Shiva

Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who gave the world Pogo, came up with any number of marvelous quotes, but the one that I seem always to remember first is his classic: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

It seems we are a society at war with ourselves, and we are losing.

At the information desk at the shopping mall where I work, we have one of those cards with “Open” on one side and with a clock face with moveable hands and “Back at…” on the other, which we use at the information desk when we have to step away for a moment. We lay it on the counter while we’re gone.

Sunday, I used it when I went to the restroom. When I returned, it was gone. This was the second time in two weeks. Who in hell would steal a “Back in” card? What possible use could it be to anyone…especially since, after the first theft, the replacement card had “Century Shopping Center” printed on it. Still, someone took it. Who would do such a thing, and why? What possible reason could they have?

The same reason, I suppose, why pay phones regularly have their receivers smashed or yanked out, or graffiti is sprayed on freshly-painted walls, or any number of utterly senseless acts of vandalism. What are the people who do this thinking? Do they feel they have so very little control over their own lives that the only way they can feel powerful is to destroy something?

There is an old proverb to the effect that “Those who cannot create, destroy.” Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, would be proud.

That ours is increasingly a society of the disenfranchised is sadly self-evident. And that there are more destroyers among us is not really surprising when you consider that, even if only two percent of the population resorts to destruction as a means of self-expression, the sheer size of our rapidly growing population increases the number of the destroyers among us, and the damage they do is far out of proportion to their number.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: