So What?

I can't decide if I am happy or sad today. I think it's the weather. Sunny - cloudy pouring rain blowing wind is a tornado coming - sunny. Mother Nature isn't sure and apparently, neither am I. As I was walking to class today, I was watching all the worms who are out of their holes, looking for a drier place. Silly, but it seemed so triumphant when I saw one who had made it to the pavement, safe from the underground flood. I wonder how nature can be so beautiful and cruel all at the same time. I overheard someone in one of my classes say she doesn't care about global warming or environmental issues, that the ice caps can melt, and she'll just watch the waters roll in. That is all well and good, but the thing is, we're making decisions now for the future generations. Global warming isn't even so much about us, for we'll all be dead by the time the effects really hit hard. It's more about a connectivity between time and people. And I'm not looking to debate whether global warming is or isn't true; I'm more wondering about the human race I guess. How is it that we are so into ourselves, yet have such a capacity for empathy and compassion? I mean, comments like this girl in my class - I've made them before, and I've heard plenty of other people make them before. I remember after 9/11, the very day after, I was at work, and a girl said "Turn off the stupid tv. I don't care about that. It doesn't affect me." But yes, it does. Have we become so blind that we don't realize that any human problem is our problem? I just struggle with this. I told you I saw that play, Nine Parts of Desire, and I was chatting with my professor about it. She made a comment that really made me think. She said something along the lines of "I've traveled. I've seen poverty, and those people, really, they are okay. They are happy. But, Iraq, they were like us." As if, through some connection of living standards, it's different. They were like us. That has just been stirring in my heart the last week and I can't seem to get past it. What does that mean? We have all these sayings Education is power. We learn history so we don't repeat it. If education is power, then why do I feel so very powerless about Darfur? And studying history - do we really just mean we study it to make sure it doesn't happen to us? If Darfur were Paris...if Sudan were England....if it was happening to people more like us.... would things be different? Would it all of a sudden "affect us"? Yet, even still, I sit here, wondering these things, and so what? So I think about it. So I know about it. So it still goes on. So what?