Anti-

The snow came down for a while this past weekend like it wanted to make its own snowballs even before it hit the ground.  After doing the morning chores in the snow, I thought I'd go in and grab the camera.   After all, it really did feel a bit like a snow globe that had been given a vigorous shake.

After taking a few pictures that I thought might turn out pretty nice, I decided to give a try at taking pictures facing the sky... just to see what I could record as the snow fell towards me.

This past weekend pictures of another sort were being taken in Eastern Europe.  Many of them show mass graves.  Others show people with their hands tied behind their backs, dead on the side - or the middle - of the street in Bucha.  And before that is was Myanmar.  And before that, Syria.  And before that....  there are too many before thats in human history.

There is plenty of ugliness in the world to counter the beauty of a heavy snowfall at the farm.  And most of that ugliness is courtesy of humanity.  Apparently, the human race is good at ugly.

And part of it comes from our affinity for being "anti-" whatever someone else might happen to be.  It encourages us to be ugly to those who fit our "anti-" of choice.  Eventually, someone or some group of someones decide there is enough hate built up that people deserve to die and things should be destroyed.  In the process, good people who were not ready to be that ugly, or that "anti-" get a lesson about what it means to hate as they receive a dose of suffering.

Now they are ready to be ugly to those who hurt them.  And they are ready to extend that feeling to anyone associated with those who hurt them as well.

Let's make this a bit more real for all of us.  Bucha is a "town" that would qualify as a "bedroom community" for Kyiv.  Kyiv had a population of 2 to 3 million people.  Bucha had an estimated population around 30,000.  Waverly, Iowa has a population of about a third that size.  Just like Waverly, people live there, work there...  you get the point.

Pick the town you live in and imagine it in the middle of a war zone.  Can you do that?  It can be difficult, I know, because so little of our life in most towns all over the world centers around military pursuits.  The idea that where we are what we do is a place that is worthy of a military operation - where people die, buildings are destroyed and the landscape is altered - is not one we want to think about.

And neither did the people in Bucha. Or, My Lai (Viet Nam).  Or Srebrenica (Bosnia). Or the Sand Creek Massacre.  Or the Congo Free State.  Or, Aleppo (Syria).

Aleppo, Syria - Karem al-Masri - AFP/Getty Images

It only takes moments to tear down that which took decades to build - and I'm referencing people's lives as well as the things that we surround ourselves with.

Do I have an answer for you?  Do I have a solution for this wounded world?

I wish I did.  I just struggle to understand what made all of these instances seem ok to those who perpetrated it in the first place.