A Brother to Love and a Brother to Kill

“Follow the Golden Rule.” “Play nice.” “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” “Sharing is caring.” “If you don’t have something nice to say don’t say it at all.” Any of these phrases sound familiar? Good. Now, think quickly as to which persons you would actually be treating this way. Are your friends, family, and peers the ones who actually get treated kindly by you? Now think about who you would not treat fairly. Think about the groups of people where you might abandon the Golden Rule and replace it with a want to disgrace or destroy said group. Every society in history, no matter how much they may brag about being peace-loving, has had a group where it was perfectly alright to abuse. From Jews, Christians, Muslims, Communists, Fascists, slaves, untouchables, to (more modernly) terrorists, homosexuals, and prisoners, someone has always been acceptable to hate. Each of us has a person or a group of persons where we would suspend our ability to be civil and enjoy thrashing the “evil” group, verbally or physically. And most of the time the groups we are thrashing are villainized by being “affronts to your Deity,” “morally repugnant,” or “backwards and barbaric.” Even though we might love one fellow human being, someone else usually gets shafted by us at every opportunity we get.
This hate and competition is only natural. Mother Nature is not the kind gentle life-giver portrayed in children’s tales. She’s a sadistic psycho-bitch that creates the best contestants in life by killing the rest, but her results have been remarkable. From tiny pieces of polypeptides, to single-celled organisms, to fish, to mammals, to humans, she has made world-shapers from what was once a jumbled collection of molecules that wanted to self-replicate. Her methods are akin to trying to hit a target by putting on a blindfold and holding the trigger on a mini-gun whilst spinning in a circle. Sure most of the bullets miss, but eventually some will hit and those few that do are rewarded with the ability to pass on their genes to the next generation. In order for creatures to increase their chances of surviving and reproducing, they kill one another to get the most resources. A group of tigers don’t wait politely for a gazelle to die of natural causes; the lion fast enough and strong enough gets to slaughter the food, eat, and reproduce. Those that are slow and weak die off. This animalistic behavior is unfortunately still buried deep in the minds of humans. Nature has said to DNA: “Those who show the most aggression and strength will win my prize.” We let loose our violence and hatred in ways that range from debates to mass murder. Let’s face it, we are a violent species. In every war we find new ways of killing each other, and we have gotten very good at it. Our media doesn’t go a day without covering some sort of horrific, violent story, be it in the news or in a movie. Today’s morals however, do not allow those living in civilized countries from expressing their anger in any way at any group they please: you can’t just kill your neighbor because he has a bigger TV set than you do. Instead we choose from the list of peoples that our country, faith, or family has decided is sub-human. In the progressive nations the negative effects of this animalistic urge for violence can range from spousal abuse to working to undermine the basic freedoms of those you oppose (no gay marriages, no abortions, wire-tapping, etc.). In countries that are less stable and are not so civilized, the resulting fit of anger could cause mass genocide, as seen in Rwanda and Darfur. They can oppress an entire nation and make them unable to control or even protest against the government which holds such a firm grasp over their lives. It causes normal people to kill each other for small pieces of territory or over who has the best invisible friend (Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, Buddha, Elrond Hubbard, you name it).
Now not all hate is necessarily bad hate. There are ways for turning hate into something useful. We can do that through constructive competition where different ideas, services, and products battle against each other to see which one is best for the consumer. What would make this constructive in civilized nations as compared to unfair in other nations is the fact that in a constructive competitive environment you have no government corruption and limited government regulations that only cover consumer safety but do not hinder the businesses. Also, the competitors would not compete with, say, bombs or drive-by shootings. The competition would be limited to a strict and logical system of laws that would protect the competitors from different interests and from one another. You can also use hatred of the status quo to create revolutionary new ideas and movements. Scientific and literary movements were driven by this primal urge. Hate and love for violence can also be spent on non-fatal activities such as paintball, sports, or video games. You cannot stem all human violence because the basic parts of our brains are violent. Underneath our human brain are the reptilian brain and the mammalian brain which have Mother Nature’s cruel commands forever imprinted on them. You can, however, have hate and violence that helps the global society rather than slowly destroying it.
Now, let us discuss exactly why we want to move away from the mindless violence that nature uses to select the best brood. Why should we move away from something that has been so successful over the past billions of years? To start, humans have something nothing before us had: intelligence. Instead of killing each other to see which trait serves us best, we can logically deduce what is best for mankind. Even when we disagree, we can have smart debates and compromises that fit everyone’s needs. We can do this without shedding a single drop of blood. By allowing peaceful democratic pluralism, which lets all ideas that aren’t inherently violent (in a bad way) to coexist together, we can allow different people with different ideals ways to collaborate and constructively compete with one another in safety and progression. I could go on with how we are all really related to each other (our DNA is more than 99% the same) and how we should love one another, but you’ve heard all that before. Let’s take the other side for a second. What if you don’t really give a shit about your fellow man? What if you think sharing and caring is for “fags and weaklings” that should be knocked off the food chain? What if you think that Mother Nature knows best and if a person cannot survive in the world no matter their conditions or where they were born, then that person did not deserve to live? Well I’ve got good news: you too can hop in on the pro-peace bandwagon and still be as greedy and selfish as your black little heart desires. By turning destructive malevolence into progressive peace, you start a myriad of processes that increase every person’s welfare in life, including yours. By decreasing the power of oppressive governments, you increase the potential for businesses to rise, which boosts global economies and puts money in your wallet. By not having millions of people die from starvation, pestilence, and war, and then educating them, you create a giant new force of workers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. These people in turn create new consumer goods which you can enjoy and might create medical advances which save, extend, or increase the quality of your life. Oh, and one last kicker for the die-hard Social Darwinists: Mother Nature also rewards compassion. In a Harvard experiment done over a decade ago people felt better and received a boost in their immune system after watching a movie about Mother Theresa and her acts of caring and goodwill. So next time you see somebody on the ground, don’t put a boot in their ass. Help them out, and you end up helping yourself.