The Animal in All of Us

Thankfully, on a smaller timeline, in any period in modern history, the laws devised by the ancient Greeks and the transcenders that followed, still serve to keep people in check, enabling them to control their animal nature because if they do not it will make their lives less beneficial. In that sense we have come a long way in recent years providing examples of somewhat stabile and less violent societies than what came before. However, some individuals still struggle to fit in a modern society. The people that fail to do so are murderers, rapists and other criminals. At times driven by desperation and triggered by their inherent survival instincts but others just out of pure malice (more on that in a bit), these people knowingly go against the well-contrived laws of our societies and sometimes pay the price, incarceration or execution, but usually not until after the fact. Without going into a discussion about the justice and penal systems, suffice it to say for the sake of argument that the people I am referring to are guilty of their crimes. These are the people that are most animal, still driven by primal instincts, acting on impulse, unable to control their actions and causing destruction to themselves and others as a result.

The scary thing is, without society and its laws, I fear most people would lose this self-control and throw reason to the curb and become just as primal as these desperate, impulsive or plain out malicious criminals, unless they have the rationale to stay from such actions. But anarchy breeds chaos and chaos fuels the primal instincts of humans. If the shit really hits the fan even the most rational of us are forced into action seen when soldiers are forced to go into war. In such cases they may find an outlet they have been lacking and a stage to engage in their more primal side without inhibitions. In any scenario where the laws of civilization take a step back, man seems to regress to a more animal state where self-preservation once again supersedes all other considerations. This is not only the theme of many a great novel; The Beach, Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, and many post-apocalyptic films/TV-shows; The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, The Road etc., but also one of the points Dawkins makes in The God Delusion when discussing morality. Like him, neither do I believe that morality is something inherent in humans infused in us by God or anyone else. Rather, it’s something we have arrived at on our own via the help of transcenders who over centuries have created societies that protect and serve humanity in its whole and not just the strongest and fittest. This has enabled our population to grow but also given us time to focus on other endeavors and encouraged further growth intellectually. Society makes humans human and not animal. Religious morality used to fill the same niche in a more unenlightened age, and still do so in some communities, but again it is important to recognize that these laws were also created by men. Even if they claimed they came from an ethereal entity, the laws published in holy scriptures were created by men to govern the animal nature in humans. In order to do so they invented an omnipresent Big Brother, a sort of divine security camera. ‘Behave or God will know and you will end up in Hell!’ Once again, it is extremely hard for me not to compare God to Santa Claus; ‘He knows if you have been naughty or nice.’ With that said, it is important to acknowledge that for all its current disadvantages, there was a time in our evolution where religion served to move us forward. As demonstrated before though, this time is far behind us and now we need to progress further, potentially at the cost of religion, at least in its strongest forms.