Man's Inhumanity to Man (and Woman)

[Cloud]

I'm depressed today. And I shouldnt' be, because it's my birthday. I'm trying to smile at people as they wish me happy birthday. But I had trouble sleeping last night, because I kept thinking about all the horrible things I read in the news. Some examples from just this week:

--gang rape of high school girl while 20 people stood around and did nothing

--Somalian authorities sending out whipping gangs to the markets to whip women for not wearing socks; and bizarrely, for wearing bras

--In Ghana, women are being raped on the streets -- for something (I forget why)

--In Saudia Arabia, a women tv executive received 60 lashes for merely producing a show in which a man talked about his sex life (the man received many more)

and on and on. So, I have to ask myself--have people been this horrible always? Is this kind of behavior worse in this day and age? Or does it just seem that way because of global news bringing this all to our attention?

Just not watching the news doesn't help, because I know that it's going on anyway. A lot of this seems to me to be violence against women, and/or violence perpetrated by religious authorities, but that may be my personal filter.

I just don't know how to feel. Am I just too sensitive? Should I stop reading the news? Are human beings just irredeemable?