Back in the 60′s when Playboy Magazine was the favorite form of pornography in America, one issue featured a cartoon that expressed a human truth that I found unforgettable.
It showed a little naked guy crouched, apparently hiding, in the back of a box not much bigger than him, glaring outward with his arms wrapped around his knees, and the caption was “People are no damned good”.
So in keeping with my last post in which I described the general stupidity of humanity, in this one I’m happily pointing out the savagery of us primates. It’s so easy to do, why not?
This morning the cheery news greeted me that people are slaughtering each other in Karachi, Pakistan for revenge over the killing of some other person, and so far at least 45 victims have died. In Lebanon six people are dead so far and others wounded in a fight over a tree.
Eight human heads were found along roadsides in Mexico as the slaughter of thousands continues without interruption and the Mexican drug cartels are said to be more violent than Al Qaeda. An employee of a beer distributorship took a rifle to work and shot a lot of people, three of whom he killed, as his way of dealing with his anger.
The FARC rebels in Columbia are still killing, kidnapping and forcing little kids to fight and kill for them.
The slaughter goes on in Iraq as the bombs keep exploding and the shooting deaths continue. Darfur, Sudan, Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the daily death count goes on. Anywhere that a person or group of people decide that they want their point of view to dominate, they’re likely to kill those they disagree with if they can’t get their way any other way. An entire pseudo-religion is founded on the basic principle of First, negotiate, then if that doesn’t succeed, kill them. It’s called Islam and about 1/6th of the Earth’s human population has been forced into submitting to it.
Islam is successful for the same reason nations have succeeded in becoming and surviving: War. Slaughter those who rule and take over, then institute a new set of rules.
Everything kills. Even plants compete for dominance. Trees shade out other plants and take over the sunlight, other plants emit poisons so nothing else but them will grow. Most other animals will negotiate with each other over territory the same as we do but if one side doesn’t submit, it always comes down to the fighting and the killing to settle the matter and it always will until the far distant day when we have established a world government, if we ever do.
The world is run by bullies with no foresight whatever, who can only see their personal goals, instead of by rational people who recoil from violence and desire happiness for everyone. In China’s Cultural Revolution, millions of those rational people, mostly scholars, were murdered because they were seen as being in the way of the new dictatorship. Fidel Castro did the same in Cuba when he took over, only on a smaller scale. He only murdered some five or six hundred dissidents.
For all the noise that Right To Lifers make over abortion, the plain fact is that human life has no more value, and probably less value, than a squirrel, especially if that’s an endangered squirrel. I value my life more than I do yours by a wide margin. In fact I care less if you die as long as I don’t, and you feel the same way about me and other strangers.
Life has been evolving for millions of years on Earth, and a great many very advanced life forms have come and gone. Yet for all those millions of years, not one animal life form has evolved to the point of living peacefully with all other animals. Not even cows. Violence has always been part of survival and I think it always will.
Humans are naturally violent. Our favorite sports are violent. Our outdoor activities are violent and dangerous. We like to hunt animals and kill them for fun.
Humans are stupid and violent. Have a nice day.
Well… I like that irony in the last four words.