Two Diseases
There are only really two diseases in the world: ignorance and apathy. All of the other blights are merely symptoms, the result of some combination of the two. Ignorance encompasses all things, from social ignorance, to cultural, to financial, to scientific. It affects all individuals, from the most learned scholar, to the most illiterate mute. As humans, we are inherently the sum of our collected knowledge and experiences. Since those experiences are innately flawed, limited, and incomplete, out capacity to understand anything is innately flawed, limited, and incomplete. But through combating ignorance, we are already halfway to the point of curing the worlds ills. The second disease of the human mind is apathy. The inability, or reluctance to care, to empathize, or to take action, is the only other quality separating us from a more perfect society. When we see an opportunity to do good, even one that takes a modicum of time, effort, and very little resources, and we fail to take it, we are making a conscious choice to allow the status quo to continue, to decline participation in the betterment of our world. The same, when we choose to judge another person, by their circumstances, by their station, or by the poor choices they may have made in their past, instead of seeking to understand them, as they understand themselves, as we generously understand ourselves, that too, is a choice, to decline to empathize, and to let our small, limited, and flawed individual viewpoints dictate the ways in which we each see the world. Apathy belies a lack of interest in the rest of humanity, indeed, in the rest of existence, and signifies a selfish preoccupation with our own shuttle. How many would die of HIV/AIDS if every man, woman and child were gifted with the knowledge of the preeminent retrovirus researcher, and possessed the empathy for their fellow man to get tested and use protection? How many mothers and children would languish in poverty if each and every American were aware of the sheer scope of the blistering squalor that exists all around them, and were able to muster the compassion to sacrifice a pittance to raise a soul out of oblivion? How many veterans of our nations endless wars would be forced to live on the street if every resident of every city knew that it costs more money to keep the homeless on the street than it would to provide affordable housing, rehabilitation, and job training for every individual? How many congressional districts would be gerrymandered into irrelevance if every voting member of the public knew the lengths and expense to which members of both parties have gone to ensure that their voices are not heard? How many "mens rights" activists would hurl accusations of perjury at rape victims, and lament the loss if their unearned privilege, if they knew the gauntlet that every woman has to walk to simply make it to work every day, and the abuse, exploitation, and disrespect that rape victims have to endure to even make their voices heard? How many of them would still campaign for their so-called "rights," if they were man enough to care? How many Trayvon Martins and Michael Browns and Eric Garners would there be if police officers, pundits, and politicians alike knew the effect that a dehumanizing, profiling, and militarized police force has on the morale and good faith of the populations they are sworn to protect? Ignorance and apathy are our society's only two true blights, but their death toll numbers in the millions, with 7 billion casualties. They can never be completely cured, but knowledge and compassion are the most effective treatments
