Will it always be this way?

Sometimes I think the human history is like a sea crew fresh from conquest but lost at sea.  We travel the open water with blood on our hands and cargo full of treasure.  Our journey is a dichotomy of endless consumption and eternal loneliness.  Our feasting and consuming makes us feel like we understand what life is about, but only for a moment.  Once our prizes wear down we hunger for more.  I find in my own life that I often go after the wrong treasure.  It leaves me feeling alone, lost at sea.  I look back at my spoils and realize that they were all in vein.  What is the price of our endeavors and pursuit of self-gain?

The recent flare-up between Somali Pirates and Western sea shipping illustrates this even further.  It's an international paradox of worldly desire.  On one hand you have the American and European ships transporting goods from our capitalist conquest in the East back home to the West.  On the other hand you have an organized crime gang capturing and holding hostages, innocent merchants and seamen.  On first glance it seems that the ships crew is absolutely in the right and the pirates are absolutely in the wrong, but if you study the history of Somalia and uncover the plight of her people you may come to understand a much more intricate, heartbreaking story.  

In the early 1990's Somalia's government collapsed, leaving a land void of structure, order, and safety.  Around the same time Western nations capitalized on the situation and began to dump nuclear waster off the coast, as it was far cheaper to dump in a country with zero regulations than to follow the strict environmental regulations of their own lands.  It costs roughly $2.50 cents per ton to dump in the Somali ocean compared to $250 per ton to dispose in nuclear waste plants.  To Western companies its a no-brainer; dump in Somalia, who's going to stop us?

This turned tragic in December 2004 when an earthquake in Java measuring over 9.0 on the richter-scale triggered a tsunami that spread completely across the Indian Ocean and devastated dozens of nations including Somalia.  To make the catastrophe worse, radio-active material began to wash on shore causing dozens of deaths and numerous sicknesses.  

As the Somali people watch the West become wealthier and wealthier they began to feel more and more forgotten and helpless.  What more value is Somalia than a place for our ships to travel through, and our companies to dump their garbage?  And is it not at the cost of floundering nations like Somalia that we become fat and rich?  In no way am I condoning the actions of the pirates, as their tactics are down-right criminal, I am merely drawing attention the the paradox of humanity.  We pillage at the expense of others, and what does our pillaging really bring us but a lonely soul and a hunger for more?  This is a lesson history has taught generation after generation and we never seem to learn.   We still remain lonely.  We still long for more.  We are like a ship lost at sea, full of booty, but haunted by the ghosts of our conquest.   

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-02/2005-02-23-voa23.cfm

If there were a set of words

That could make this world work

Would you use your voice to free

This thorn from my flesh?

If I could buy you a home

Walls to keep you safe from harm

Would I use my will for you 

or Would I steal again

Sorrow is our song chorus

Sing as one voice all people

History bleeds as our Ghosts cry

For more than this life

Our ship has lost its course

And we can't see through the fog

Haunted by the waves below

Silence is our great foe

Was our pillaging worth

All this loneliness here?

We're so scared to drown and 

Face the truth of our lust

Some day we will fall into an

Ocean of sovereign seas

Where your love reigns  o'er suffering

Come soon, please come soon, heavenly