In case any of you are wondering about my site banner, it’s a reminder to myself that we humans are capable of both great evil and great good.
The images on the banner are the combination of a World War II holocaust picture and a graphic I created of a Glock 23, a .40 caliber pistol I own and often target shoot with. To me, the pistol represents great good. It affirms my natural right to self-defense. The holocaust image reminds me that humans are capable of great evil. The tsunami that recently killed more than 100,000 people in Asia and Africa is staggering, but I am reminded that in the 20th century governments run by human beings killed more than 100 million of their own citizens. Nature’s cruelty doesn’t begin to compare to the cruelty we ourselves have inflicted on each other throughout our history.
I suppose it all depends who is wielding the pistol. We haven’t done a very good job of passing out pistols to the right people worldwide.
Today is the first day of a new year in my life and in human history. I wonder what we’ve learned from the previous year. Most of us have probably learned very little. That makes me sad.
The man in the picture to the right was the subject of a high pressure experiment in one of World War II’s concentration camp. He is long dead by now, but at the time the image was made, the man in it was being slowly crushed to death just to see how much a human being can stand. He was a lab rat.