Civilization is culture.
It reflects our humanity.
If we loose our humanity, civilization disintegrates and society with it.
Healing begins with a private renaissance.
While Dayita made this last comparison of the coveted imperial depopulation project I felt terribly ill. I saw the images of the genocide that she had talked about earlier, flashing into my mind. I was loosing my breath. I was beginning to cry. "Mankind must awake and prevent this while there is still time to do so!"
I heard myself say in protest, again and again, "this can't be allowed! This mustn't happen!"
I felt tears running down my face. The tears came unstoppable. The tears were for the people I had seen and had learned to admire during the conference, people like Nic, Astrid, Tara, and others. I could see their faces. I beheld their smiles. I remembered their gentle manners and their feelings and concerns for one-another and the world. I could mentally see them being erased. I cried for them, for myself, for the loss of humanity to the world. I couldn't control the deeply stirred emotions from this sudden eruption of a deep-reaching unspeakable sadness. I got up hastily and left the auditorium. I made it to the far end of the lobby before I broke down completely.
I cried not because the statistics had been overwhelming. I knew the statistics. I understood what they meant. I had talked about these issues with Steve and with others before him, and also with Nic. Indeed, the woman hadn't presented anything that I didn't already know. In fact, she had stepped lightly in defining the horror. I cried, because this knowledge had suddenly been given a new dimension against the background of an unfolding love that had come into my life, of people I had come into contact with. My love had begun to envelop them and myself. It had made everyone more precious. I suddenly felt more deeply for those people, including those that I had met only in passing at the conference. I cried also for the little Soviet children who had sung for us during the opening ceremony, and also for the beautiful people that I had fallen in love with five times in ten minutes in Randy's way. How many of them would find themselves on the target lists? And that didn't include all those other people who were most dear to me back home and abroad, like Sylvia, Ushi, Steve, Tony, and everyone else that I knew and embraced in my love, including all the rest of mankind that suddenly appeared much more precious. They were all suddenly caught up in this flow of death as targeted victims.
I cried because I knew Dayita from India had not fabricated one single aspect of her ugly presentation, because India was her home where this train of insanity began. Thus she had gone lightly over the facts. I felt deep within me that everything that she had said did have the potential to come to pass, because no one of humanity had cared enough for 3,500 years to raise one finger to stop the 'empires of the willing' from unleashing their tragedy, which the modern empires had promised they would unleash anew in ever larger measures. I cried, because the movement for a new renaissance of love that Steve, Ushi, and I had hoped to set in motion seemed so hopelessly feeble all of a sudden. I hardly noticed in my up welling agony that someone was sitting beside me.
I had rushed to the far end of the lobby in the hope to be alone. Even this seemed to be denied to me now. As I looked up, I noticed a woman sitting beside me offering me a handkerchief to try my tears. "Let me help you," she said in English with a Russian accent. She spoke with a lovely and clear voice. I looked at her, questioningly. She appeared to be one of the Soviet students who had organized the conference. She was sitting patiently beside me, offering me her handkerchief. I had noticed that her face seemed familiar. Perhaps she had been ushering at one of the doors. Now she was reaching out to me with an open hand. She began to smile as I looked at her. Her smile seemed infinitely precious against the dark predictions that would likely come true some day. Her smile appeared like a light in that darkness.
