The Curious Case of...

Force-Fed: My Own Humanity

Today I perfectly exemplified what I hate most in humanity.

What, you may be asking yourself, could I be referring to? Well, what I personally hate most in humanity is our aptitude to do harm to the rest of the world -namely other living organisms- with a complete lack of intention.

Yes, there are a fair amount [I would assume millions considering our population] of people who are cruel and would enjoy actually hurting things with the single intent of watching them suffer, but I would say most don’t intend to be that way.

For example, do hunters and poachers think what they are doing is “wrong,” do they think in their minds that they are hurting something that desires and deserves to live just as much as they do? Perhaps, but it seems most likely to me that they would just see prey as sub-human and therefore less important beings; maybe things “given” to humans for our purposes.

Anyway, the point is that people do so much harm and they never really mean to. We hurt each other, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt everything around us because we don’t -on the whole- take the time to think things through from any perspective other than our own.

I must admit that I’ve always resented this. I’ve always resented the thoughtlessness people show nearly all of the time. I’ve always thought of myself as somehow better than other people in that respect; that simply because I always try to be aware of other living things that would be effected by my actions. I thought I could avoid being like THEM.

Them: not us, not me… them.

‘Them’ is a concept so prevalent throughout humanity. It’s why we are racist, sexist, and every other form of discrimination. We think of ‘us’ as a different category entirely, a somehow better or superior category. The truth is we’re all the same. We are all people, we all do selfish things and can’t/don’t foresee the possible repercussions to others because of our actions.

I am no different from all those people I have resented for so long. The only difference, maybe, is that I am acutely aware of my, our, faults.

I would be lying if I said it didn’t depress me. And I mean really depress me. I always assumed that we had a choice, that other people just took the moral low-ground. Well, what I would ethnocentrically consider to be the moral low-ground -the moral stance in opposition to “logical thought” and “critical reasoning.”

It’s funny how life can just hit you over the head out of the blue. It slams you with your own thoughts/assumptions/beliefs, and you’re forced to fact uncertainty. I wonder if that’s one of the greatest tests in life, if you adapt your beliefs to the new information, or struggle to retain those ideas no longer supported by experience…

I suppose maybe you’re wondering what I did to get myself and my thoughts in a nice cluster fuck? Honestly, if I told you, you would laugh [except maybe if you’re in PETA -and I’m not even in that]. It’s not anything most everyone in the entire world would consider a ‘big’ deal by any means. I will say that it involved the accidental partial squishing of a small creature involving a heavy rock [not a vehicle thank you very much], which was promptly followed by my enacting a mercy killing. Which then made me cry, and I rarely cry… ever…

Regardless of how anyone else perceives the actual situation that prompted this post, the point still stands: I am human and I will, no matter how hard I try, impact other living beings in a negative fashion just by my being alive and doing “normal” activities.

I hope this blow to my little conception of the world will make me become a better person. And I pray there is a solution to the problems previously/presently caused by humanity on the entire world besides our extinction…

THAT’S what I call ending with an upper. Oooooh yeah!

[That is the moral of the story that was my day though… UGH!]