Phew, this thread sure has been a whole lot longer than I thought it would be
joseph raccoon - Thanks for the critique! It does seem like keeping things simple usually has more of an impact. I think I would actually agree with you quite a bit on some of the other things you said as well. I’ve heard quite a few stories of people that seem to take care for everyone but their family, and the consequences of that are pretty awful as well. I think in a weird sort of way, one actually can love the people around them by taking care of themselves, because it means someone else doesn’t have to take care of you. Also, if I were to give everything I had to someone else, I would have nothing and then someone else would have to give everything they had to me, etc. etc. and it just wouldn’t work. That’s why I tried not to make it about someone who was homeless as much, but more how the love that is in the heart in those small acts of kindness and goodness effect such big things as entire nations. I guess the way I see it is whenever I have done an awful thing to someone, it seems like it usually comes out of a lack of love or compassion for them.
I would also agree that we definitely could all do with more humility, myself very much included. Sometimes I find it’s hard to admit that I was wrong; I’ve no idea why this is but it definitely happens sometimes.
Estajxo - Be sure to read my second post. I didn’t add Van Gogh because of what he did to others, but who he was as a person.
It was not bad that Karl Marx was poor, it was bad that he chose to write and philosophize instead of taking care of his family, when he could have taken care of his family and wrote on the side. Even just cooking and taking care of the house so his wife could work would have made a huge difference. You may like his philosophy, but is that really who you want to model your life after? Imagine if everyone lived that way, the world would be far worse than it is now.
Also, this image wasn’t about nations, but about people, and more about just asking the question of who should we want to become and model our own lives after? Should we look up to people for their greatness and fame or for the goodness they lived their lives with? I just find it to be such an amazing thought that if all the people that I mentioned, as well as all the people I forgot about, had loved instead of hated with the same love it takes to give a glass of water on a hot day, history would have been completely different. And if you think about it, Karl Marx probably would have never even felt the need to write his book if the ones who had money had had love for the ones who didn’t. This is really just my own personal opinion and I don’t expect anyone else to believe it as well, but it seems like love should be looked at as what is truly great, not the things we achieve in life.
cart - Thanks! I am doing a bit better now.
And I actually am sorry now that I did name specific people, it really seems to have detracted a lot from the heart of what the image is about. I guess that’s life though, you learn new things and hope to do better the next time.
With Che, I probably shouldn’t have grouped him with Stalin, Mao, and Napolean and I would agree with you that it’s important to get both sides of the story (hopefully unbiased), but I was actually more going according to his own writings. I’ve just never in my entire life known a loving person who writes things like, "will bathe my weapon in blood and, mad with fury, will slit the throat of any enemy that falls into my hands. …I feel my nostrils dilated, tasting the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood, of dead enemy, " or this, “Here, in the Cuban jungle, alive and thirsting for blood, I write to you these inflamed lines inspired by Martí.” It just seems like he did things more out of hatred for anyone he saw as an oppressor instead of out of love for the ones being oppressed. And please don’t get mad at me for saying this, I’m not at all trying to compare him to Hitler, but once you start hating people instead of loving them, it’s very easy to do the things Hitler, and so many others who hated people, have done. You just kind of become what you hated so much in the first place. I guess it just seems like if we choose to hate people, we don’t really have any grounding for being against others who have hated people because aren’t we just the same in the end? That is really one of the reasons why, I think at least, love is such an important thing to have. He might not have actually said those things, I don’t know the language he wrote them in to read it myself, and granted, they are taken out of context, but at face value at least, it does appear that he did.
Toshiro - Thank you for that, it really wasn’t my intention to appear hateful.
Jamie B - Wow! That’s pretty amazing to me. Thanks for letting me know.
Well, thanks to everyone who posted, I’ve really learned quite a bit from this experience. I guess this post is a whole bigger than I thought it would be too:)