I used to ponder if humans have been getting shittier and shittier the last few decades, or is it that we have always been shitty? Before you spout “but humans are wonderful!,” wonderful people do not enslave others, systematically beat, torture and rape them, put them in concentration camps, gas and perform sick and cruel experiments on them, or slaughter the native people of every single place they land on. Just a few examples of how “wonderful” humans are.
To wonder about humans, we must start off with other organisms in the animal kingdom, and fishes and birds, and insects. In nature, animals eat other animals. We know that. But what’s also very common and occurs in almost all species, is that the babies routinely kill their siblings so they can get all the food the mother brings.
This bird is trying to kill his smaller brother:
This one is trying to kill the smaller bird:
This one is killing it’s brothers and sisters while still in the womb!
Yes, our murdering tendencies start at conception!
When nature does it, we just accept it and don’t blink an eye. “It’s just part of nature!”
When humans do it, we say “oh but they are the very very few, the exception, the rest of us are good!”
I’m not just saying that humans are evil (although we are). But that maybe we were innately born to be “evil.” Just like all the other animals and insects and fish.
Bad, evil, natural, nature, survival. Call it whatever. At the end of the day, it isn’t the “nice” bird, animal, or human that survives and gets all the resources. It’s the assholes.
On the same token, If animals do it and it’s just part of nature and not evil, then it follows that humans are not “evil” either, and that it’s just “part of nature.”
So over time, after thousands and thousands of generations of “culling” and nature selecting the best traits for survival (which means killing off your siblings or rivals), we end up what we have today- all the organisms that are alive today were the most brutal, most savage and most homicidal- and that includes humans.
This is just a thought. You don’t have to agree. I am merely extrapolating from nature. And humans are part of nature, subject to all it’s rules and conditions just like any other organism. Humans are fundamentally no different from all the other animals and organisms in nature. People like to think we are outside of nature, that we are so different, we are so civilized and so advanced, while animals are not consciously thinking about their actions but merely surviving on instinct. Pretty sure that bird pecked it’s sibling to death because it chose to do it (not all sibling birds of that species kill their siblings). And guess what? It worked. It killed it’s brother and got all the food it’s mother brought back.
Survival of the most asshole-ish.
That’s what life is.
6 comments
I’ve been thinking about it, too for a while but only about humans. Your point is really interesting and thought provoking. I’ve told my mother way back that humans are bad by nature but she called me crazy. But even if we do nice things to others it’s still mostly about us, because WE want to feel good about it, that we want to be “good” and “generous” but I think in the end of the day we’re still selfish. Many of us pray on the weak, destroy them, just because we have the power to and we’re happy when someone makes a mistake, so we can be “superior” to them. My mother didn’t have me because she wanted to have kids and love and care about someone but because she didn’t want to end up alone when she grows older. I think many of us thinks the same way because we always think about ourselves first.
Exactly. If people do do good things, it’s because:
1- People want something in return. “If I do something good for you now, I expect you to do something for me later, especially when I need it.”
2- People want others to see them as good and will boast about it / talk about it / blog it / FB post it, mention it to everyone to let them know how great they are, “look at what I did”, etc. If their good deed would go by completely unnoticed and anonymous, many of them would not do it.
3- Like you said, people do good deeds not necessarily for the good deed itself, but to feel good about ourselves. “If I do this good deed, I might go to heaven. If I do this good deed, it ought to balance the bad deed I did last week…”
Not saying all people are bad, but some of the motivations behind doing good deeds aren’t always altruistic or selfless.
We are a part of the exact same cycle of nature that you describe. We are the most adept and capable thinkers, hence our position at the top of the food chain. I deliberately avoided using the word “evolved” and went with adept and capable instead, as I like to think evolving implies forward progress. What we seem to be doing, where we’re heading doesn’t seem like forward moving evolution to me. Rather, it seems to me we are utilizing our egos and sense of self importance to manipulate the natural world to suit us, allowing the comfortable lifestyle I enjoy, while ensuring that we cannot survive without our customized set of conditions. How many of us will die the first day the electric grid stops functioning, how many die in the days and weeks following the cessation of the production of gasoline and trucks stop delivering food to stores? Millions. We have created a magnificent infrastructure in which we defy nature and shelter ourselves from the system of nature that runs according to schedule. As a result, this. This world of pollution, overpopulation and depletion. We don’t know when, or how, to stop. It’s not in our highly developed yet highly disillusioned and dysfunctional pea brains to live more in tune with the natural world. We insist on attempting to show the world who’s the boss, and devising plan after plan to defile and defy the natural order. All we’re doing is further unbalancing the scales.
I believe the system will win, nature will outlast us, easily. Our house of cards is crumbling, due to its shoddy and un-natural construction. Evil is an inherent characteristic of life, all life. The cycle of life includes death, the strong survive and the weak die, that’s Life 101. Yet we will forever insist that we can outfox nature, that our ego can overcome it’s patience. I bet that at some point there was a T-Rex that had a similar thought, in a soon-to-be extinct dinosaur kind of way.
It’s becoming comical, watching the conundrum we’ve created for ourselves, pretending to champion honor, integrity, respect and similar values, all while practicing the skills nature designed into the system that governs the universe – death, chaos and mayhem. All necessary to maintain balance. For being the most skilled practitioners of death and evil, we sure enjoy making a production of appearing to be “civilized.”
But the t-rex was arguably one of the strongest creatures to ever walk the earth. How could they possibly be replaced by the pigeons who poop on my windshield? I can’t believe it. Obviously, Noah just left them off the ark. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Not all animals do that. It is something that’s built into infancy and early development, though. Young animals (much like young humans) are immature and haven’t any experience in the world yet. They don’t have what passes as an understanding of their fellow beings. Human children are probably some of the most murderous creatures out there. They would kill a ***** for some milk. Thankfully, their bodies are all wobbly and they have almost no dexterity, so the act of murder is well beyond their capacity. Still, you can see the glint of evil in every tiny baby’s eyes, especially right before it vomits all over you.
“Survival of the most asshole-ish.
That’s what life is.”
That really is it in a nutshell, isn’t it?