We’re mad for plenty

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We probably all dream of having plenty, indeed that there should be plenty for all. We dream that eventually humans will fix things up for the planet and all our violence and oafishness will dissolve like Scotch mist.
Ironically, this is more or less the justification for today’s bad behaviour, in the convenient tradition of ‘being cruel to be kind’. By becoming truly dominant over lesser life forms (including lesser ‘human’ life forms) we see ourselves as the ‘benevolent despots of Planet Earth’. Call it evil, call it crazy, it matters not a jot since dominators always self justify according to their end-aim (it being to ‘save the world’ or to ‘save our souls’).
It all goes wrong since too much happens along the way that we don’t bargain for. We’re seduced into cutting corners and outsmarting the opposition. We practise violence because it brings us a certain type of advantage with which we can win things and get what we want. It’s too easy to forget when we cross the line in our rush to establish our position of humans-staying-in-charge. We have to do it - violation, violence, stealing and exploiting. It all seems straight forward and legitimate since the world seems ripe for the picking. There seem to be no adverse outcomes … so, we put on hold our lofty aim of saving souls or saving the world and instead enjoy being on a roll. It’s only later that the awful consequences of what we’ve done become apparent, and by then it’s almost too late!
You look at almost anyone, at dinner, tucking in to the muscle tissue of a dear sweet executed animal. There’s not a thought given to that animal, anymore than any mass murderer thinks about his victims. And yet we have the capacity to think about the whole sordid process of bringing animals to their death so that lump of tissue can rest on the dinner plate. The human is superior to other animals, we are the dominant ones and we believe there’s no need to consider our victims.
The people responsible for great empires have always thought they were God’s chosen people. The belief that we are superior gives us our right to rule. Each empire fails and it’s central weaknesses show up in the endgame, when they collapse. Humans who’ve ‘made it’ don’t learn from the past mistakes. We think we can only learn by re-experiencing the whole cycle of ‘succeeding then failing’, so we go through the same lessons, lifetime after lifetime, until eventually we learn. But only eventually.