being frank

As a species, we’ve overcome all manner of challenges in the last eighty-odd years. Many diseases have been contained or eradicated altogether, access to basic education has risen substantially, and the average person in most countries is now living longer and more prosperous than ever before. So why are so many people continually feeling alienated, despondent and stressed? I realize that I’m opening up Pandora’s box with that line of questioning, and there is no way to delve deeply into these types of global issues on this little blog. It’s just one of those things that cross my mind fairly frequently, mostly because the state of the world today is constantly reminding me of how much we, as a species have yet to grow.

With that said, I want to share a quote here that has been a favorite of mine for some time. Written by the renowned sociobiologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, it states that, the real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. I’ve always found this to be both an amusing and incredibly prescient quote. It also seems to corroborate itself with each passing technological trend, modern social discord, or the continual degradation of our political experiment. So since this has been at the heart of my thoughts as of late, I decided to write a little pebble about what I consider to be a mountainous issue: The proliferation of violence and aggression.

The aggressive side of humanity is, in this writer’s humble opinion, the last great barrier of human shortcomings we need to rise above. There is so much violence depicted in everything these days, slathered with an abundance of testosterone, angst and an overly inflated muscularity. All which serves to glorify the fleeting nature of strength and the perceived power that comes from being a subjugator of the hapless or the weak. I have always believed that this insane adulation for might and muscle has been one of the perennial catalysts for the decline of just about every advanced civilization on Earth. But again, that’s just this humble writer’s opinion.

Yet once brawn is considered to reign supreme over brains, a nation will tend to lose its ability to think, to heal, to create and to advance; in other words, to survive. Brawn alone cannot maintain the status quo without the brains to guide it. This is represented to a great and ridiculously obvious extent by the human body. Quite simply, it cannot function without the brain to run things. Eliminate the mind and the body, despite its muscles, apportioned power and impressive frame, will fail in time. Regardless of having circulatory systems intact, organs fully functioning, and respiratory system untouched, they will all suffer irreversible failure without the brain to guide their functions and channel their output for the benefit of the body as a whole. As always, nature gives us the perfect example from which to learn. Yet we’re too busy flexing, fantasizing or fucking to know any better.

Crude language aside, the collective we on this planet needs to come to terms with this runaway penchant for mindless violence and aggression. No doubt that mentioning either of these terms brings to mind their conventional extremes. Yet in today’s world where so many of our interactions occur within a virtual environment, violence can be carried out with a keystroke; aggression played out in the guise of good natured fun. Our levels of patience, understanding, and balance have dropped to dangerously low levels, and we’re losing our ability to see beyond a given problem or course of action. Compromise has given way to competition; everything these days needs an opportunity to create winners at all costs. We are no longer capable of adjudicating an issue without first ensuring that we have an ironclad path towards an eventual and secured success. Victory used to be largely predicated on the desire or belief of being on the side of reason; on the side of what was best for the whole. If success was not achieved, we addressed the need for learning, adjusting, or perhaps even capitulating our position for the sake of arriving at a compromise that would benefit all concerned. The second we began opting to aim for victory as the only means for success, we began to fail as a collective; we began to raise the ante on aggression to ensure we ended up on our feet. We have taken the path of least resistance; the highway to hell paved with the shiny bricks of purported good intentions, excellence, power, and the take-no-prisoners mantra of the competitive spirit. Losing has become one of the obscenest words in the English language today. Yet it is nothing more than one side of a simple equation: We are all different and therefore prone to fall into a given category or ranking at some point; high or low, good or bad, win or lose. They’re not a measure of value, just an acknowledgement of a skill or the lack thereof; nothing more.

As much as we may wish to argue this point with some, we humans were given a brain. We were imbued with the ability for complex thinking and rationalization that evolved beyond the instinctual genetics of raw survival. We move forward through the achievements of our intellect; not merely through subjugation on the basis of strength. The very definition of survival speaks to its limitations when it comes to the resiliency of humans: The state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances. We were designed by nature to live and thrive through the use of our intellect. Our physical strength is there as a means to shape our environs and protect ourselves from the challenges of nature. We have a wondrous mind but a lousy body when it comes to surviving. It’s the prioritization of mind over muscle that makes us the apex creature; the noble ape. It’s not solely because of our physical strength, but because of the intellect that controls its use and the rationale that drives its intent.

Asimov said it best (and most succinctly): Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. It is the dichotomy of being creatures of great intellect yet capable of committing incredible acts of stupidity. The historian Yuval Harari calls this the Paradox of Wisdom. We have the ability to create amazing things through our intellect. But yet with many of them not being good for us at all, we’ll stupidly continue making them. We have achieved so much as a species; of this there is no doubt. But we continue to supplement our progress by relying more and more on our aggressive nature, committing ourselves to doing incredible feats of ineptitude and stupidity rather than relying on a balance alongside our intellect and common sense. At some moment in time, the tipping point will flip us over the edge and we may not have the mental acuity or even the strength, to right our wrongs. To borrow a line from the Hitchcock film, Notorious: We are protected by the enormity of our stupidity – for a time.