Civilization

There's been this fun dichotomy in how people see civilization and nature as two totally separate or even opposing things. Or how they think we're removed from nature, or that our industrial society is this horrendously unnatural creation.

Life eats itself to survive in this world, and humans are no exception. (Here comes that bit where some omnivores use what I just mentioned to justify their eating habits--that's not what I want to do here.) I just want to remind myself and anyone else reading this that we can't escape the cannibalistic side of the nature of life (if you'll excuse my liberal application of that word)--we must kill things or starve, and most of those organisms we kill at least relied on eating dead things to survive, if they didn't also actively kill things. It's not just our treatment of animals (though that is where it's particularly apparent if you stop and look), it's in all of agriculture and in the very fabric of the economic practices and attitudes that are driving the destruction of the environmental conditions conducive to human life (be it capitalism or communism or something like socialism with the capacity for all the downsides of both of those systems =D.)

We use people whenever we can. Just because we don't actually eat them doesn't mean the system isn't naturally inclined to devour them in order to expand itself if it gets a chance. We tell ourselves this is fair, and maybe we think it's fair because it seems unavoidable (even if it happens very disproportionately more often to some groups of people than others.) And maybe it is to some degree--the phrase "life is hard" is hackneyed for a reason. But devouring animals (human and non) on the massive scale we do is not something I can accept as completely unavoidable.

(Not to imply that I'm some sort of activist or something, or even that I avoid such practices as much as is humanly possible. I'm far too self-centered for that, though I do put some effort into getting close to the latter. Anyway, when I say avoid I mean personally avoid perpetuating, not actively fight the existance of.)

But just because it's atrocious doesn't mean it's not natural. The similarities between our industrial economy and the life/death cycle of other organisms are pretty surprising to me given the attitude we have toward said economy (not to mention civilization in general.) It's an expectable extension of the same instincts and practices that keep other less diabolically clever animals alive.

That doesn't make it right, of course. Nature is ruthlessly pragmatic--if it works, it goes, regardless of how much suffering comes with it. I suppose I should feel lucky that eating our young is unconducive to the continuation of our genes, and that devouring the weak in a literal sense never quite caught on.

Somehow, someway, being able to think of how our actions affect other beings even when they benefit us as individuals and care whether others suffer managed to be so conducive (or at least not in conflict with) our surivial that we can do it to the degree we're capable of. This is an ability that must be put to use, no matter how contrary it may be to the nature of the perpetuation of life in this world.

 [I'll try to post something more positive on Thursday? ^^;]