07/12/2024
When Everyone Turns Their Backs, Who Will Save Us?
By: Nicole Angel Faith B. Pu-od
“When the world turns its back on you, you turn your back on the world” is a famous line ‘The Lion King’ that encourages mutual cruelty between society and the people living within it. It might seem logical to do, after all, you are merely reciprocating the actions done to you. But when everyone turns their back on each other when no one wants to see eye to eye anymore because of spite, who will we turn to? Who will help you when everyone has decided it's no longer worth it to be compassionate about others?
Many people grow up learning morals, simply figuring out what’s considered good and bad, what is acceptable and what’s not. For the most part, people learn quickly and for a moment, it’s all clear. What’s good is good and what’s bad is bad. That is what a child or even a teen thinks after living through a few chapters of their life. But at some point, that perspective shifts, and that idea, those thoughts labeled black and white become blurred somewhere because of a few exceptions. Those exceptions turn into loopholes, and those loopholes turn into more choices becoming blurred. Until everything suddenly has a ‘but’ connected to it, offering a failsafe, something that makes something inherently wrong, technically right. While the world uses that to its absolute advantage, deriving justice with expectations of scenarios where one needs to kill to protect oneself and emphasizing how things may not be as they seem, people on the other hand use it as an excuse to be cruel.
In the world that we live in today, it’s very unlikely to find compassion and genuine help. It’s become a world where everyone fends for themselves and it’s honestly quite as intriguing as it is concerning. I mean, how can a civilization that came from working together and sharing their resources to build nations and knowledge to create laws to protect their people be who they are today? People who seem to no longer care about their surroundings. People simply expect something in return for their ‘kindness’ because that’s simply how the world is. ‘Nothing comes for free’ they say but it was in the past, that people used to barter for their resources rather than print money and rely on a currency exchange to properly live. People acknowledge how much we’ve changed. But you hardly ever see them contemplate on the bad ways we’ve evolved, choosing to wear crimson glass and focus on the good things.
People changed for the worse. We have to admit that. Because if we don’t we’ll end up losing the very things that make us human. Day by day people become more selfish. Day by day people buy into the “survival of the fittest” ideology, not caring if their neighbors or fellow humans die out on the streets so as long as they are doing fine. Day by day, as the price of things skyrockets, everyone becomes more hesitant about helping the people on the streets, not even giving a single coin. As the world turns, humans are losing a sense of compassion that is the very essence of who they are. Humans slowly turn their backs on the suffering of others, enjoying their own lives because ‘that’s just life’.
As sad as it sounds, that’s how the world is evolving. That’s how the world is beginning to look like. No one cares for each other when it should be common sense that it’s easier if we stand together rather than dividing ourselves into small groups and eventually isolating ourselves into a lone island that goes against our initial code of conduct. We are humans. We need each other to survive because the world simply holds too many responsibilities for us to take care of on our own. We live to be together, we exist to survive with the help of one another. So before you think of turning your back on the world because you’re tired of it all. When you think of giving up because you simply wanna wait for the relief, the moment you can escape the results of humanity’s actions, please stop for a moment and ask yourself “When everyone turns their backs to the world, who will save us?”.
