“I'm sitting in my office doing computer programming this morning, while the world out there is fighting, looting, revenging, searching, waiting and hoping (not in that particular order). The world is anything but in order. Yet in a room with no view, I sit at my desk coding, and the most immediate problem that concerns me goes no further beyond how to avoid a Java exception. The power of my existence this morning goes no further beyond my keyboard.”

I think I wanted to write something the other day when I started with that paragraph. But as usual I got bogged down and left it.

I remember that morning, when I was writing the above, the children in that Russian elementary school were mostly all alive. The standoff was still going on. The families of those, mostly children, held as hostages inside the school walls by Chechens rebels, were still anxiously waiting and praying across the street.

As of today when I’m picking up where I left off, I know many of these prayers didn’t get answered. Over three hundred innocent adults and children behind those school walls had gone in there on that first day of school, and didn’t make out live.

I see pictures of the local people standing across the street from that doomed school. Heaven forbid that one has to wait so helplessly while their loved ones are being ruthlessly killed and all they could do was praying hysterically. Hours, days would go by before they found out all they were left waiting for was to collect the bodies of their loved ones.

Following the news of what was happening inside those tall Russian school walls pains me. Although I know this pain is nothing compared to what any desperate mother had to bear when burying her child too young after that event.

However, what pains me even more is my knowing that today they’re done reporting this hostage taking turned bloodshed in Russia, tomorrow there will be killings elsewhere in this world, near or far, in which more mothers have to bury their children, more families have to cry over their lost loved ones to more bloodshed.

It just makes me sick to my stomach, that with all the tragic causes beyond our control today – traffic accidents, submarine mechanic failures, chronic illness, natural disasters, as if those are not enough for suffering, humans as a race are still killing each other amongst ourselves. The same reasons what our ancient ancestors living in caves used to kill for – possessions, revenge etc, we’re still doing the same countless generations later. Homicides and wars are in our daily newspaper.

I’ve always believed in evolution. If humans have so successfully evolved out of tails and what not, can we never move beyond the desire to kill each other? Or does evolution not apply here?

I read today’s news – there are articles on more suicide bombers in Iraq and Israel blowing up and taking how many victims with them. This kind of news has become so frequent lately that sometimes it doesn’t even make to the headlines any more. Yet every single time I read it, it doesn’t cease to chill and shock me.

Just how much does one have to hate to carry out something like that? What kind of hatred can cause you to want to destroy yourself to terrorize your enemy?

Just how ridiculous does it have to be, to believe that there is no better way to promote your cause than blowing yourself and a few harmless passers-by up?

Just how foolish do you have to be, to be proud of your child’s suicide bombing act because you think she died a ‘martyr’? Just when ever does committing cold murders against innocent street people make one a martyr? Do you really hate your enemies more than you love your children?

The answers are tremendously incomprehensible to me.

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War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.