Ethical Responsibility

We converge ourselves into the masses of high school students and look around, hearing the conversations and becoming the topic of such in a deeply personal manner. From time to time it’s only a product of normalcy and pragmatism to wonder where most of these aggregate confines apply their minds to in common speculation. Quite often I myself ask what these people live for. What gives them purpose and what gives them joy. The hopes and dreams in a seemingly ambiguous existence we are all heir too as they either vastly expand or simply whimper as they diminish into restrictions violently forced by another. All the exciting and transcendent realizations, objective observations and perceived illusions, the intimate affections of ardent love and life as well as crippling “traumas”, whether they miss anybody; all of course bound to be sketched into our fates yet I feel much obliged to constantly questions this sometimes seemingly self-deluded and centered way of life.

Considering the numerable atrocious exploits and infinitely crucial politics and philosophy which now engulfs the world; as human beings containing a liberty to be potent in such a society we must acknowledge an ethical responsibility for global events and acquiesce the materialistic basis for most modern living.

Though I must admit my cynicism in relation to such circumstances, it seems as if it’s asking far too much. After-all, looking around and bearing witness to petty disputes leading to violence with insidious intent as well as a devastating disappointment in regards to the apathy to the plights of people we see around every day. Surely our humanity must be brought into question at each glance of overwhelming rage and disregard for compassion, why is it that comfort best’s altruism at seeing another mourn? What is it about tears that spurns a need to escape from such a presence as opposed to an attempt to remedy such a despairing yearn?

Of course that isn’t to say every individual we come across which manage to spark laughter is a bad person, but how much focus do we put on the way we treat each other. When meeting eyes is contempt present in our conscience, glimpsing into the depth of another’s life are we able to defend ourselves from the falsity of malice and hatred?

Many of us are. Fully capable and it is the ties we hold to each other as people which makes it so. Despite the known fervent aggressions and lustrous bloodshed of man forever present will be those whom show love, the very emotion which fills the void of an unbearable loneliness in the vastly unimaginable empty space of the cosmos.

This fairly amateur drawing depicts such a tragedy, even in a remote and cold harsh environment we are all capable of releasing such a compassion and fair grace. Recalling the early development and working of the Earth a frailty most noticed as the pioneers of life began to sweep across a deserted horizon under the swift evolution of nature. In such a light much of our wars and disputes seem childishly paradoxical don’t they? A land desolate and dark in the past now blossoming with life eventually to be met with the threats and hazards created by those thought to be most cognitively awake to the point of harming themselves. Taking into the consideration all the withdrawal of intimacy now faced it’s possible to consider such a wreckage and debris to arise once again, leaving only the basis for a short opportunity for future life as it timidly strides for light in the developed obscurity.

That’s what I see when pondering the drawing, an insight into the continuity of time endured by us; our past, present, and future.  As the fleeting importance of ethics and philosophy wither away it is to note a hope and opportunity presented to all is an option to care. To succumb to vice and corrode the longing cry for empathy or perhaps a path arisen as a beautifully developed species enriched by the transparency of the depth of our souls. Much to be cherished are our connections to one another in life, however for all the grandeur we also are more deserving as humans in totality for the care we give to those we might not ever meet.

 - Jorge Roque