And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
Was there ever a more soulful, sadder lament to mankind's utter stupidity? Man, the thinker. We are imbued with so many emotions, and they sadly submerge our intelligence. We can reason, but evidently not in the face of insupporable emotions. What a wonderful motto: "Reason over" - what was that word? How does it go? Ah, passion, the missing word. Too bad it's just the word that eluded me, how much better we'd be as a species if we could ween ourselves away from the kinds of passion that produce suspicion, jealousy, anger and strife.REASON OVER PASSION
We could retain those passions that enable us to care about one another. What we would have to do would be to surmount those emotions which focus on that most elemental of imperatives which nature endowed us with: self-preservation. To preserve our individual DNA, to bring evolutionary motes and neurons representing our very own genes forward into the future. What a truly circuitous route. Aren't those imbued with aggressive traits most likely to survive? Particularly when we were first roaming the savannahs and forests among which we evolved as upright, bipedal animals, and our minds were functioning on a primeval, elementary level of subsistence and self-preservation - and just incidentally, preservation of the species?
When, one wonders, did the ability to reason enter the equation? Was it always there, submerged, subliminally available, but not called upon until a time of great preservational stress to enable us to become creative, inventive, preparatory to becoming fully human? We began to produce tools, tools for protection, for amending our landscape. We found comfort in small groups of similar-appearing copies of ourselves, sharing a habitat and habits and emerging culture - and, above all, need. We found utility in sharing all of these traits and attributes to respond to our need to survive. No man was ever an island.
There was never an obligation toward others who belonged to groups not one's own, from differing habitats, habits and cultures. Their needs, although basically a reflection of our own, were not embraced, since they were in direct competition with ours. The competition for food, for "ownership" of place. Over all the aeons, millenia after millenia of development of habitation amenable to our needs, and the gradual realization of civilizing traits among ourselves - the recognition of the need to co-operate - mankind has never been able to successfully apprehend those most basic emotions once critical to survival of the individual, now inimical to survival of the collective.
So, exactly how have we evolved? Have we become more intensely cerebral, capable of surmounting the difficulties we ourselves place in the path toward enlightenment, toward the goal of harmony among nations? Well, one supposes not, on the evidence. The evidence being wars, continual wars, whether inter- or intra-tribal. Whether involving groups of nations against other groups of rival nations, whether individual countries attempting to preserve their sovereignty against the military incursion of a neighbour intent on increasing their resources, or whether isolated tribes one against the other, reflecting our whole sad history as a species.
Man the Wise is actually not all that wise.
When, one wonders, did the ability to reason enter the equation? Was it always there, submerged, subliminally available, but not called upon until a time of great preservational stress to enable us to become creative, inventive, preparatory to becoming fully human? We began to produce tools, tools for protection, for amending our landscape. We found comfort in small groups of similar-appearing copies of ourselves, sharing a habitat and habits and emerging culture - and, above all, need. We found utility in sharing all of these traits and attributes to respond to our need to survive. No man was ever an island.
There was never an obligation toward others who belonged to groups not one's own, from differing habitats, habits and cultures. Their needs, although basically a reflection of our own, were not embraced, since they were in direct competition with ours. The competition for food, for "ownership" of place. Over all the aeons, millenia after millenia of development of habitation amenable to our needs, and the gradual realization of civilizing traits among ourselves - the recognition of the need to co-operate - mankind has never been able to successfully apprehend those most basic emotions once critical to survival of the individual, now inimical to survival of the collective.
So, exactly how have we evolved? Have we become more intensely cerebral, capable of surmounting the difficulties we ourselves place in the path toward enlightenment, toward the goal of harmony among nations? Well, one supposes not, on the evidence. The evidence being wars, continual wars, whether inter- or intra-tribal. Whether involving groups of nations against other groups of rival nations, whether individual countries attempting to preserve their sovereignty against the military incursion of a neighbour intent on increasing their resources, or whether isolated tribes one against the other, reflecting our whole sad history as a species.
Man the Wise is actually not all that wise.
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 11, 2006
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