309 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 41 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds   

Human Hell and the Demons of War

By       (Page 2 of 4 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   No comments

Manuel Valenzuela
We live in the denial of our existence, believing us superior and chosen, unable, unwilling really, to accept that which our minds and egos refuse to acknowledge. For to degrade ourselves as having risen and indeed being part of the world of the beasts and mammals would be to strike down the fallacy of our own self-absorbed greatness that has led us down the wrong road for the last ten-thousand years. Conditioned for millennia to believe in our own hegemony and importance, we have been led astray, lost in our concrete jungle ecosystems, wandering aimlessly on our road to perdition, passing through the ruins of the knowledge that can save us but that we are destroying, even as we refuse to accept the reality of our creation and the truth behind our behaviors.

The animal world that birthed us have we abandoned, along with the vast knowledge it possesses. The keys to understanding ourselves lie in front of our eyes, in the world we refuse to acknowledge and only seem to want to destroy. Instead primitive we remain, thrust upon our violent selves by our refusal to evolve past the dogma of ancient times that was born to ignorance and fear. A perplexing quandary has arisen that denies the truth behind our ways and the understanding we desperately need to squash our demons. In light we see no evil and in darkness the truth remains.

The grand lie we live of our god-like divinity has for centuries clashed with the great truth of our animal-like reality. Except we are too delusional to see beyond the mirage of greatness we espouse onto our fragile egos. The great fallacy of our omnipotence is corrosively leading to the impotence of our continued existence.


Evolving Brain, Advancing Civilization, Destructive Violence


Spit out of the jungles by evolution after we landed on solid ground from the dense branches of our trees above, we began our great Diaspora, ever-slowly traversing savannah, desert, forest, tundra and oceans, reaching the far reaches of the globe. Yet within us we carried the virus that to this day continues to plague our existence.

Attaching itself to the human condition like a blood-sucking leach firmly entrenched on a mammalian body, our propensity towards violence has never left us. Like many species of animal, including our primate cousins, aggression and violence are deeply entrenched in our psyches. The real danger, however, lies in the evolving brain we have over the millennia allowed to develop.

What separates our aggression from the instinctual one residing in the animal kingdom is our capacity for intelligent, analytical and cognizant understanding. That is, our intelligent brain has the capability to mutate our many passions, emotions and aggressions into organized violence against our own kind, done methodically and purposefully, thereby superceding any instinct we might possess to the great detriment of our fellow man. The threat to our race is that unlike animals, whose aggression is minimal and based on instincts of survival that also serve the laws of nature, our propensity towards violence exerts pressure to endanger our own kind thanks to the complex mechanizations of the mind. Our deep thinking and highly intelligent brain unleashes violence not according to the laws of the jungle but for much more sinister purposes dealing with our highly volatile and misunderstood animal passions.

With feelings of anger, hatred, competition, revenge and jealousy so ingrained into our animalistic selves, it becomes extremely difficult to sequester them in our daily lives. These emotions, and the reactions inherent in such circumstances, are unique to the human race. It is our species that can act out violently against such passions; we are the only animal that can direct our passions in violent outrage, whether at one person, an entire army or an absolute nation. Our vast superiority in intelligence over the animal world, combined with the same behaviors and propensities as our mammal relatives, makes us much more dangerous animals than previously existed. It is our mind, combined with our animal passions, that allows our violent and aggressive selves to mutate to the kind of destruction, death and misery we are so capable of.

It is this Molotov cocktail of human intelligence and animal passions that makes of man that most dangerous of animals. Intelligence and passion, when mixed together, can create a volatile concoction that has been manifested in the often bloody history of man.

When combined with the collective brain of the many, such as in the case of tribes or nation-states, the propensity towards violence against competitors or rivals becomes even greater, escalating into full-fledged war. The same parameters that led to fighting among our primate ancestors and the animal world of today helps bring to the surface the human hell that has shackled us from our earliest beginnings and that today leads to untold levels of misery worldwide.

Competition for food, resources, sexual partners and territory condemn humans to releasing into the open the virus of violence attached to our psyches that lingers hibernating in the innermost closets of our minds, ready at any moment to makes its ominous entrance into our lives.

With our more intelligent mind, however, new non-nature parameters that open the scabs of violence have emerged in the last several hundred thousand years. As differences of religious dogma arose, eroded and mutated throughout tribal societies, so did the propensity for war based on differences of belief. Indeed, wars of religious inclinations have killed, maimed and destroyed more humans than any other excuse for warfare. The untold suffering caused by religious wars cannot be adequately described in words. The "my god is better than your god" syndrome, combined with the 'my religion is the true and only religion' belief in which battles for the true religion continue to be fought, has condemned hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of human spirits to the nadir of nothingness.

Wars of religious proclivity are the greatest example of the malignant human hell that legitimizes the murder and killing of our fellow man. Added to the already prevalent munitions of aggression our animal selves are born with, this breed of violence, encompassing a small timeframe of our life on Earth, against differences of religion, nationality, ethnicity, race, beliefs, goals and vision of the world, has elevated the violence against one another to a scale the first humans to inhabit the world could never possibly envisage.

Conflict has defined human society from time immemorial. Our gravitation to violence has characterized our existence and our history. After leaving our cradle in Africa, from our earliest nomadic tribal predecessors to our most advanced societies today our fate has in large measure been determined as a result of warfare. Competition for land, homes, food, sexual partners and resources were once the sole reason for human combat. Today, added to those just mentioned we can include the much more sinister wars based on differences of religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, beliefs and goals. With the advancement of human civilization our primitiveness only grows. The introduction of new anthropological creations in human societal evolution have only exacerbated the need to kill one another. The reasons for human hell keep increasing with the advancement of our existence and the continued growth of our species.

Conquest, usurpation, power and control have sealed destinies and advanced humankind to where it stands today. It is these same that will help seal our fates the more we clash and more we bump into each other's vested interests. Under growing pressures for the finite space available and as nation states compete for Earth's dwindling resources, the human hell we have known since the dawn of time will only resurface once more, continuing to dance alongside humanity's unsustainable desires, animalistic passions and our voracious inability to understand the complexity of who and what we truly are that has scarred us during our entire time on Earth.


The Human Hell

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3  |  4

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Manuel Valenzuela Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet essayist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at other alternative (more...)
 
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter

Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Cabal of Criminality

The Dumbing Down of America

The Killing Fields

Of Crazies, Neocons and the Enemy Within

Unmasking of the Authoritarians

A Nation in Silent Anger

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend