Here is another guest diary by "Annie" West, one of my twin 11-year-old daughters:
Humans: Good or Bad? (Part One)
This diary is about what Humans have done to each other, the the environment, and to other animals. There may be some good things, but I found them hard to think of, so there may be more negative than positive.
The list below is a prayer that Jews say on Yom Kippur. It’s a list of the bad things Humans have done, but only twenty-six of them.
The List
We abuse,
we betray,
we are cruel.
We destroy,
we embitter,
we falsify.
We gossip,
we hate,
we insult.
We jeer,
we kill,
we lie.
We mock,
we neglect,
we oppress.
We pervert,
we quarrel,
we rebel.
We steal,
we transgress,
we are unkind.
We are violent,
we are wicked,
we are xenophobic.
We yield to evil,
we are zealots for bad causes.
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Here are some of the words from “The List”. I used them to create the word “Peace."
I have some thoughts about it below.
We Pervert, we Embitter, we Abuse, we are Cruel, and we Embitter.
PEACE
While that’s one way of looking at the list of horrible things we Humans have done. But it could mean two things:
1. The saying “Two wrongs don’t make a right”, could also apply to this, only it would be saying “five wrongs don’t make a right.”
2. It could also mean that although we have done bad things, we can still do good.
The second option is sort of an argument for the first one, and I agree with the first one, so I’m going to make an argument for the second one.
Yes, we CAN do good, but what about the people who don’t want to do good. There are some Humans out there...a lot...who still kill, and fight, they want to fight!
Fighting....sometimes it’s just a small quarrel between friends, or siblings. Other times, it’s war.
While other species might fight each other, Humans do the most damage. Other animals don’t have bombs, or guns, or pistols, or planes. Some Humans might think that we have these dangerous, violent objects because we were smart enough to make them. While that might be true, other animals are smart too. Most of them have survived all these years!
Animals can be as bad as Humans, and Humans can be as bad as animals, or maybe worse. Humans have gone a long way since they first came to this planet. From inventing the wheel to creating democracy, to marching down Wall Street protesting inequality. Surely Humans will go farther....unless we kill everyone in our race...or something less violent that still obliterates our species.
We do love each other though, and we do good things for the Earth, in an attempt to preserve it, like trying to reduce global warming -- which we caused -- we recycle, and teach children to do the same so maybe when they grow up they’ll have an even better world to live in.
Unfortunately, nothing can be perfect. Humans fight each other, destroy the environment, get drunk...and do things they don’t mean to, we gamble, we cheat each other, the list goes on and on.
Humans have done bad things in life, but they have also done good. Is that good enough?