Civil Wars Breaking Out Across the Globe; Are We Ignoring The Smaller Issues?

Every day in the news, we read of civil wars and how they are wreaking so much havoc on their respective countries. The television comes on after dinner, and we are reminded of the violence erupting in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. A sea of feelings overwhelms us; some feel sad, some afraid, some indifferent. But are we letting these larger stories engulf the just as important smaller ones?

I read a fascinating article on malaysiakini.com which made me realize that I was a victim of the situation above. "Oh these civil wars are the bigger problem, so I don't care about the little things", was my thinking. Granted, I have my ow life to live, and it's largely not my responsibility to care. But should it be?

The article discusses political violence coming from opposing parties during elections, a situation which seems to occur all too often. Voters threatened, beaten, or killed for disagreeing with the current political power.

This man was almost beaten to death while voting

We see this type of thing happen all over the place, and in many cases, only a select few are trying to change it. What if the man shown above was your son, or daughter? Wouldn't you want more people caring about this?

I've posed a lot of questions in this post, and they may not all have answers. I hope that my readers connect with the man above, as I did, and see that we can't just spend all of our time talking about the big things.