The need to get involved

There can be no doubt that human beings are capable of the very worst acts, as we have been fully aware for a long time now. We see this in wars, terrorist attacks and genocides; but also in the everyday statistics for bullying at school, reported offences, abuse. Such events happen both here and there, in a small Anatolian village or the big city right next to us. Reality shows that our most commonplace acts are subject to complex tensions, full of contradictions, half-truths, jealousies and interests. From the grey zones between good and evil, people betray their own principles. Men and women cause harm, and then strive to make up for it. We create injustice and then seek to combat it. Love, justice, ideologies, friendship… all contaminated by a mediocre version of the world that ends only in suffering and ennui.

But what is our responsibility regarding all this? Are we victims, or are we responsible for our fate, by living submissively within a system that lacks solidarity, that cancels out and destroys us, while shattering communal values, to be replaced with rabid individualism?

It is hard to know. What would seem undeniable is that there is no time left to look the other way. Only by getting involved will we be able to achieve a true and complete understanding of ourselves and of what is happening to us. It is down to us to take responsibility for our fate, to fight for a new crucible in which to forge the rights needed for a better world. The question is: will we prove capable?

Photo: © Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Film:About Dry Grasses