We are still cavemen. Clubbing each other over the head, noncompliant females included. Except that now, the clubs are missiles and drones and the targets are entire countries and peoples. The behavior has not changed. Only the technology. And consequently, the breadth and depth of the destruction.
Why have we behaved this way since time immemorial?
One could easily conclude that there is something wrong with us. Is there?
When you reflect on our behaviors, our thoughts, our impulses, anything, in fact, you realize that they are in response to, in pursuit of, and in fulfillment of our two basic imperatives—the drive for sex (creation) and the drive for death (destruction)—although there are also those who say that sex and death are one and the same.
Test yourself. Think about it: When you get up in the morning and wash your face and comb your hair (if you still have hair), why do you do it? Because you want to be attractive or, at the very least, presentable to, usually, the opposite sex. Why do we engage in or follow contact or extreme sports? Why are we transfixed by news of disaster, why are our eyes drawn to that unfortunate motorcyclist lying crushed under a truck’s huge wheels? Because of the thrill of risking death and the prospect of death.
Psychiatrist R.D. Laing observed: “We are all murderers and prostitutes—no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature one takes oneself to be.”
But is it really just sex and death? Are we so base? Hopefully not so. These driving forces are in keeping with the universe, which is in a constant state of flux, of creation and destruction, with no discernible “mind.” Any homeostatic state of equilibrium is a tribute to the strength and therefore the balancing out of these two coexisting forces.
Fortunately, the power of the mind actually influences and can make a difference. Consciousness, even mere observation, has time and again been shown to shape and influence “reality.”
The leaders who run the world’s most warlike states, among them the United States and Israel, are using their immense power for the wrong reasons—territorial expansion, political hegemony and dominance, tribalism—disguised as self-defense, the liberation of oppressed peoples, and the hollow claim to a “rules-based international order.” They are in the grip of the death imperative on a planetary scale. They do not learn from history, or refuse to learn, or want to make their version of history.
The United States has not learned from its losses in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other assorted debacles. Israel has not learned from almost 80 years of perpetual war with its neighbors, except for growing an appetite for greater destruction.
The more clear-headed we are about who we are, the more easily we can try to be better.
But better how?
Through religion? Hardly. Religion is often misused and becomes an abomination that makes us do the worst things to each other.
Law and order? Not without common agreement and good enforcement.
The only real ways that seem to work are by being a good example and by being kind, both in word and in deed.
All claims to good intentions—e.g., self-defense—that are not matched by good deeds matter not because they are mental constructs that can be used to cloak bad behavior. Our thoughts and beliefs can be self-deluding. Our experiences reinforce our behaviors. And our behaviors determine our character.
Yes, it’s true: We are lovers and killers. But we should not accept that that is the long and short of humanity. We must be true to our species and be wise.
In fact, speaking of cavemen, returning to the earth is how bombarded peoples have survived. Tunneling. The tons of bombs the United States dropped on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War were far more than all the bombs it dropped during World War II. But the Vietnamese went underground and survived—and eventually won against the mightiest military on earth. A more recent example is the tunnels of Hamas in Gaza that enabled them to withstand the unrelenting onslaught of the Israeli war machine.
We return to the earth to keep our humanity, to fight another day.
While being of the flesh is our fate, it should not be our destiny. We must turn to the spirit, to a wise and good consciousness, if we are to emerge as fully human from the darkest of caves. CS
