Yes, my worst ememy has always been me. “Nobody can ride your back unless it’s bent”–MLK.
Predators?
Would you be happier with the word; hunters? We prey on animals for food, we prey on each other for territory. We hunt, we stalk, we attack. We are hunters/ predators.
Yeah, I’ll go with hunters. Looking at the word predator, I can’t seem to fit Gandhi in its definitions. You bring up a great point. Do we consider the living beings we must eat in order to survive as having less value, at least as value of continued existence? Is this the natural cause of human predatory dispositions? When it comes down to social orders, how can we define ethics except as something better than our survival instincts allow?
Our societies do not accept what we are, it denies it, hides from it and cowers from it. Our societies if they wish to resolve social ills, they need to accept what we are and control the instincts as a whole and individual. Ethics and morals are just ways to hide and deny right now. They are wishful thinking. Even you my friend would prefer the word hunter rather than the true word predator. Are not predators our closest companions? Would you deny Thai? We can learn from them and their social ways. A pack of animal predators work as a team and as individuals. There is very little infighting and when that fight does occur it is controlled. We as humans think our companions are cute cuddly huggable loveable little friends and family, but they are predators, killers. We deny what we are, yet we admire the beauty of the predator… Who does not think the black panther slipping through a jungle is a thing of jaw dropping beauty? Accept what we are, work our society around that acceptance then go from there. Perhaps repressing our instincts is causing more ills than what anyone wants to think because we hide from it. We could accept it and make laws according to it. We could fall back and take basic simple steps forward. I feel the more we hide from it in the guise of religion and social ethics, the more repressed predator will bubble forth in really demented dangerous ways. Religious wars, racial hatred, hate crimes may just be symptoms of the disease.
Lady K.,
“If I have more money in my purse than can meet my immediate need, consider me a thief.”–John Wesley. Did Wesley live up to that ideal? Not hardly. He was an educated, wealthy gentleman who loved to dance and ride horses. Yet, it was his belief that something better than his animal instincts could exist that drove him to ride the circuits among impoverished Southerners with a message of hope. Such hope is not an illusion. It is part and parcel of any amelioative evolutionary change. His dogma was not as important as was his message about the importance of individuals. Those who can find no other social verification of their right to be turn to religion, a virtual substantiation.
Yes, we must acknowledge our darker side, our propensity to kill or self-destruct. The last century’s considerations of human degradation (Aubrey) did nothing to offer any hope of ethical improvement. Some, who see how evil we are, simply give up and give in to the “predestined " fates of darkness.
So Wesley wasn’t poor. So Rev. Wright can afford to fill up his gas tank. Does this negate the hope of an improved human ethical condition both acknowledged? Even now, pictures and writings about the holocost move us to sadness. And, you are right on noting that we needed to see the the depths of inhumanity to which humans can sink. But, the sadness indicates that we can see beyond that. It is this vision that offers us any hope at all, not a lingering over inhumanity as if it were a precedent in some inabilty to change.
In our last discussions about society, my ex-wife and I came to one conclusion from single question. Were our social critiques simply adding to the memes of negativity that engender the very ideas and actions we oppose?” Our conclusion–if you can’t add to the help, at least don’t add to the harm.
Wherein lies the hypocrisy? In those who see better than they are and espouse that vision? Or in those who claim to be better than they are?
Possibly both. Although, Hypocrisy like Mysogyny is thrown about more than it should be. People use words like those as a shield. Its a heck of alot easier to call someone a hypocrite than try to understand them, It is easier to say a biased man is a mysogynist rather than just understand he is simply biased.
Words can be weapons or shields. They may not break bones but, they sure can break your mental comfort zone. And that is the purpose of ministers and politicians speaking to the masses is it not? To break or make your mental comfort zone. The winner takes all.
I don’t think there is a human alive who does not see his/her personal problems as resolved in often abstract ideologies of coulds ,woulds and shoulds.