It is perhaps the saddest of all human traits. We tend to kill those things that we love and sustain us in a self-generated orgy of stupid. We have, in fact, built entire religions upon that very altar. They killed Jesus, they killed Mohmand’s son in a dispute over dogma. As humans, we tend to kill things and people, and then elevate them to gods. Perhaps, it is time to celebrate things and people, while they live, and before we go through their destruction and our god-building them from remorse.
.
Admittedly, it is easier to see the value of things in hindsight. Constantly, we do and say things that hurt each other, and everything around us, that makes life possible. All in the name of something, that in the end, always loses its appeal as the all-consuming ambition and the reason for destroying all around us.
.
Today, we find a society, drunk on the power to destroy. Sometime from neglect, but many times from the drunken orgy of self-importance, loss of perspective, and accepting the replacement of truth, by the lust for things and power. We are constantly choosing to be without perspective and driven by short-term foolishness in our lives.
.
We celebrate family, while many times creating a soul-killing machine that is mostly held together through mutual need. We create myths and stories to justify what we do to others. Telling ourselves that we are not bad people, it is just a bad situation, making us do bad things. That, in the end, the destruction we build will be justified by the things we get. That is usually a self-serving illusion. A way of justifying the unjustifiable.
.
Because of that, we are constantly trying to put the genie back in the bottle and fix the destruction that once seemed so necessary. We are the consummate monster makers, we create broken people, along our paths, giving each a reason to hate us, to want revenge, and to lose all perspective themselves.
.
Sadly, it all seems so normal, so important, and so righteous. But it is none of those. It is, in fact, the greatest of all human folly. The real reason why in a land where everything is available, so many live in poverty, suffering, and desperation. Yes, we build our own monsters, our own disasters, and probably our own destruction. Not just through ignorance, though there is plenty of that to go around, but by choosing to put self and hubris ahead of intelligence and understanding.
.
We are brilliant at creating excuses, rationales, and myths to cover our tracks. Billions are spent monthly, to do just that. Our news is no longer news, but an excuse for doing the bad things we do. For hiding who and what we have become. But we do the same thing with religion, with entertainment, and with politics. The sad truth is that we have sold ourselves for the morally baren world of things. Everything has become just a justification for that.
.
So much of our world, ourselves, is on a type of autopilot toward the destruction of the very things we love most. Our democracy, our freedoms, and our intelligence. There is a comfort, so it seems, in that autopilot world of what I call “Comfortable Certainty.” That few, seek to venture out into the reality of “Uncertain Understanding.” Of true, and critical thinking, seeking to understand, as opposed to control. And if they can’t control it, then they must destroy.
.
This is not the path to our potential as human beings. This is the road of the intelligent animal. Cunning and destructive, while still shitting where it eats. There are not enough tech toys and shiny things to make up for that.
RC Romine