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In the 1998 remake of The Thin Red Line, a character voice-over says the following:
This great evil; where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbin' us of life and light? Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known? Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night? The most important question in that paragraph is "Who's doin' this?" The answer is just too humiliating for 'modern' human beings to accept. I'm not a secular humanist. I do, however, believe in the intrinsic goodness of mankind (or the more politically correct term, humanity). The paragraph from The Thin Red Line is more relevant than most of us realize. Our shared predicament is not a result of a handful of evil men, although a handful of evil men certainly perpetuate misery on the planet based on their own agendas of greed. Why hasn't our ever-expanding knowledge made us more wise? Why is it we have increasingly fantastic examples of human ingenuity, yet the so-called primitive aggression of generations past has not left us at all? If the social scientists are correct, and we are now so much better off because of our ever-growing collective 'enlightenment', then why were the worst wars in human history fought in the last 100 years? Why are wars still being fought in the twenty-first century? Why do we still allow individuals in certain positions to poison our minds with hatred of others? Why are we still so ready to believe there are enemies everywhere we turn? Why are so many still willing to pick up a gun or a bomb, and end the lives of others who are doing the exact same thing for what they also believe are good reasons? The sadism of leaders of strife-torn countries is clearly evident to the world. Does the world truly see us as their unofficial police officers, or are we complicit with murder every time we fill our tanks with gas? Why has the United States, the beacon of freedom to the rest of the planet, spent so much time displaying their military prowess on the soil of other lands? Why do so many still trust that the leaders of our country only have goodness and righteousness on their minds when they send our brave soldiers to die? With all our knowledge and with all our collective experience and history, how do we address these real and tangible horrors? We throw our hands in the air and say, "That's life." Well I say to you: This is not how the world was meant to be. This is not the natural result of human nature. This is not an outgrowth of our supposedly primitive past. This is a system-wide, all-reaching, purposeful implementation, whose obvious goal is the ruination of everyone's lives on this biosphere. Human beings are not irrational, ignorant and savage. We are creatures capable of goodness and greatness, but apparently we can be manipulated into justifying our own selfish desires. For those of you still quoting Freud or Nietzsche, or hopelessly enamored of the likes of Dawkins or Darwin, you may skip this and continue on your not-so-merry way. For those of you who want a real answer to who is destroying us, try looking beyond the mirror, beyond the limitations of physics, and beyond the siren song of psychoanalytical brainwashing. Look closer. Think deeper. Open your mind. The truth may not be attractive to you, but if you revise it, the only person you fool is yourself. |