Pictures can tell us many stories depending on the creator's intent and the consumer's imagination. I'd like to paint a picture for you and hope you receive the message it brings across.
First, imagine a world with nothing in it but the wonders of nature. Animals of all different shapes, colors and sizes. Trees both tall and short, fruitful and bare. Giant mountains and deep caverns. Roaring oceans and gentle streams. All seems wonderful in this picture. Nothing but harmony, balance and diverse splendor.
But the artist finds this picture to be too ordinary so he decides to spice it up a bit. For that he adds human beings into the mix. At first they all look so similar. Indistinguishable from each other. Almost as if they were all clones. The artist made nature contain various spectacles so why not with humans too?
The artist makes some humans darker, some with different facial features, some shorter, some taller. Now everything in this picture has a unique aspect to its existence. But, for some reason the picture becomes despoiled. The humans are almost displeased by their differences. Some feeling superior and others inferior. They quarrel and bicker and envy each other. Before long they lose sanity and disperse to different parts of the land. They built their own kingdoms, placed their own banners and called themselves Asian or Spanish, black or white, or Muslim.
The artist, confused, begins to wonder if this is all a part of how nature functions. But how can this be? No creature, despite size or color exhibits this behavior. The artist looks on to see his picture take evolve further.
The humans, now distinguished, have prided themselves on being the most superior among others. Terms they derived. Terms called race and religion. These separate them from their natural human existence. These terms have made them forget what they are at the core. To no end, they disagree and cause unprecedented wars in a world where no such thing had ever happened before. They fight and kill and destroy each other even at the expense of their own morality. In the end only a cataclysm remains.
The picture before was so beautifully pleasant that it was unthinkable that anything could go wrong. Until the humans lost their way to their own labels and perceptions. They lost their humanity to their jealousy and hatred of each other because of their differences. In the end, there were no differences. Everyone and everything that had ever lived suffered the same fate. The artist now looks upon his picture. To see that the addition of something so simple and inconsequential could result in the ruination of his entire painting.
The artist drops his brush and never paints again.
