Crusade.

Something struck me this morning.

I’ve been paying attention to some of the recent news stories about the bombings around the world.

Someone commented about how we were 700+ years past the crusades.

(I did not fact check this number, but the actual number is fairly moot.)

And I get what he was trying to say.

He feels like we’ve evolved as a species, gotten to and settled at a point where we must be beyond such childish, ignorant behavior as to blow ourselves up and take lives with us because we have some minor disagreements.

It would be nice to be able to commend that point of view.

But it’s a lie.

Even the kindest, most moral people have traces of death in their hearts.

And we want to say we’ve evolved past this, but truly, we’ve spent thousands of years improving the ways we do things, not necessarily doing new things.

Sure, we can mass produce food, communicate to someone halfway across the world in seconds, and drive thirty miles in thirty minutes.

We can save more lives with our advances in technology, plan for the future, and effectively kill large amounts of people in seconds.

Have our needs evolved?

Have our basic desires changed?

Absolutely, they haven’t.

We are now simply able to fulfill said needs and desires “better.”

So, who’s to say our hearts, our minds have evolved past any point?

Especially on a global scale.

That’s ignorant, at best. Arrogant, even.

There are still millions (perhaps billions) of people living in circumstances where they are daily denied education, adequate nutrition, protective shelter, even clean water.

People who are never taught that bombing someone when they take your milk money is not the answer.

People who are encouraged to die so they take up less resources.

People who don’t understand they have a life, and that life is worth living.

So.

Have we “evolved” past our intellectual ignorance of the crusading days?

I don’t believe so.

We’ve only gotten more adept at hiding our motives and quickly fulfilling our desires.

We are all still undeniably, one thousand percent human.