Is Society Getting Worse? | Teen Ink

Is Society Getting Worse?

January 21, 2018
By Sana_Rafaqat BRONZE, Mars, Pennsylvania
Sana_Rafaqat BRONZE, Mars, Pennsylvania
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

George Bernard Shaw said, “ We must always think about things and we must think about things as they are, not as they should be.”  All of my friends know what I went through in Pakistan I never hid it, it’s impossible to hide something like that. Anytime in class we talk about countries that are struggling or have had an act of  terrorism, I get a flashback of all the faces I saw the one day that changed a lot for me. It’s not that I can’t handle it, but I wonder if anyone had gone through anything similar to the explosion. It’s because I hear some negatives that makes me realize they have it easy, or maybe I’m just wrong because you can’t truly know a person just by looking at them. Not a lot of people know what it is have your life ripped apart in blink of an eye. Unfortunately I’ve seen it with my eyes and have experienced it myself.  


We live in a world where society is capable of such horror that we have to prepare ourselves to a worst case scenario. It terrifies me that we have to practice lockdown drills, but on the other hand it is a wake up call that society has gone down a road from which it can never come back. Some parts of society have already labeled the Middle East as the origin of terrorism. Society is quick to judge people. It’s not a choice but a human instinct. Everyday I get a reminder of what the society is truly capable of.


Over time we have dug ourselves a tremendous hole which there is no way out of. In America we don’t see a lot of violence, but in the Middle East where ever you look you see violence and it’s everyday. Living here is a luxury that some people do not have; sometimes we take it for granted. I can agree because sometimes even I take it for granted, that is why I go back to the Middle East every two to three years to get a grasp of reality that I can’t get in America sometimes. Also to see how easy I have it now, so I never forget that there is a world outside of the walls and it is slowly disintegrating. In my American History class, we were trying to recall the attacks that had happened in the US and everyone knew about them, but when it came to the Middle East attacks the room fell into silence.I realized it’s too easy to forget what goes on outside my world. I’ve been in a position where sometimes I don’t even  know what is  going on in the Middle East and I know that’s wrong.


I get taken aback when I ask myself that if the world can come together for a tragedy in American or in Europe, can they not come together for a country or the people in the Middle East? We are quick to judge things we do not understand, we walk the other way without hearing the other side. No matter how hard we try we are always going to have an enemy. Even if we win this war, the victory won’t be so pleasing because if we take one look at  what we did and how many lives it cost, it won’t be so pleasing because it’s never worth killing millions of innocent people for a handful of guilty people. It’s ironic that it takes sadness to know what happiness is, noise to appreciate silence and absence to value presence. It’s that we have to go through worst of what humanity can do to learn the important things in life. What humans don’t get is that people aren’t perfect, but the relationships we make are. We can never grasp what really goes on around us. But if you stop and look we just might truly see both side of the argument. One of my favorite poets once wrote “Reality can destroy dreams; Why shouldn’t dream destroy reality?”-George Moore.


The author's comments:

In my opinion there are things that are never said but everyone knows. Looking at the environment that we live and how blind we are to our surroundings suprises me. I wrote this piece because I believe that these are just somethings that are never said but we all know it is true but we don't give it a second thougth. Which is why I wonder why is that?


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