Friday, September 27, 2013

Bloodshame

                               1

Adam and Eve had three sons.
They had also daughters, but they are not mentioned in the scriptures.
The sons took their sisters as wives.
Then Cain killed Abel because he was jealous and angry.
Seth was born later.

We are the descendants of a very dysfunctional family.
We are mad, totally mad, all of us, oppressors as well as the oppressed.
We are one great big clan of morons, regardless of class or skin color.
We are all the descendants of Adam and Eve.
We have, for thousands and thousands of years, killed each other,
raped each other, tortured, exploited and oppressed each other.

The European slave traders purchased slaves from African kings
and shipped them to the New World.
The African kings were as heartless as the European kings.

The Europeans, hungry for gold, killed the native Americans
and stole their land, while they spread the good news of Jesus.
And Montezuma was as crazy as the Conquistadors.
He was sacrificing thousands of prisoners to appease the Gods.
His high priests cut the hearts out of living, screaming victims
and held up the pounding lumps of flesh to the skies.
"Look what we are doing for you, oh great Lord."

We are madmen, behind our masks, all of us,
wolves in sheep's clothing.
We follow our crazy leaders, like dogs.
We have no will of our own.
We are born into a gang of gangsters.

You might think that you are civilized, but this is an illusion.
You simply happen to live in a a place, in a time period,
where there currently are no ongoing battles.
But the war is around the corner.
Now it is Syria that is burning.
Completely ordinary, decent men go berserk there now.

                              2

This way of thinking is wrong.
It's totally wrong to say that all people are evil.
There are also many good people here;
warm and genuinely friendly people, human beings.
You can see it this way:
selfish and brutal people that are hungry for power
are perhaps genetically different from friendly people,
much like the incidence of introverts and extroverts in a population.
Some are tall and some are short.
Variation is one of the cornerstones in biology.
The problem is that the aggressive brutes take over the show.
They are so much stronger and so powerful.

                              3

It's not just our genes that defines us.
It's not just our genes that make us what we are.
This is an outdated view.
For example,
our language ability is a result of evolutionary processes with a genetic component,
but this ability to speak requires environmental factors to develop.
If a child does not have close contact with other people in early life,
he or she will never be able to learn how to speak.
Environment is as important as inheritance for us humans.
Although selfishness, aggression and belligerence
may be influenced by genetic factors,
it is the society we live in that makes us more or less
selfish, aggressive and belligerent.
Selfishness, aggressiveness and belligerence are not written in our genes.

                              4

So, where do our political opinions come from?
Where has the idea arisen that greed is good
because it is conducive to development,
in a poor man's mind, in outer space?
And where, do you think, has the idea emerged that without love and kindness,
life would be absolutely meaningless?