Legacy of the Murder Ape

Human beings are unnatural. Nowhere on the planet, maybe nowhere in the universe, can be found another aware creature that slaughters its own kind. All of recorded human history is rife with mayhem and homicide. Pre-literate cultures such as the Maya and Aztecs have left behind evidence of ritual blood-letting on a grand scale. Nothing to compare with our heavy duty modern ordnance carnage but pretty good for early butchers using only stone knives.

We started off doing each other in with sticks and stones and increased the gain as we acquired the skills; but have we made an advance as a species? Or do we do what we do because we are the weakest kid on the block. We were the 90 pound weakling pushed around by everything in the jungle. But we got the smarts one day and were able to fight back.

With the smarts came the ego. It came and came and came until it lighted up our brains and drove out any lingering jungle smarts. (Like street smarts, the jungle variety are innate, useful and basic.) All the other beasts have it. We're unnatural; we don't. Or if we do, it has a Z class priority and is easily ignored. Having learned to kill but still being basically a weakling species; we kill each other.

I know, I know, not all of us do it you say. Really... how about killings done in our name or with our tacit approval? No point in listing all the ways it's done for us, everybody knows a whole bunch. Each of us has our private scent bag around the neck wafting abattoir stench up a wrinkling nose.

Is there a cure for what ails us? We could start the search by eschewing the preference for things over people. Might help. Got enough stuff now to last until doomsday which might be around the corner if we don't get with it. The primitive societies take the murder route too, so looking to them for guidance is not helpful. Nothing noble there; plenty savage, though. But the problem then, as now, is mostly about getting and having things. Hunting and fishing rights, prime territory, nubile ladies...the lot. What is gained in pursuing ever bigger, grander things and greater constructions if murder is in our nature and homicide our vocation? Why the pretense of any higher calling?

If we spent a fraction of our time, our interest and our effort, seeking ways to keep from doing murder, we might be successful. It would mean giving up our singular quest for stuff but it would be novel and who knows, we might learn to like it. Maybe, in time, not killing folks might turn out to be almost as much fun as offing them has always been. Let's try it.