A couple of thoughts I want to note down after seeing Hotel Rwanda last night, which is a well done movie. What stroke me is the fact that by now there have been a few genocides in the last decade and there are still a couple if not few in development. What is astonishing is how desensitized the world has become to this phenomena and how the word unity is used on a daily basis where we are so far away from it. Let’s break down what I mean here. Take the genocide story of Rwanda, during the course of some three months around 1 million Hutus and Tutsis were killed. That is the population size of greater Seattle or greater Stockholm, take a second to imagine that, one of these cities disappear withing the course of three months. This doesn’t shock people anymore, and in fact to use a line from the movie itself, “people will see it on the news, say oh my God! that is tragic and then proceed to eat dinner”. Now obviously a lot has to do with the fact that this didn’t happen in one of the developed country or we wouldn’t have heard the end of it (e.g. if it happened in one the cities I mentioned). But nevertheless this brings me to what I mentioned about unity.

What does this have to do with unity? Well, I believe if there was unity between the peoples of this planet, these genocides would never have taken place or even if they were, they would have been stopped very quickly. I hear the word unity here and there, how doing this brings unity between the people or the fact that a city’s basketball team winning a championship makes the people of that city more united. What does that mean? The way I see it the highest degree of unity we see in the world today is empathy and I am talking between larger populations, whether within or between countries. If we see people starve, suffer or murdered, which we do on a daily basis on the news most of us feel bad and empathic and move on with our lives. What is unity then? Well, unity to me is when I simply can’t bear to see someone starve, suffer or die and have to stop and help them. Just the way I would do for any of my family members. Imagine the power of this now for a second. If I see my child sick and unable to eat, I simply cant eat anything until I make sure everything is done in my power to help my child. If the population of America or any other developed country stopped eating simply because they can’t bear seeing another people die of starvation, would the leaders of that developed country not help out to their maximum ability the poor country? So, the power a unity is something very few of us get to experience and see on a larger scale. In ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s word from the book Foundation of World Unity, true spiritual unity

“…creates such a condition in mankind that each one will make sacrifices for the other and the utmost desire will be to forfeit life and all that pertains to it in behalf of another’s good.”