Angry Monkeys with Sticks

I am going to write a lot about human nature in these blogs so I want to post something that outlines my fundamental belief in human nature so as to act as a disclaimer for future posts. Humans are at our core angry monkeys with sticks. Three thousand years ago those sticks were pretty close to actual sticks with points on them while today they are more like laser guided bombs and M16s. Make no mistakes about it, we maybe be technologically advanced, but our biological evolution really hasn’t gone anywhere in a while. We fight for our ideas and rights, but mainly we fight for power, wealth and mating rights. Sorry ladies but this is for the most part a man’s world even though we would like to think we have most past that. Men still control the planes and bomb and guns, and we will continue to use them as long as we feel the need to kill other men to secure to the rights to put our penises in your vaginas. We kill each other out of greed, anger, jealousy, and sometimes just because we can.

With all that said there is still hope. Humans may be fighting millions of years of evolution in our efforts to move past our primal motivations, but sometimes we are able to win that struggle but only as long as we acknowledge it and not pretend it is not within each and every one of us. We are separated from most other species because we have evolved to care for one another and form communities. The problem lies as evolutionary biologists have noted that after a certain number of people are included in that community we seem to lose our empathetical ties to that group. Evolution has played a cruel joke on us since they estimate that number is around 60-90 people at maximum for our brains to form natural empathetic bonds with. Where humanity’s real struggle lies is in finding that empathetical bond with the world community beyond just our immediate 60-90 person hard wired social connection scenario.

Lack of empathy in action. CAPITOLISM. No place in humanity is our awful evolutionary baggage more apparent than in the realm of capitalism. I am not a socialist, but capitalism to me represents the worst in humanity. We seek to rise above our peers, not raise a community to new standards of living. We are driven to accumulate wealth and not share success. We are taught that business must consume and consume regardless of the consequences to maintain growth. We destroy countless lives to enrich a few and then shake our simple primate heads when our economies fail when the wealth at the bottom can no longer support the largess at the top. This is evolutions cruel legacy in action. Economic Darwinism is not a good thing; it is a sign that we are still monkeys with sticks. The goal of humanity must be to exercise the one thing that makes us special and that is our amazing ability to empathize with people we do not even know, but choose to help regardless of association.

When I discuss future economic, political, and social happenings I hope you will remember this simple blog so you can better understand my view of humanity an how we must overcome our primitive urges to move on to a new plain of consciousness and cooperation with our fellow human beings. I am not a tree hugging hippy, I am simply and angry monkey with a stick who doesn’t want to be one anymore.