Ramblings on the Human Condition

I believe in the non-believers. Those who have borne the brunt of everything, those who have been whipped, hit, robbed, tackled, hated, outcasted. Those who society have deemed irredeemable, and therefore those who have rejected society themselves. The loners. The lonely. The survivors.

Call it naive, call it seeing the world through a rose-colored pane, but I think that privilege warps us. In our abundance we forget that our ancestors dealt with scarcity, and therefore forget the very things that have humbled us before. We were once at the mercy of our surroundings - regulated by them, perhaps for the better. But, what makes us unique is the fact that we have somehow trespassed our regulations, our natural rules, the natural order that keeps us in check. We no longer are regulated by the limited resources in our habitat - we can just ship food and resources from abroad. No longer do predators prey on humans - we have developed tools and weapons to deal with them. Disease is fought against by vaccines and medicine. We no longer die as early as we used to, and live for longer. Our regulators have been broken by our intellect. And so, as a cheap fix we have decided to be our own regulators, operating in our own natural biases. We now regulate human life, we now regulate human punishment, WE are the regulators when our natural conditions were before. History suggests such has led to more harm than good… war, famine, climate change, domestication of animals. The result of such regulation was mere infighting, causing collateral damage to the species around us. I ask the question - does civility truly separate us from our animal brethren? Or does it create a fake, illusionary barrier between us two, resulting in our essentially unconscious following of natural instinct resulting in the demise of everything… Privilege is the ultimate enforcer of the notion of "civility" - that we are morally better, display more etiquette, and therefore are the "better." We are different than mere animals - we are "civil," regulated by rules... But are we truly regulated?

Hence, my point about the outcasts. Those who have rejected civility, those who society hates. Transcendentalism was a movement that dictated such rejection of societal pressures, and connection with pure nature. I end with a question: Should we as humans reject the very notion of civility, of acceptance by those in our same race? Or must we collude? I do not know...