The Civilized Man

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

~ Henry David Thoreau

Let us reflect upon the advancement of the common Man and his goal for civilization in the past thousand years. Ever since the cave men, we've strided to advance ourselves into a sophisticated and eloquent species. We cast down our crude clubs and makeshift weapons, only to pick up spears and shields. We harnessed the power of fire and conquered even the greatest of animals. We learned to interact with others and to speak, to write, to communicate. And, when humans have become the most advanced being on this small Earth, we turned on each other, intent on conquering the fiercest predator in the world: man. We learned langauge and literature, only to use it to write Delcaration of Wars and messages. We learned the use of weapons and the Arts of War, only to use it on each other. Where ever humans advance along the chain of civilization, violence will follow. Because deep down, beneath all the civilized language, clothing, and knowledge we have; we cannot deny the truth: Humans are animals. We still have the instinct to reproduce and pass on our genes, we still have to urge to hunt and kill for food, and we still have the most primal instinct for violence. It is human nature to assert their dominance above the rest with violence and a show of strength.

You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
~ Will Rogers

No matter how much civilization advances, we still adhere to our most primal of instincts: the thirst for violence. Everyday you hear on the news about the latest fighting that's occured somewhere in the world; or how many people were killed today due to a gang-related shooting or some other act of senseless violence. You can call it whatever you want; a war, a duel, a coup, whatever... But it's still violence. Why else would be spend so much time and money into weapons research? We want to develop new weapons to fight new wars, to gain dominance over the world. Ambition is the name we give to our need for dominance and control.

Always, we believe ourselves to be civilized and cultured. But in reality, all we're doing is just dressing up and editing our own barbarism. We look back at past civilizations that hunted animals and ate them right on the spot as uncultured savages; but isn't rounding up thousands of livestock a day and slaughtering them with machines the same? Our so called civilized mind thinks "Of course not, they are barbarians who don't know how to be civilized and social-able. We, on the other hand, do not use such crude methods of finding food." Isn't it all the friggin' same!? We kill for food, they kill for food. We fight for control, they fight for control. The only difference is in the way we achieve these goals.