It's a little hard for me to believe that all humans are born cannabalistic. I've spent a lot of time around young children from my many nephews, nieces and cousins to the hundreds of children I took pictures of as a portrait photographer. I've seen them bite each other, but never try to eat each other.
I was thinking about the many ways that human children are less independent and more needy than most animals. Many animals are capable of walking shortly after birth. Many have the ability to feed themselves. Many receive no parenting whatsoever and are forced to care for themselves their entire lives. Maybe the weakness and vulnerability of human children and the fact that they must be reared for a prolonged period before they can do much on their own is the reason behind the suppression of our natural cannibalistic instincts.
I definitely agree that language can change the way people think. It gives us the ability to attempt to reason with each other and "talk things out" rather than just running over everyone who has the nerve to cross our path. Then again, some people, like certain soon-to-be former presidents, have only hurt themselves with language. I know I'm in Texas and if he's got any fans anywhere it's here, but when Ol' Dubbya opens his mouth he only hurts his image. He would definitely be better off and make less enemies if he just shut the hell up.
And a thought on the whole good and evil disscussion we were having at the end of the last class...someone said you must define good and evil in order to answer the question of whether we are all born evil. If evil is anything that is no good, then we are all a little bit evil right? Can anyone in our class, besides perhaps the super mom (sorry I can't remember your name) say that they always do everything within their power to help other people? Do you always stop for someone who is broke down on the side of the highway? Do you always hold doors open for elderly folks? Do you always drop some change into the various donation jars around town?
But I do think we live very cushy lives compared to humans a couple hundred years ago, or even 50 years ago. If we couldn't get food so easily or if we were deserted on an island, who knows what some people would do to sustain life. To somewhat loosely quote The Joker as played by the late Heath Ledger, "When the cards are down these so-called civilized people...they will eat each other."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Nice post. Very engaging. And the quote by Ledger fits well.
ReplyDeleteGood point, also, about the difficulty of defining what is "good." We do assume, often, that because I didn't kick a homeless person or I gave a didn't flip someone off on the way home from work that I've done something "good." In your scenarios, sounds more like people have simply refrained from causing too much havoc rather than reversed the polarities of good and evil.