Today, I shout

I can't today. I can't share news about archeology. I can't post rituals, talk about life in ancient Hellas, or anything else while our society is on fire. Not today. I am hurting, grieving, over life that should not have been lost. Over governments hell-bent on lining their pockets over the backs of its citizens. I am raging over lives lost because of the threat of healthcare bills and restricted medication. I am outraged, ready to tear at my hair, my skin, my flesh over this crushing, crippling sense of powerlessness.

You don't need your guns.
Government doesn't need more power.
The rich don't need more wealth.
No one needs another shopping mall.

We need children who aren't regularly trained in what to do when there is an active shooter in their school.
We need governments that work for its people.
We need money in the hands of the working class, so they can spread it amongst their local businesses.
We need forests and clean air.

We are dying.
By the one's, ten's, hundreds, thousands.
By the planet.
We are killing ourselves.

And don't you dare point to a higher power in your pursuit of justification for what are essentially war crimes. The Theoi, God, Allah--none would condone what this age has come to. I am sick and tired of religion being used as a veil to shroud the eyes of onlookers while all commandments and ethical guidelines associated with those religions are broken by "the faithful."

That is not religion. That is not what being religious looks like.

Being religious is dying inside because everything you hold dear is being twisted in order to make life better for the few whose life is already saturated by greed and filth. Being religious is real anger, real fear, real tears.

I will leave you today with an out-of-context quote by Sophocles (Ajax, 964):

"Men of ill judgment ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it."

We've already lost so much. Don't let another child die in a place of education. Don't let another tree perish in the name of greed. Don't let another acre of sacred land be smeared, another person defiled, another billionaire become richer.

If nothing else, use your voice to shout from the rooftops that these are not the ethics of our ancestors, of our Gods.

None of this is someone else's problem. It's all your problem. Every rape of person or land, every lost child, every bomb that goes off--it's all your problem.

And it's solution lies with you.
All of you.