Matthew 5:5

“Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth”

The teaching of almost every religion and philosophy across the world teach the simple idea that those who live meekly and unobtrusively shall be rewarded for their good behavior. Laws then take these moral codes and re-apply them in a way that a society is best able to function. However, all these religions tell tales of those who saw the unjust events that took place in their world and made a stand. They showed the world that it doesn’t have to be the way that it is and in doing so they were idolized and used as an icon of how people could live life and be happy. These same beliefs and morals have guided famous peoples for thousands of years and many of them teach the same thing. When put side by side the teachings of Gandhi are extremely close to those of Jesus or Siddhartha. So if all these people where saying similar things then what was it that made these people so famous when people have been trying to teach others to be good since the beginning of time?

The thing that made these peoples famous wasn’t what they said; it was the fact that they believed what they said so adamantly that they stood against those in power. Despite what horrors and suffering they may have faced they cared more for an idea than they did for their own well-being. From here when can bring these peoples to and equal plane as the founding fathers of the United States, Che Guevara, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and thousands of others.

Each of these peoples had their own cause, each stood valiantly in the face of danger. These people had such devotion that their efforts were, or will be, recorded for hundreds of years. And why? It wasn’t what they stood for; Hitler is recorded more than most despite how malicious his ideals were, it was the fact they made a stand for what they believed in.

And now what about all the others? Today there are approximately two billion people in this world. The sad fact is that of these two million people, far less than one percent will make enough of an impression on this world to even be mentioned in a history book. These people will live out their entire lives unwilling to stand behind their beliefs enough to actually stand for them. Yes, we talk about the things that make us mad in this world and we might send our fifty cents a day to those starving kids in Africa, but most of us are more concerned with how much is in our wallet than how much we’ll effect the world.

But there are more culprits to this than just ourselves, for we have been programmed to be this way. Our lives are flooded with influences, most of which are pushing for one thing: control. The media, the car dealerships, the electronics manufacturers, the music industry, it all serves the simple purpose of a distraction. We want the biggest house, the fastest car, the hottest girls and the fattest wallet and so long as those things are shoved in our faces constantly most other things fade into the background of our daily lives. We are being trained to be followers, brainwashed by materialism and subdued by those in power.

“Our world is not the same as Othello’s world. You can’t make flivvers without steel-and you can’t make tragedies without social instability. The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get…And if anything should go wrong, there’s soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty! Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy, of course Othello is better than those feelies. But that’s the price we have to pay for stability. You’ve got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art.” World Controller Mustapha Mond, (Brave New World)

We may not have completely fallen into Aldous Huxley’s world but our world is getting dangerously close. Far to many people make an appearance in our history books as a simple number, two billion…