"Sometimes you didn’t want to know the end."

Before you, dear readers, start whining about the fact that this entry does not meet the blog's description—you know, the small penis, big mouth, funny, hahaha-thingy—I hereby immediately admit that you're right. However, this is a thing that I personally care about, so I figure it fits this place as good as a small-penis-big-mouth-funny-hahaha-post... 

Let's start again... 

 

"Sometimes you didn’t want to know the end." 

 

"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings ... I have no conscience, so that does not worry me. I don't believe in Man, God, nor Devil. I hate the whole damned human race, including myself."  

— Carl Panzram  

 

 

According to Wikipedia, Carl Panzram (June 28, 1892 – September 5, 1930) was a serial killer, rapist, arsonist, and burglar. In prison confessions and his autobiography, he claimed to have committed 21 murders, most of which could not be corroborated, and over 1,000 sodomies of boys and men. After a series of imprisonments and escapes, he was executed in 1930 for the murder of a prison employee at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. 

Why Carl, you ask? Since, and this is my opinion, the human race is turning into him.  

When I browse the internet, or watch TV—something I hardly ever do—I am shocked sometimes at the state of mind of the human race. Dumb&Dumber 2.0, to say the least. People seem to care more for Funny Cat Video's than about the pollution of our planet. 

And don't tell me it isn't true. 

Water-pollution, air-pollution; people don't care. Because it's "all because of the immigrants". And when it's not the immigrants, it's the gays. Or the feminists. And the polar bears don't deserve any better. And who cares about penguins anyway? This whole climate-change-thing is a sham, I heard the other day. Sure. That's why we have the demographics. Funny Cat Video: shares 100,056,837,456,372,784,726,475,768. Random Greenpeace Video: shares 2,000. 

And that's summons up the world today. 

It saddens me. Truly.  

Pollution of the entire earth’s water supply, to enter some topic here, is evident in the fact that there is hardly a clean river on the planet and in the fact of frequent catastrophic oil well and oil tanker spills, not to mention huge oceanic garbage patches of floating plastic and less visible masses of plastic microfibers. The problem of seaborne plastic pollution is growing alarmingly each year. Plastic is not readily biodegradable, and the tiny microfibers are swallowed by marine life and thus enter the food chain. The concern is that the chemical composition of acrylic, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyamide and polyester may be harmful to marine life and human life once ingested. Yeah! Funny Cat Video! 

And people like Carl Panzram tend to be Malthusians who want to "solve overpopulation" or restore the planet to its "natural" (i.e., non-human) state. Funny Cat Video that! 

However, about 1% of the population (and I round that number up, in case you wondered) does however care. Not only about themselves, their believes or their religions. They tend to care about the future of the human race, the animal kingdom and the survival of this planet. 

 

10th December is International Human Rights Day and starts the one year lead up to the 70th anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The United Nations is kicking off a year-long campaign to mark the 70th anniversary to raise awareness about the importance of human rights. The global organisation, made up of 193 member states, explains that: “The principles enshrined in the Declaration are as relevant today as they were in 1948. We need to stand up for our own rights and those of others. We can take action in our own daily lives, to uphold the rights that protect us all and thereby promote the kinship of all human beings.” 

Since 1948, new problems facing humanity have arisen. Climate change is one of them and has become a full-blown human rights crisis. Now it’s time for us to take action to uphold the rights of the people who are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because in the end all of our rights are on the line.  

According to Greenpeace, "The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines has asked the biggest oil, gas, coal and cement companies to attend a meeting in Manila on 11th December to agree the next steps in a full-blown national inquiry into their responsibility for human rights abuses resulting from climate impacts.  Extreme weather fuelled by climate change is making life worse for those on the frontlines of climate change, like the communities in the Philippines. Their basic rights to food, water, shelter, health, and even life are being threatened by climate change. International Human Rights Day underscores the importance of human rights: we, the people, have rights, states have duties, and companies have responsibilities to protect these rights. No oil, gas, or coal company has a right to pollute the climate, and those who undermine, threaten, and violate human rights must be held accountable. 

The national inquiry was triggered by a legal petition filed by disaster survivors, community leaders, Greenpeace Southeast Asia and 13 other organisations, two years after the deadly and devastating super-typhoon Haiyan, which killed at least 6,300 people and affected millions more in 2013. 

Filipinos want to know how these polluters will change the fossil fuel business so that their children and future generations don’t have to face deadly and devastating climate impacts." 

The whole planet is being assaulted by human beings and human activity. Compare this troubling situation, in which man has besmirched virtually everything he has touched, with the words describing the Creator’s assessment of His work during Creation Week: “And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31). Into this very favourable environment God had introduced the first human, placing him in a garden setting to “tend and keep” it. The sense of the Hebrew is to till the land and care for, protect and nurture it. 

American writer Wendell Berry applies this instruction as follows, “We have been given the earth to live, not on, but with and from, and only on the condition that we care properly for it. We did not make it, and we know little about it. Above all, we must not damage it permanently or compromise its natural means of sustaining itself.” 

Climate change affects us all and, if we don’t do anything about it, the way we live will change forever. If we all stand with the brave people taking legal action in the Philippines now, we have a chance to create a tipping point that could save the climate from corporate greed. 

We are all in this together, and people are rising up around the world. The national inquiry in the Philippines is one of many people-powered legal actions. Greenpeace Nordic and Nature & Youth in Norway, young people in the US, senior women in Switzerland, a Peruvian farmer in Germany, a law student in New Zealand, and many others, are taking legal action to protect our right to a stable climate and healthy environment. 

 

These few, small people—the ones who stand up and act—were once also described in Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings. You might think "yeah, but that's fiction," and you're right. 

However, The Lord Of The Rings has always been a symbolic parable to the real world we live in, and thus, directly correlated to the same questions and concepts that our world faces… 

Let me take you to a scene from the film The Two Towers, in which this whole human mess is described so beautifully. 

 

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam. 

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. 

But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. 

The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, 

and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. 

Because how could the end be happy.  

How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? 

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. 

Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. 

And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. 

Those were the stories that stayed with you. 

That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. 

But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. 

Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. 

Because they were holding on to something. 

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam? 

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for. 

 

There's still some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for... You only have to make a choice. Are you going to be Sam? Or are you going to be Carl Panzram? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original text from the book: 

'Yes, that's so,' said Sam. `And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into? ' 

`I wonder,' said Frodo. 'But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.' 

'No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it – and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got – you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end? ' 

'No, they never end as tales,' said Frodo. `But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.' 

'And then we can have some rest and some sleep,' said Sam. He laughed grimly. 'And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning's work in the garden. I'm afraid that's all I'm hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, or course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring! " And they'll say: "Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave. wasn't he, dad?" "Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot."' 

`It's saying a lot too much,' said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. 'Why, Sam,' he said, 'to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you've left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. "I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad? " ' 

`Now, Mr. Frodo,' said Sam, 'you shouldn't make fun. I was serious. ' 

`So was I,' said Frodo, 'and so I am. We're going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: "Shut the book now, dad; we don't want to read any more." ' 

`Maybe,' said Sam, 'but I wouldn't be one to say that. Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different. Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he thinks he's the hero or the villain?