Today was a pretty good day. Went shopping with my Vivianna and had pizza. I am a little stove up still from all the time on my feet yesterday but it isn’t bad. Actually I feel it more went I am getting up and down or in and out of the car than when I am up or down.
My concern/gripe of the day is about the level of cruelty that is considered normal and ACCEPTABLE in our current society…
A human being IS by nature a cruel animal. This is just a fact of life that comes with any predatory carnivore. Over the millennia, mankind has struggled with this and societies are in part a group effort to subdue and control this cruelty. In our current American set up, men in the past had to be somewhat cruel. Boys were taught at a young age to control/deny the softer emotions. When you do this, the harder emotions fill in the spaces. Up until less than a hundred years ago men had to hunt and raise livestock and kill it. Because of our nature, if not taught otherwise, men get pleasure from doing this. A species that didn’t have a sex DRIVE would die out because of indifference. A species of carnivores that didn’t like to hunt and kill would starve to death. The necessary cruelty or maybe indifference to the suffering of our prey was encouraged in boys. I was raised “country” and never thought much of going out, catching and killing supper. In the past, public executions were treated like a fair and people would come from miles around with their entire families to see the spectacle of a human being killed; often most cruelly.
As we have moved away from the necessity of this and became a more urban society, this sort of thing has not only been forgotten, but actively denied. Suddenly, in our kinder, gentler country, any sort of public physical cruelty to animals has become abhorrent! We want to act as if someone acting cruelly is deranged and evil. I read the other day where a couple of Marines have gotten in DEEEEEEEP trouble for throwing a couple of dogs off a cliff in
All that said; I am not at all surprised or particularly disturbed by this because I understand it. A warrior, MUST, set aside nearly all of his or her social conditioning to become a professional KILLER. Atrocities in wars and times of war are sadly an unavoidable part if this horrible state of affairs. This is the difference between a peace time toy soldier and a combat veteran warrior.
The problem with these two soldiers is not so much in what they have done but in their loss of control. After you have killed a few people and learned to live with it, what is killing a couple of dogs? Anytime someone kills or attacks a person, it is a break down of their social conditioning. It isn’t the least odd that they did it or desired to do it. It is just that normally we control and resist these urges!
FINALLY, I’ll return to my original point. I am disturbed that while we TALK about kindness we are increasingly ACTING cruelly towards each other. We TALK about being gentle but more and more I see us ACTING meaner all the time in wide open ways.
Rudeness is now considered some sort of nationally approved art form! Help and old lady across a street??? She is lucky if someone doesn’t trip her or rob her!!!! TV shows now have made hurting and humiliating people before a national audience a BIG money enterprise. People think that it is FUN to watch someone have their heart broken by a sub-human spouse of partner. It is FUN to watch a person frightened out of their mind in some sadistic fashion…THIS IS ENTERTAINMENT????? At least when I killed a chicken, and laughed because it would run without a head, I did it for a reason! It was for a meal, and not just for sadistic, sick pleasure.
More and more, when someone does some really awful thing, it becomes a political issue and a ton of excuses are made for the monster. I was more bothered by the punk that hit that poor helpless truck driver in the head with a brick while he was on his hands and knees during the LA riots than I am by a Serial Killer. I understand and our society universally condemns what they do as a bad thing. The PUNK tried to kill a helpless innocent man that he didn’t even know…and a large part of our society tried to treat him like some sort of misunderstood hero that didn't deserve to be punished. A Serial killer kills for a reason. It is most likely a sick and twisted reason but a reason nonetheless. The punk didn’t have a reason. He wasn’t mad; he was grinning from ear to ear. He didn’t know the man so how could it have been a personal thing…No he did it because it was great fun!! This is natural, what bothers me isn’t that he did it as much as it is that after he did it, the action was not universally condemned.
The problem that I’m seeing isn’t with the individual. We are the same people we were 70,000 years ago. The problem is that our culture no longer whole heartedly repudiates actions that are cruel, sadistic or dishonorable! We TALK a good show but then when something happens we make excuses for these actions. Reality shows are all about who can be the most dishonest, the most dishonorable, the cruelest. We are training our kids to be and act in ways that no society can tolerate and survive.
Honor has become a word without meaning. At the altar of political correctness, kindness and gentleness have become empty promises. We encourage stupidity and make fun of intelligence. We reward laziness and then punish through back breaking taxes hard work.
I fear that the only hope that we have left is collapse and rebuilding again from the bottom up. Those who wish to be a part of this future need to prepare NOW. I look at it the same way that I look at life insurance. I hope that it doesn’t happen but I have insurance anyway. If you wait until you are on your death bed you can’t buy insurance. If you wait until things get really bad, you will not be able to get what you will need because at that point EVERYBODY will be trying to get the last can of food on the shelf!
DanL
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