Okay, the thread I started on why we destroy our own environment appears to be about exhausted. Out of this, however, arose the issue of a self-loathing human race, bent on its own destruction without ever specifically stating that intention.
We are, apparently, the most self-conscious creatures on this planet. We know that we exist. We are apparently wired to value and protect that existence, yet also know that this thing we hold as so precious will inevitably end. We also now know, through our continuing investigation, that all things inevitably will end, even the universe itself, as part of the natural process. Individually, none of us know in advance when or how we will die. Collectively, it might all end at any time. An asteroid could slam the Earth, a volcano could engulf us all in ash, an earthquake and ensuing tsunami recently ended more than 200,000 lives, another ice age will eventually descend upon us, we might bring it all to an end ourselves, by the means we have devised in the past 60 years. These are only a few of the possibilities.
There is something about all of these factors that has, throughout the millennia, and particularly in the West, led most if not all human beings to believe, consciously or not, that they are somehow a cursed race, contemptible, children of a lesser god, and doomed. We have, for some reason, developed a belief that we, ourselves, might be responsible for this set-up, the concept of original sin, present in some form in many religious systems. We come to loathe ourselves for finding ourselves in such a situation, and behave toward each other, and the environment, as people who loathe each other.
Why do we blame ourselves for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and consequently attempt to bring about our own demise, while simultaneously claiming to “value” life? Why to we continually try to add to and exacerbate the inevitable anxieties of life, when we possess the capacity to minimize at least some of the misery?
Have at it!