1487:
Edited by CJ.Tointon
Nature, being much older and
wiser than its delinquent child, grants us enough brain power and free will to
discover our weaknesses. Through intellect and free will we can, in theory,
learn from our mistakes. But the human is too protective of its image,
too full of hubris and conceit, to see the mistake we keep making. And
still Nature accepts this, letting our imbalance burn itself out until we start
to want to understand, to sufficiently want balance to be restored.
We are confronted by
opposites. We know we have the potential brain power to be productive for
the greater good, but there's an equal potential to push on with 'progress', by
ignoring our mistakes and creating ever more violence-based solutions.
You'd think we'd have learnt our lesson from the twentieth century's orgy
of violence - but we haven't! Maybe this means there's a bigger lesson
yet to be learned. It may have something to do with our having perfected
certain parts of our physical and mental prowess and now we can't control them.
We haven't recognised the importance of our 'second brain' which houses
the spiritual side of us and counsels greater wisdom. On an intellectual
level, we can see our imbalance, but get sucked into Society's attitudes and
'normalities'. But even if we know in
theory what is needed, we are still part of the whole. The collective
mind is made up of individuals, each of whom has free will, each afraid of
being pushed down by others. By being overprotective of our own free
will, we avoid acting for the greater good. So, in effect, free will is
the enemy of collective action. The 'will' part allows us to be
constructive, but the 'free' part is more selfish, holding us back (individually
and collectively) from being constructive. We're yet not altruistic
enough to think about 'the Other', or to think constructively about a future in
which we won't be around to enjoy things. All the same, we can see a
complexity of crime being committed by our species and we do know that each of
us should be riveted by the possibility of getting to the bottom of it.
It's like a complicated
murder mystery where the chief clues aren't immediately obvious. The
prize at the end is a very big prize, so solving the mystery was never going to
be easy. There are too many clues and links-between-clues and we are
either too selfish or too panicked to see which is the most important clue.
And even if you or I understood the seriousness of the crime, no one
individual can do much about it, since it's entrenched and involves just about
every individual human on the planet.
As an example of this global
and unsolvable 'crime', we have huge numbers of displaced people with nowhere
to live. These days, there's a never-ending tide of refugees flooding into
'safe haven' countries. 'Kind' countries take them in, 'unkind' countries
turn them away. As word gets around and the fleeing masses surge towards
the 'kind' countries, those safe havens eventually have to join the 'unkind'
countries for fear of starting a civil war amongst their own population. Even
the best brains can find no solution or clues as to how this problem may be
solved.
We are faced with many
similar major problems where no obvious solution is apparent. These
problems provide us with an intellectual stalemate, which brings us to such a
point of panic that we can no longer think straight. So - what do we
do? We go bull-at-a-gate at these 'insuperable' problems. We respond
with ever more extremes of violence and a reluctance to go back to the drawing
board to re-examine the causes. The causes inexorably will refer back to
some past violence that has led to the present situation. It's as if we
self-harm, bleed, and then attempt to stem the blood loss to avoid facing the
much more painful 'cure'. We won't associate external violence with how
we conduct our own lives.
To the outsider, this might
all seem crazy! A three year old could see how things are going
wrong! "As we sow, so shall we reap". Violence always
leads to instability and an escalation into further violence. Nature can
only restore balance by drumming the same message into the 'advanced' human
brain over and over until it gets it - violent solutions are not solutions at
all. Humans are locked into selfish attitudes, lifestyles and habits
where 'charity starts at home' and remains there while the bigger problems are
left outside. We can't address the big problems of the world because
we're blinded by the constraints of our own lives. Our unconstrained
three year old can see what the big problem is - a hardness of attitude.
Amongst hardened people the child can sense danger, but the child's voice is
too weak to be heard. And yet the child sees straightaway what all adults
will one day have to see - the need to avoid hardness and violence. It's
the simplest of lessons we all have to learn and we learn it without having to
use either our 'free will' or our 'big brain'. In whatever form it takes,
violence is our greatest and most dangerous enemy. It acts as our worst
killer virus.
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