The Nature of Human Nature

I told a story in yesterday’s blog of a past life in which I killed a man who had wronged me. Justice and injustice came swiftly in those days before a formal legal system developed. Times were simpler and people were generally much more aware of the potentially high cost of cheating or stealing. Since they constantly lived with the awareness that serious bodily injury or worse could result if they didn’t follow the golden rule, people were generally more considerate – or they led carelessly short lives.

Today, humanity is struggling through an awkward growing phase where we don’t have law and order even though we have laws. Roughly 7% of the US population is serving time behind bars at any one time, but criminals are protected from the retribution of their victims. That’s civilization as we know it, and sometimes, usually when I’m really mad, I wish there was a better way.

However, being really mad is what traps us into a scenario with only two choices: Either we follow the rules and try to act like civilized humans, or we take the law into our own hands. Still, the days when you could do that without fear of third party retribution are over. Now, there’s no other choice but to evolve.

Learning to evolve beyond the control of our tempers is the test that’s growing more imperative every day as tempers rise in every civilized society around the world. When I left my isolated little dome in the woods to travel to Seattle a couple weeks ago, I literally couldn’t even think because of all the tension in the air.

Along with increased tension comes an increase in civil unrest. Personally, I expect the isolated riots we’re seeing in this country and around the world to spread this summer as injustices reach the boiling point and people everywhere face their age-old demons of ego and anger, which most people have come to accept as just part of our human nature.

We've seen human nature remain fairly constant for all of recorded history. However, what isn’t seen is how far it’s drifted away from our divine, natural path. Ever since we made that tower to human ego 5000 years ago in Babylon, people have acted more and more selfishly.

However, as we approach the end of an era with 2012 just around the corner, it’s now clear that our experiment with furthering our self interest with anger and every tool at our disposal at the expense of others hasn’t yielded the desired results. Every major social and economic system in place is falling apart. If it doesn’t look that way to you now, just wait until the end of summer.

Maybe our 5000+ year experiment with selfishness was a good and needed experience. Still, the virtues of the alternative will become obvious before too long – because the old economic and social systems that were built by ego are toppling under their own weight! Soon the rubble of this failed experiment will be scattered about for all to see.

In the meantime, many are rediscovering their true, loving nature. Before long, I’ll bet we’ll be looking back at this time, and our experience with what we now think of as our baseline “human nature,” and realize it was all just the learning process of an awkward adolescence.