Some dark feelings, a mood where I sense we humans are about to meet something more deadly and horrendous than we can imagine.
There are questions I have about my capacity to “see” into the deeper levels of darkness because I have difficulty separating fear from truth.
“Love thy neighbor if . . . ”
“If he’s not like you, you can murder his body and soul.”
“Hate thy Neighbor if he is not white.”
I don’t see any built in “nice” in humanity’s ability to dismiss another person’s right to life, or respect for their entitlement to life and living.
We take it for granted that we are entitled to dismiss and dispose of that which we don’t like. There is nothing unusual about all organisms doing this. It is the foundation of biological selection, but the “ideal” of freedom and rights as human beings is a dreamy, conditional entitlement in contradiction to our feelings and natural rejection of that which does not ”fit” into what we feel we want and can accept.
For most humans we are conditioned by our environment, culture, genetic temperament, and position in the hierarchy of status in our family, tribe and nation. That which is outside this personal world of taste, belief and means, does not have much presence or credibility from those “outside”, even though both are living out of the same paradigm of cultural acceptance or rejection.
They have in common the biological impulses and responses to what they do want, or don’t want or “like”, as a life form.
The character of the totality of this world is seldom considered beyond the individual point of view. The majority not only are captured in their personal world of acceptance of rejection, but they do not want to, or are not capable of, observing themselves objectively or rationally as an individual in regards to the totality of the group—humankind. Most of us are not looking at ourselves and relating our own responsibility to a given situation, no, we look upon the other as the source, and consequently we blame them for the unwanted outcomes of our failings and mis-judgements.
Our population density is growing in unprecedented numbers, forcing us to see what we normally would not, due to the closer life-giving interchange in essential resources.
Our responses to strangers are usually skeptical, doubtful and suspicious. Also, there is a psychic question of including or excluding the other.
Our standard habit is to exclude those who are not like us, as well as those we don’t know, like, or trust. This is foundational in our unwillingness to grant others their full rights of citizenship, whoever they might be, and showing them the same respect we would give to the value of our ideals.
The rate and intensity of the forced lack of individual space, due to our increasing populations, is exacerbating the underlying stresses that we increasingly feel towards an explosive organic rejection. I can’t see a positive outcome from this. With the onslaught of embedded ignorance, judgment, and hate, this is the trifecta-recipe for a collective explosion of violence and rage.