Judgment of the Human Race

One of my favorite movies, The Abyss, has a poignant message at the end that I want to share with you. It is regarding the human race's violence toward each other.

This is a trailer for the movie.

This blog contains spoilers, so if you'd like to watch the movie, come back to read this later. This is an extended scene so you won't find it in the theatrical release.

In this movie, a group of deep sea oil drillers have discovered a strange new life form: aliens who live at the bottom of the ocean. A Navy Seal with severe paranoia sends a nuclear bomb down to the aliens and the head of the drilling crew, Bud, goes down to dismantle the bomb. He leaves his wife, formerly estranged and now in love again, to go three miles down into a trench, sacrificing himself to save an unknown species of intelligent life. He dismantles the nuclear bomb, and when he is out of oxygen, the aliens take him into their city to save his life. They then communicate to him their concerns for the human race as a result of their watching the humans for a long time.

This is what happens.

As intelligent animals, we so often use our new technology for destruction. In the last century, the ways of waging war has changed completely. Instead of rifles and bayonets we have tanks, machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, war ships, automatic weapons, snipers, drones, fighter jets, biological weapons, and bombs that can destroy everything within 34 miles and injure anyone up to 60 miles away.

We have inflicted on each other slavery, genocide, forced prostitution, and the Holocaust, We have mass shootings of children by children, murders, rapes, beatings, and the abuse of one's own family.

There are people like  Jeffrey Dahmer, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Ed Gein, Vlad the Impaler, Countess Elizabeth Bathroy, Ted Bundy, and Jack the Ripper.

As a race, we have done truly atrocious things to one another and to judge us by these actions would be understandable. We advertise our own violence on the news more than we do the wonderful acts of kindness that happen around the world. We expect the bad more than we hope for the good. We judge others with misconceptions and falsehoods. We don't trust others to be good and honest. We teach our children to hate and commit horrible acts for the sake of sheer ignorance. We kill each other over who is on the receiving end of our prayers. We hate what is not like ourselves and judge others within that frame of reference. We make snap judgments and jump to conclusions. We will accept lies more than truth. We can be narrow-minded and cruel, intolerant and violent.

There are groups like the KKK, Nazis, Al Qaeda, Neo-Nazis, and so many more.

We do so much violence and that is most of the news. But there is so much good in this world if we simply reach out to each other and help.