Picture yourself in a little valley, a grassy clearing in the middle surrounded by majestic trees of all sort and variety. A rambling brook with smooth and slippery rocks, running through your small village, began its downward run sitting in a big, spring-fed lake well up into the hills to the side the sun rises on. This brook regularly provides a few fish and cold drink for your parched palate back from a long day. The smell is familiar, earthy, strong, dampened leaves from a recent drizzle. You're at home here, you and the others in your tribe. The sounds the forest casts, the babble of the riffles, the birdsong, it all makes perfect sense to your ears, it is familiar and comforting.
This morning, however, you awake to a new noise entirely. Splash! You peek to see a large bird has found a perch on a snag of a tree just downstream of your clay-floored hovel. In it's talons, a fresh fish plucked from your creek lays motionless, the sun's warm rays reflecting golden off its wet and scaly form.
There is no hesitation on your part, no thoughts of how beautiful this animal is, how rare it may be, no reflection on why it's there, or where it came from, or some empathy for it's hunger that you know all too well. Your only thought, as you reach for your bow and an arrow, is that this thief has taken a fish from your creek, a fish that would have done you and your tribe much better in your own bellies, shared over this morning's fire.
Pulling hard against the protesting wood fibers of the bow, you draw back the sinew bowstring to your cheek, a task you've done a thousand times before, take careful aim, and let the arrow fly.
The arrow arcs with a parabolic grace, the beast spreads it's wings in a defiant show of superior reaction time, but it's still too late...the arrow finds its mark, the big bird slumps on its perch, pierced broadside by knapped flint and wood, falling in a slow pirouette to the ground, the fish still clutched tightly in its hunter's grasp.
What am I saying here? That we've always just killed for a wanton, trophy, blood-lust...cavemen on African safari? That we've always been at odds with our environment? No, of course not, what I'm illustrating is simple competition...competition for resources, competition for food.
This fact of competing was what life as an early human or hominid was all about. Our life expectancy for millenia was a mere twenty-six years, with our sole hope to stay upright long enough to lay down next to...to impart our haploid selves onto, hopefully into, an accepting member of the opposite sex. Coho Salmon we were for heaven's sake...doing our best to survive in the oceans fierce depths, avoiding bigger fish and toothy Pinnipeds just to fight our way up an icy cold and bear laden stream to finally...find...release...then die. Pretty simple really...thank you Charles Darwin...if we were savvy enough to make it to sexual maturity then our genes were deemed a quality that could be passed along.
Today, in this the twenty-first century with all it's healthcare and sanitary improvements, this need to compete is still with us as strong as ever. We group ourselves for strength, a simple tribe or a million member trade union, trying to gain an edge on those willing to oppose us. We won't hesitate to draw our figurative bows on a competing assembly bill or would-be law that infringes on our blessed bennies, just as my theoretic tribesman drew death on a fish-thieving eagle.
Alliteration aside, this explains a lot. Coupled with current theories in social psychology (which I'll attempt to explain in later posts), our very evolution may be the culprit to blame for the bicycle-automobile conflict in the streets, the proverbial fox in the hen house. Moreover, if this indeed holds true, the question then becomes, can we overcome this artifact in a lifetime, or are we doomed to lash out in uncontrolled rage anytime we're challenged?MH
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