Monday, December 15, 2008
Beyond Mere Survival
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The only way to get rid of my internal violence is to see where it is coming from - but, why is it so hard to find the root of the act of violence?
Is it because it precedes even my own existence? my parents, grandparents, even my great-great-great-grandparents?
Did it all begun during the dawn of human existence - when the human being started to defend itself - when we begun to protect ourselves from the environment, from nature itself - when we begun to fight for our survival?
Did it begun with our ancestors - who had to face overwhelming odds against the forces of nature? And from them, did we inherited these instincts, these mechanisms - the instincts of self-preservation and the conservation of the species? Surely, our ancestors would have never survived without these mechanisms. It was these instincts that kept them together and united - but, later on, these same mechanisms made them turn against each other. Has the time for a new mechanism to develop arrived?
So, it must have been our primary function and purpose - first, to survive. But now, it is clear that for the species TO SURVIVE, we need to go beyond mere survival.
With more than seven billion individuals on this planet, there could be no doubt that the human species will survive for a long foreseeable future.
Is now the moment for the human species to go beyond mere survival?
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