Sharing God: a.k.a Power Abuse

Through history the same situation has happened over and over again: violation of human rights, power abuse and iniquities. I am talking about one of the contents that have impacted me most in this third unit, and taking as main example Queen Mary I, known as “Bloody Mary”.

Queen Mary I of England was born on February 18, 1516; daughter of King Henry VIII and his first of six wives. At the age of 37 she got to the throne and reigned from July 19, 1553 until November 17, 1558, the very last of her days. His father disjoined England from the Roman Catholic Church and expanded it across the kingdom while he lived, but Mary kept her faith in the Roman Catholic Church and disagreed with him.  When Henry VIII died she came to the English throne and made everything that was in her hands to keep her position safe and bring the Roman Catholicism back to the English Kingdom, so her first violent act took place at the moment and her nickname “Bloody Mary” was born: on February 12, 1554 she executed her cousin Lady Jane Grey, who could've gave her power struggle being alive. This was just the beginning, Bloody Mary turned the zone back to Roman Catholicism by force and 273 people were sentenced to the stake for being against this, just to please her. What I’m trying to say here is how can someone put her beliefs ahead of people’s precious life, full of opportunities to cooperate in the world? And I think she, as many other colonizers, being catholic and following the good values it gives such as “don’t kill”, how could she have the strength to call herself a believer and giving such example of abuse and disrespect for people?

The mass murder and abuse tend to happen when there are colonization and religious reasons as I showed you here, just because some people think that what they believe in is the right belief to follow and everyone who is not might be underdeveloped or heretic. They tell you how to act, how to think, how to dress, who to kiss, how to believe in and so the endless list goes on. But this “powerful” people often act depending on their self-convenience, instead of following their values consequently as it should be and avoid falling into a cynical and hypocrite attitude. Why am I putting this here? Because this is one of the most important and shocking examples of dehumanization. Among time, things like this have frequently happened in human history all across the world, we lose lives just because of a bunch of closed minded people, just because some people want power, money or whatever. We need to think about this, open people’s mind and don't let them do this anymore; we need to empathize and then maybe we can reach some harmonic connivance in the world.