I’ve been thinking a great deal about humanity… the things that make us human as it were. For most people, humanity is was separates us from the animals. Duh! you say… The thing is, humans are not born with the emotional and mental tools necessary for “humanity” or kindness or compassion. We have to learn humanity at an early age, left to our instincts, man (and woman) would be only slightly better than animals. I find it oddly comforting that most people completely disagree with this because their brains cannot process certain truths.
For instance… sanity. What is it? How is it measured? What does it really mean?
Lets look at it another way…
A man goes for a walk. On his walk he encounters a man who begins to berate him for wearing a sweater vest. In response the man in the sweater vest beats the man to death with a brick he picks up from the ground. When he is finished bashing this mans brains in, he continues on his walk without any thought to his previous actions.
Which man is insane and which man is sane?
Culturally, we have rules that prevent responding to external experiences violently. Call it the “civil” part of civilization. The idea that disputes can be handled without resorting to our base instincts. Instinctually though, as the previous thought suggests, human beings respond to all stimulus in one of two ways… fight or flight. Civilization is really another way of saying domestication. That domestication is the product of hundreds of years of culturally forced rules (or morals) that are meant to make people more likely to be controlled, often times by weaker, less intelligent people.
Click on READ MORE to see a video that proves my point that there is no such thing as a selfless act… or at least shows how funny Friends was back in the day…