Humanity and the "self"

Sometimes there comes a time when you have to really reflect. I was thinking about a random movie quote, as I normally do. I thought about the Archangel Gabriel in the movie Constantine. The archangel told Constantine that the humanities best moments are in times of suffering. That is when we are most noble. I find that is an interesting topic of discussion. Normally I would argue that no, humans are best when they are suffering. I tend to think that Humans are best when they know themselves. However the discovery of self is often aided by cases of extreme suffering. The "self" are those things which are integral to what one really is. So in once sense yes bad brings out the best in people but really its always trying to come out. Just that when we face huge perils we tend to react in the best possible way in order to overcome them. Now obviously there are those exceptions to the general rule. For example the people looting New Orleans after Katrina. If there were no exceptions then we would live in a perfect world and last time I checked that is not the case. I do however think that humanity can benefit from other tragedies. For example, global warming which I know is a topic that can be debating for years, and it will be. However lets just for arguments sake say its true....I will not give my opinion on this one (wink)...then the future is what we are worried about. We are not panicking for nothing, we are worried about the future of our species. And this worry which is not imminent is causing us to do great things. For example cars, more efficient and less polluting methods of travel are being developed. i read a story today that Sony made a battery that is run by sugar. Yes sugar. This battery harnessed a natural process of breaking down sugar and was strong enough to run an MP3 player. A few weeks ago i read about new technology being developed involving wireless electricity. Yeah that was my idea at happy hour a few years back, but someone got up and actually did it. The general idea was that electricity was transmitted via radio waves. i mean all of these advances mean two things. People are going to get filthy rich, but the second is that the future does have the potential to be less destructive to nature than it is being now. I don't know how I got on this tangent but OK. roll wit it. I think that technology will either kill us or make us better. We are either going to come up with ridiculous ways of killing each other or we are going to discover that "self" that unites us to the other. Those others that even though we may never meet them, we are preparing the world for them. I know and I trust that Humanity will be able to use technology to better lives and bring out the best in all of us without have to face a catastrophe or some disaster. Remember 9/11? I do, i was completely oblivious to what was going on. I went to 8 am history class and as i walked in my teacher was crying and she turned on the news. At the time I did not know it was the news, but anyways we saw live the second tower get hit. The image almost surreal was replayed in my mind over and over and over. All I could think was, who influenced such evil and why did no one do anything to stop it. The will to stop that evil is a grassroots effort that begins with all of us, I think. I know that it is easy to say that because i personally did not have family or friends in the towers, but as an American I know how it felt to lose confidence in Humanity. I also know how many people united under one cause to rally for the families and the country. I wish that global warming, the death penalty, or the end of nuclear warheads would be such a cause. I wish that without having to suffer humanity could see the issues and really come together, become one, one "self."