The modern plague

I caught the last part of a movie on TV this morning. It was the movie I am Legend with Will Smith. This was a movie I saw at Cinemark a couple of years ago. The images in it are powerful. I sat thinking about this film after I turned off the television and I began to wonder about the stories that become part of us.

With so much craziness in the world I can't help but ask the question about what types of stories we are incorporating into our lives. The film and video gaming world are full of stories about death and destruction. We look for superheros to come and save us from ourselves. Everywhere you turn there is some television program with horrific violence as part of the norm. The television news shows are full of people who abduct children and indiscriminate violence by young teenagers against other teenagers, drug cartels killing on a daily basis in Mexico, suicide bombers, war being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The news programs are full of families all wanting to get their 15 minutes of fame television time on the Today Show, Good Morning America or Larry King. The news channels have become news commentary channels with people of various backgrounds all telling us how the liberals or conservatives are all destroying our country. The newspapers now don't even bother trying to be balanced with their editorials and often the news sources they use to tell stories. Politicians and business people don't want anything done that might take away the profits from business. Even if their business is slowly killing the people or the environment of our planet.

As I watch all this I can't help but think about the stories that we are filling our hearts and souls with. Every television program we watch, every movie, every book, every play or piece of music that we take in becomes part of us in some way. I have been moved to action by reading stories in books which have inspired me to become a better person. I have watched films and plays of stories that make me stop and think about what I'm doing with my life and recognize the presence of God in other human beings.

So much of what I see today seems to be stories about how we kill each other. How we have to fight against everyone else to make sure that they don't take a single crumb from our table. We are creating stories that are destroying ourselves from the inside out. I know that you can play a violent video game and then not go out into the street to shoot someone. But if you incorporate that violence into your core then you become immune to stopping the violence that is around you. If you watch television shows or listen to radio programs that tear down your political opponents every day then you stop being willing to listen to people with other points of view. In the latest play on Broadway two couples get together to talk about their children fighting. It soon is revealed that one of the parents believes that you have to fight for everything in life. If you don't fight others they will walk all over you and you will have nothing. Our culture considers it a failure if someone else wins and you don't.

It is painful to stand idly by and watch us destroy ourselves. In I am Legend what was supposed to be a miracle drug to cure cancer turned into a plague that destroyed mankind. I sometimes wonder if our 24 hour news cycles, and violent video games, and films glorifying violence and destruction, and political commentary, and YouTube, and aren't doing the same thing to us. We will fight to the death, anyone who tries to take away, the right we have to destroy ourselves.

I'm just grateful I'm working on a comedy at the moment about a couple adopting a baby or I would go insane..