pursuits. Yet in reality, humanity has just become more and more sophisticated — from the bow and arrow to the sword to the handgun to surface-to-air missile — in the pursuit of annihilating one another. Humans have never moved beyond self-preservation and survival of the fittest. Has man on his own and throughout the history of his earthly existence ever been able to define his authentic and beautiful nature? Has man ever really sincerely aspired to goodness? If not, then it is small wonder that man has not found true happiness and fulfilment.
To transcend these desperate times is to understand that instances of destruction are the very occasions that call man to retreat into the deepest recesses of his soul, recognise the folly, discover the spirit, and re-create the outside world to become a better place.
We pray that the leaders of the present generation of men will choose to aspire to goodness rather than flaunt their power for mass destruction.
If man is able to see the evil of Khan Sheikhun for what it is — the Good Friday of human sacrifice — and if man then makes a conscious decision to prevent its propagation, and forcefully acts in the spirit of unity to change the course of things, then man would have acknowledged the day of its visitation, and the Easter of his renaissance is well at hand. Then the children and families whose lives were snuffed in the dark night of the human spirit would not have perished in vain. And may God have mercy on us all! #TPS
