A World That Breathes Pain

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Ahmed Saif Hashed

I often reflect on how I came to inhabit this tumultuous world, a realm steeped in conflict and turmoil—an arena overflowing with suffering and profound tragedies. It is a world rife with violence, oppression, and atrocities, where the right to life is sacrificed in the name of life itself, and justice is crucified under the guise of fairness. In this environment, the equality of opportunity frequently dissolves into nothingness.

Throughout history, tyrants and despots have ruled with impunity and continue to do so in various forms. They have constructed their false “glory” upon the blood and labor of the subjugated, trampling human dignity and burdening individuals with hunger and pain while shattering their dreams and extinguishing their hopes.

The impoverished, the destitute, and the deprived endure their hunger and gnaw on their deprivations, deceived even unto death. They are afflicted by fates that refuse to release them, relentlessly pursuing them. These wretched souls are beset by ill fortune and a “curse of existence” that encircles them, compounded by the misery of the era into which they were born. These unwilling subjects pay a steep price to their oppressors, sacrificing their meager resources and suffering to sustain the opulence and excess of those in power.

Life, whether on land, sea, or air, is harsh and feral—brimming with sorrow, injustice, and anguish. This world is predominantly ruled by might, a harrowing reality that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer aptly articulated when he wrote: “Tortured beings and torturers… who can only exist by devouring one another. Every beast here is a living grave for thousands of other beasts, and the way to survive is a series of painful deaths.”

In the realm of humanity, this analogy holds with significant differences, as we witness brutality manifest in myriad forms. The American thinker and writer Mark Twain asserted that humans are more monstrous and savage than animals. In his essay “The Damned Human Race,” he expressed that his experiences convinced him that humanity alone harbors malice, harm, vengeance, and contempt. 

Humans interact with one another through cruelty, humiliation, and subjugation. While animals kill from instinctual motives such as hunger or fear, humans abandon their conscience, ethics, and humanity, committing the most horrific atrocities: organized mass wars.

A world has been established and continues to be governed by forces far more ruthless than the law of the jungle. In this realm, survival favors the strongest, the most cunning, or those most adaptable to change, as Darwin aptly noted. Yet, we remain uncertain about the direction this change will take and the destinies that await us.

Countless individuals shed blood in the name of God and the sacred, or under the banners of ideas, ideologies, and toxic tribalism—all driven by the pursuit of power or an insatiable, tyrannical selfishness. This greed perpetuates itself without end.

The history of humanity is rife with brutality, bloodshed, and the exploitation of one individual by another across various epochs. It stretches from primal savagery to the enslavement wrought by capital. Entire populations have been subjugated through iron and fire, enduring severe bondage, where slavery has reached its most extreme forms. This deep-seated servitude has become hereditary, passed down through lineage, race, and heritage.

These harsh stages, despite their transformations and changes in nomenclature, illustrate humanity’s journey from slavery to serfdom, and then into the bondage and savagery of capital. This enslavement, in its myriad forms and names, is marked by humiliation and oppression. It transitions from a system of slavery to a feudal order filled with serfs and laborers, ultimately evolving into a capitalist system that, despite any illusions of progress, reveals itself to be increasingly grotesque and savage.

Wars, occupation, exploitation, hunger, famine, and widespread tragedies abound. Entire nations have been eradicated, while a fortunate few have escaped, often by mere chance or miracle. Tribes have fragmented, with many displaced, surrendered, or retreated. The relentless cycle of wars, pyres, crimes, and ever-expanding poverty continues unabated.

A lengthy history of suffering endures, irrespective of how high civilization may ascend.

 It is a realm of anguish and torment on Earth. Great civilizations have risen upon the tragedies of peoples, nations, and humanity itself, marked by plunder, corruption, thievery, and an endless multitude of victims. This is merely a glimpse of what has transpired; the intricacies of these events cannot be fully encapsulated in this brief discourse.

I shall conclude with a poignant reflection from Mohammed Maghout in his play “The Hunchbacked Sparrow”: “There are bronze statues of cowards and thieves, memorials to harlots, walls adorned with pearls and jasmine for spies who carry their homeland in their wallets. Knights, as youthful as roses, entered Rome and exited with their entrails hanging from the tips of their swords on their way to exile. Trivial men entered restrooms and emerged on their path to the throne.”