I find myself growing more angry as I get older. Maybe it’s because I’ve been retired a while. I have more time to observe the world around me and those who inhabit it. In particular, the human race to which I belong.
Abuse of power is, above all, what makes me most angry. There have been abuses of power since Homo sapiens came down from the trees, and maybe even before that. Originally, it was survival of the fittest, the natural evolutionary process that guaranteed only the best, strongest, fittest, passed on their genes to their next generation.
It wasn’t until so-called civilisation took hold and mankind found he could rise above and control those around him, that true abuse began. The era of powerful dictatorial monarchs and emperors was upon us. It was here that the natural evolutionary process we call survival of the fittest, became warped in the brain of Homo sapiens and evolved into something we simply call, “greed.”
Millions were massacred by armies led by these power-hungry early dictators, greedy to enlarge their lands or to subdue their enemies and force them into new, fashionable, religions, from which they took hefty tithes.
Today, nothing has changed except the climate. Dictators are on the rise everywhere. They have charge of nations, governments, corporations. Their slaves are not just the workers. Whole governments now bow to the will of the corporate dictators and leave the lowly workers to suffer further deprivation.
In early history the weapons were sword and crossbow. Now, it is more sophisticated. While missiles and tanks destroy whole nations and kill millions, the internet and other media have become possibly even more powerful with their ability to propagandize and brainwash whole populations. In Russia, a population initially opposed to Vladimir Putin’s tyranny in Ukraine, has now been effectively brainwashed via government media, to accept and even support the hideous crimes committed by their armed forces.
Survival of the fittest is no longer necessary. We go to great lengths to keep alive the more physically and mentally unfit of our offspring. Greed has become the acceptable face of Homo sapiens, greed for money, possessions, and power. So great is this factor in human life that we are now prepared to risk the very planet we inhabit in order to maintain our greed obsession.
Despite the warnings of climate scientists; despite the obvious and often deadly evidence of a planet in distress, we still continue as we’ve always done to rob and pillage our home for no other purpose than to satisfy our greed.
Throughout four billion years of evolutionary history, creatures have come and gone. Millions of lifeforms that never made it to a permanent place on Earth. For one reason or another they just weren’t suited to survive here. A number have made it, but only one has evolved an insatiable greed that will determine its own demise.
Evolution is a natural process. When a part becomes un-natural it is discarded as unsuitable and becomes extinct. Unless, we radically change our ways very quickly, we will be the next to be discarded.
I grow more angry as I get older because the future becomes much clearer, and for Homo sapiens, much shorter.