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Addendum
URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/
Issue# 52 : We don't have the right!
19th May 2002
Author: Steak
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As I look over the past happenings in my life I cannot help but notice the
people who I have known that have passed on from this world, people
like my sister, my grand father, my fifth grade teacher etc and I wonder
where they are right now. It seems so strange that they should no longer
be on this earth.

I think back and I can remember them, I can almost hear them talking to 
me, I know what they sounded like I know how they looked, I know what 
it was like to pick up Ella, my little sister in my arms, and feel her 
breath on my cheek and now she and the rest have gone.

My mother said the other day that she has taken on a sort of strange
mythological status, a sort of magic realm. This is in ways true,
however I see my entire life when she was alive as a sort of different
life, almost as if I had died and changed lives.

Maybe it is my own way of coping with it all, to file it all away
under another life, to keep it all from not being accessed. I don't
know, have I really come to terms with it or am I just paying for time
until it all comes crashing down on me. I don't know.

And with all this thought about these sorts of things, my thoughts 
turn to my own death. Some times it really does trip me out, I will
be sitting down, maybe listing to music or watching something practically
funny, usually late at night, or reading a book and it will just hit
me. One day I will not exist.

One day I will not be able to take a walk in the park, read a good
book or listen to music, one day I will not be able to enjoy a
hug from my girlfriend, or feel the grass in my toes as I walk
through a field on a bright summers morning. And that scares me

I suppose it is the fact that I don't know what will happen after
I pass on; after all it is just normal that humans should be scared
of the unknown, it is natural. But I think I know what it was like,
the time before I was born I feel was much the same, I had no
knowledge of anything or anyone and that scares me. I now know what
I can feel I really enjoy my life and I don't want it to be taken
away. I want to live forever, I know people say that they wouldn’t 
want that, I know they feel that they would have to watch all their
friends die, and that would hurt, but I want to be able to feel
the good things in life for ever. I do, I don't want to die.

But I must realize that just like the beetle, the mosquito, the cat,
the rose and everything else I will one day go back into the system
of everything, I will not be around to see the first manned launch
into deep space, or the fifty thousand terahertz processor. Just like
Ella and my year five teacher will not be around to see E3 this year
or the publishing of this Addendum, it is very sad.

I guess with times like these you really have to look at the big
picture, you have to consider it selfish to worry about your own
death when many things including people are dieing everyday.

I guess it all comes down to the thing I discussed in issue number
eight, that you really only care about yourself family and friends,
and when it comes to looking at the big picture humans are
disconcertingly unable to comprehend such a thing.

We are surrounded by images of death everyday, you watch a movie,
there will be hundreds of killings in it, sometimes watching the
news you can see people actually being killed for real, yet it
all just floods by us because we are so desensitized to the
slaughter That doesn't seem right for me.

When playing half life, do you ever think about what that scientist 
is thinking as he runs away from you screaming for his very life 
just before you jump round the corner and pump several shotgun 
rounds into his fragile now dead body, you laughing at the humorous 
way that his head parted company from the rest of his body,

Do you wonder how that bady felt in that movie you watched as he 
fell into that vat of sulfuric acid and had all his flesh melted away
until he was nothing but skin and bone.

"But it’s not real!" I hear you cry; yes I know it's not real
but what I am saying is that when we really do see it, death that
is, it washes over us. We don't care.

I saw pictures of an afghani man being gunned down in the middle of
the street my American sympathizes the other day as his screaming wife
and children watched their father and husband, the person that they 
loved get filled with bullets. The pictures CNN doesn't want you to see,
the anti patriotic ones. It was not a pretty site, and it started
to wash over me, after all I had seen much worse in horror movies right?

Then it dawned on me, this was a man with a wife and kids loosing his
life right here before my eyes, and I became horribly ashamed of 
myself, how could I not think of this man, for now he would never be 
able to read a book or listen to music, his wife and children, if not
raped were now mentally scarred for life because of what they had
witnessed. It really is troubling. 

What give us or anyone the right to take life?

The American people recently executed timothy mc'veie (sp?) he was
gassed and killed in a little room in a state prison with police
looking on while they deprived a man of his life, what gives us the 
right? I mean yes he took the life of others, yes he had no right
either but does that mean we should kill him? I don't think that's
fair, two wrongs don't make a right I was told from birth. So why 
should we punish him, maybe we should take the massage he was trying
to give us to heart, if he felt he needed to kill all those people
for it then it has to be something important no?

And the September 11th disaster, it must take a shit load of guts
to commandeer a plane and kill yourself by flying into a building
and taking the life of everyone on board. Trust me they had a good
reason to do that, nobody would do that with out a valid reason, not 
that I am condoning it at all, nobody has the right to take a human 
life, *not even Americans* but they would not have done it if they 
did not have good reason.

But instead of listening to there reasons and trying to correct the
problems so that it doesn't happen again, they sit round tables
drink coffee and launch war on a country that they will never even
see for real and send many many men to their deaths in the name
of "America"

They want their revenge, to quote T'pol from Enterprise
"revenge is a primitive emotion" and she is dead right (when
are the Vulcans not?) why can't we get over the revenge idea
and try to correct our problems, can we not live in peace, and
try to live out our lives as happy individuals and try to come
to terms with our own deaths that will eventually befall us
or do we have to keep going on like we are.

We will never evolve out of this because kindness and compassion
is not something we need to survive. The human race has stopped
evolving. We can now survive on nothing, even if we are dumb, blind
deaf and spastic we are still aloud to live. When do you see
a cheetah that cannot move? never because natural selection takes
them out of the equation. I'm not saying kill the retards I'm
just saying that the human race has stopped evolving. And this is
sad.

We believe we are perfect, we are far from it.
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Addendum
(C) Steak May 2002
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