The Hidden Flaw

I have come to understand that there is a hidden flaw in humankind. It is “hidden” because I do not know what it is exactly; however, it is clearly there, doing its mischief in human affairs. It is when we take a sober look at what humans do and how they act that we understand the flaw’s existence and the danger that it poses.

Let’s look past all the sweet little stores about being God’s special creatures and take a realistic view of what actually happens in the world. First and foremost, creatures breathe oxygen in order to fuel their inner organic systems. [OK, fish don’t exactly “breathe” but they still extract oxygen out of water through their gills.] However, second most important, all creatures require “food” in order to build and maintain their bodies. What humans like to ignore is that “food” is actually us. Food is really just the whole collection of insects, plants, and animals. All living things get eaten by something. Perhaps humans do not get eaten very often nowadays but they were in the past and there still are animals higher in the food chain. The “food chain” . . . it’s like a comprehensive menu of who eats whom and what. Of special interest, and significance, is the lack of waste in this process. Killing is done for food and if the killer doesn’t want all of its prey, there is always someone else who will take the rest.

There is one animal that violates this law constantly, thoroughly, and grotesquely. That is the human; and that is where we begin to sense the existence of a flaw. Humans try to hide the nature of food by industrializing the process of killing animals and, in the process, they waste enormous amounts of food. But there is a much greater failed behavior of humankind and that is the killing of other humans. For the most part, humans do not even kill other humans for food (which is a legitimate reason in the animal world) but rather they kill other humans for sport, in revenge, out of hatred, and by command. The human dead are mutilated, burned, and buried. 

In my lifetime, I have witnessed the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the War in Afganistan, and the Second War in Iraq. Countless human civilians and military personnel died in these epic clashes and one can only ask why. But we never seriously ask why; instead, we invent mythic excuses that elevate democracy, freedom, defense in order to hide the money-making, profit-taking, economic ambitions, and political fantasies that really underly the command to kill. 

It is not clear to me where and when all of this began in the long history of humankind. What is clear today is that humans have worked science, technology, and invention to the point that this inner flaw can now do enormous damage to humankind as a whole as well as to all the rest of the world. The 21st Century is off to a terrible start, and if we do not get some insight into why we do these things, I fear the century’s end may bring humanity’s end as well.