What is wrong with the world?
Things work. Grass grows. Flowers bloom. Trees rocket toward the sky on trajectories that leave them hanging in the air for longer than we walk the walk the earth. Insects buzz around their business eating, mating, and dying. Of the countless forms of life, only those we have forced to evolve to require our care need it. Why is it that arguably most intelligent form of life on this planet sees so much strife and terror and hatred for members of its own species?
Perhaps the lack of true godliness is to blame. After all, if everyone lived as Jesus or Muhammad did, wouldn’t there be peace? Of course. The problem lies in the society we live in; a society that values capital gains and personal station over peace and humanity is not conducive to allowing full freedom of self. Society also allowed humanity to be able to postulate a subject such as this. Society is the sum of all evolutionary steps that pushed Homo sapiens to be the sole self-aware species on this planet. Without it, our actions would matter, nor come to fruition, because we, as we know ourselves, would not exist. It must be something else.
Maybe it is the obsession with God that is the problem. I know I wish I could blame God; the Inquisitions, the Crusades, the 911, Madrid, and London attacks (all unquestionably terrible events) are all the product of jealousy, fear, and dogma. People who feel their religion or faith pushed aside or spat upon rise up with proportional power. If someone were to subjugate you personally, instinct dictates that you fight back. Evolution has trained our species to fight for our own well-being. If your well-being is tied to a faith (in your mind) logically following instinct would lead you to fight back. Evolution has trained our species to fight for our own well-being, and so fighting for faith has been bred into us as well. Faiths, however, do not usually dictate the slaughter of others simply because they exist. It is a reflex: this faith is in opposition to mine, and so to prove that I am correct I must kill the others. I understand fully that not every religious person decides to kill people with other faiths, but historically religions have not gotten along. Again, evolution forces us to defend ourselves, and therefore our beliefs, with blood if necessary.
So religion has nothing to do with it? It must be society then, right? That could be a stretch. Religions have fueled bloodbaths since their inception. Perhaps, then, the fear of the unknown imposed on us by society is at fault? After all, no one truly knows what happens after death (even if they think they do). Fearing what other groups do (or disagreeing with it) can cause violent behaviour when the “others” are seen as a threat. Again, however, without fear of the unknown, we as a species could not exist. In our formative years (both as individuals and a species), fear of the unknown kept us alive. We didn’t wander into the dark, unknown world far beyond our homes because danger could lay in wait. If our ancestors wandered wildernesses without tools and weapons to defend themselves (and kill the “other” things that could be dangerous), none would survive and we would not be here at all.
Time and time again, it seems as though we turn to evolution to both explain why we act certain ways and why we exist in our present form. Evolution, it seems, forces us to be greedy, fearful, and hateful. Of course, evolution is the reason we are here, now, reading (or writing) this post. It is the reason we can see the world as we do, instead of seeing “food, fuck, and FUCK!”. I suggest, however, that the speed (or lack of speed) of evolution is to blame for the ills of society, even as it allows for us to have society at all. Had evolution taken a more leisurely pace, relics of survival in a less-than-modern tribe would die out, as the genes forcing us to be much more cautious than we currently need to would fall away. There would be no need for greed or fear or hatred because we would have evolved for a much longer time in societal circles, and would learn to rely on previous knowledge and aid, as opposed to individual successes and proving one’s self. Conversely, had evolution gone much more quickly, only a single society would survive because it would have killed every other society out. The survival instincts would have beat out the societal instincts, and any society in the way of the dominant one would be destroyed. There would be no respect for human rights, because anyone who was not important in society would be killed off or left for dead. Therefore, evolution forces our hand by making us be stuck between wanting to kill everyone and wanting everyone to get along. We can no longer evolve to leave our survivalist traits behind, and so we are destined to live lives wrought with war and hatred.
Thoughts?
