There must be something, somewhere, that we know that is correct, clearly correct, simple to assess and know to be correct. Surely?
But there’s certainly not much.
How about the War on Drugs? Good thing? No.
War in Iraq? No.
Fluoride toothpaste? No.
Canola Oil? No.
Asbestos? No.
Higher Education? No.
Lead-free petrol? No.
On and on it goes….. find a ‘truth’, look a little further and it evaporates, gets thinner like melting snow, grows holes…..
And yet our world lives on these ‘truths’.
We order our whole society on them.
How can we be so stupid?
Well, there’s another truth: We are sentient beings. Rational beings. No.
We simply don’t behave that way.
A quick glance at history – the history of the human race – a history of massacres and wars, deaths, tortures, genocides….
Horrible, inconceivably horrible events piled one on the other… terrible torment topped by even greater horrors throughout the ages……
Ah… but these were the doings of a few madmen throughout human history, weren’t they? No.
They were our doings. OUR doings. You and me. The ordinary people. It is WE who turn on ourselves. The murderers, the killers, the butchers, the tormentors… they are drawn from our ranks.
Brother against brother, neighbour against neighbour…
How many people did Idi Amin kill? Saddam Hussein? Stalin? Hitler? Ghenghis Khan? All the famous black hearted murderers of history? How many did they kill?
None. None. Some of them literally none at all. Some of them shot, stabbed, tortured a few here and there but regardless it was physically impossible for them to do what was done in their name.
No. The actual work had to be done by US. The ordinary people.
We had to take jobs as soldiers, police, prison officers, secret police, murder squads, whatever……..
We had to take those jobs and do that work.
The orders came ‘kill these people’ and we killed them.
Apparently Stalin wrote up commands and sent them out to villages and towns and they were nothing more than commands that a certain number of people be sent from that place to the prisons or the death camps or whatever.
Stalin just quoted a place and a number, that’s all. And that many people from that place died, or were incarcerated, tormented, probably later died.
He must have wondered at his own power. They all must. Wondered at just how much we would do for them.
They must have laughed, hollowly and insanely, at the orders they could issue and what people would do…..
They must have thought it incredible that their people would turn on themselves and devour themselves, rip themselves apart on their orders, the orders of one man.
And yet that’s it. That is the human race. That is what we do.
Always have done and still do.
We believe crap and we willingly turn on ourselves, devour ourselves.
It is all kind of the same thing, isn’t it? The truth is not ours to see. Words of a pop song – que sera sera, whatever will be, will be, the truth is not ours to see……
We seem to agree with that philosophy… we seem to want that philosophy… it is too much effort to want something else…
Better for us, easier for us, if truth is not known by us, not searched for by us, but we just ‘do what we’re told’.
Truth belongs to someone else. The witchdoctors, the magicians, the overlords.
We do what we’re told. Drink this – it is good for you… Eat this, it is good for you…. Believe this…… Do this…… Kill him……… Kill her….. Capture them……… Imprison them…….
Somehow we easily see parts of our self as ‘other’, allowing us to hate and destroy it.
Perhaps we are the result of millenia of evolution – and that evolution has tended to the creation of a malleable, acquiescent, undemanding, humble subservient creature capable at the drop of a hat of turning on its fellows, its friends and family, peers, workmates…….
Why would evolution have given rise to that? To us? Why?
It is a great puzzle to me.