VIOLENCE

HUMAN BEINGS are the most violent creatures on earth. That might be a difficult fact to come to terms with, but it’s true. Predatory animals may appear to be more violent than us, but they are not. Their violence is the same basic instinct that they started out with and still use today. They use violence to kill and eat… to survive.

We used the same instincts for survival at the beginning of our existence as well, but we had a big advantage over the other animals – we developed a more sophisticated brain, which gave us the ability to reason and to learn from our mistakes.

We are an extraordinarily violent animal and an exceptionally successful one. We have casually destroyed entire species around us completely without batting an eyelid and more are dying every day. We have spread our progeny all over the planet to plague proportions and as we do so, other less well equipped species die out.

Our evolutionary advantage is our mind and brain. That is what has made our species the successful animal it is. The tiger and lion have their claws, we have intelligence. We realized early on that we can’t beat a big cat in a fight, but we can shoot it.

Now that we no longer need to fight for survival, we have turned our violent nature upon ourselves and the planet we live on. We are attempting to destroy our very selves. If we as a species are to continue to evolve, we must come to terms with our violence. The old evolutionary framework is no longer working.

We are all capable of violence, even if we think we are not. We all get irritable, impatient and frustrated  at times, emotions that if provoked can escalate to anger and rage, all of which is violent.

It is high time for us to move on from our early fight or flight instincts that once were vital for our survival, mechanisms we now no longer require. We must evolve or perish. How can we do that, so as to continue to exist and prosper?

That is a crucial question that we all must now face and answer…

Dan’s Quote: “Violence, even well-intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.”- Lao Tzu

Inspiration for this chapter came from the writings of Joel Kramer, Eckhart Tolle and others.