is the world that wonderful, mr wonder?

和平 I 暴力
meaning: peace I violence

It's a recurring joke that in beauty pagents, all aspiring beauty queens say they hope to one day bring about "world peace". It's a funny gag that gets all of us sniggering slightly, but is it that funny a dream? Is it because it's so unattainable, we just laugh at the concept, without attempting to achieve it?

Why does violence even occur? Is it not embedded in the back of everybody's mind that you should only do good? What prompts people to "break away" and commit crimes? Look at the murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu. Her body was found stuffed in a suitcase dumped in an irrigation pond. Her alleged murderer has been accused of not only murdering the girl but also raping her with "a foreign object". What could have possibly motivated her to do something like that? Mental illness? Could explain it, but it's an excuse rather than a justification for it.

What about sane killings? OJ Simpson's name was cleared, but the world's pretty convinced that he was guilty of Nicole Brown's murder. Yeah, guilty enough to write that book "If I Did It", and insensitive enough to have the "If" almost non-existent on the front cover of the book. This man is not mentally challenged, nor does he have some sort of emotional problem. He's just a cold-hearted monster of a murderer. And yet he walked free (well, until he got arrested for the other charges), taunting and teasing the world about his "Not Guilty" verdict. Was it prompted by jealousy? Jealous of what? They had divorced 2 years prior to the murder. Pulling jealousy back into the argument is like blaming postpartum depression for your behaviour when your kids are already in their teens. And even if you are a teensy bit jealous, surely you have some sort of mental barrier that stops you from committing "wrong".

And the London stabbings. There's no excuse for that. It's died down now, and obviously everybody's grateful it has, but when it was at its peak, it was absolutely unbelievable in the worst possible way. People say "Oh, it is terrible, but it's okay because it will never happen to you". Well, that's what the victims' friends and families told them, yet they died. Why? Because knife crimes were cool. Cool. What sort of fucked-up world would think that taking somebody else's life--the one most precious thing in the world--is cool? Does this say something about our world? Do we enjoy living on the edge so much that we need deaths to satisfy us? Are we that blood-thirsty now? Is this why people are encouraged to commit violent acts? There are countless excuses for violence and meanness: mental problems, emotional problems, stress, jealousy, financial problems... But that's all they are. Excuses. Not justifications.

You look at the world around you, and it's filled with an air of deadness. Of course there are nice people--I'm not suicidal or pessemistic enough to think that there is absolutely no good in this world--but in this--let's face it--terrifying world we live in, is world peace really such a joke? Is it that stupid of an idea, or is it just so unrealistic that it's merely a dream we revere but not aspire to?