Almost Human

With all the technological advances and precision capabilities in modern military weapons systems, doesn't it make one wonder why it is that so many civilians continue to get caught in the fighting? On the surface, it is made to appear accidental, "collateral damage" is the terminology-of-choice. Upon deeper inspection, it becomes obvious civilians are being targetted, some say to frighten them out of the area, but more than likely to exterminate those whose lives are thought to be of lesser "value" than the attacking forces.

While on the topic of targetting civilians, I recommend you take a minute to watch a flash movie showing exactly how, over the span of decades, one goes about dehumanizing an entire population. The makers of the Pentagon Strike flash movie, a movie played over millions of times on the Internet, have recently released another incredibly powerful flash movie, Pathocracy: Disease.

So, is it all really about killing civilians, or exterminating a population because of their religious affiliation, ethnic or cultural environment, the land they possess? I believe it is more than that. It is about control. Control over those who allow themselves to be controlled and over-powered.

Apparently, many individuals have no issue doing whatever needs to be done to obtain or maintain power. Is what drives them of a psychological, spiritual, emotional, or physical source? There is lots of discussion pointing in the direction of genetics.

One of the most interesting perspectives came from the following article, Hope by Henry See of Signs of the Times, of which I will excerpt a few sections:

All the evidence points to the fact that war, violence, and the killing of innocents is part of who we are as a species.

But what if the initial assumptions are wrong?

How many of you reading these words would be able to do such a thing as kill a baby or small child? How many of you could put a bullet, or several, into the head of a ten-year-old on her way to school, or empty your pistol's clip into the body of a child wounded at your feet? How many of you could order the bombing of an appartment block knowing that the dead will be civilians, families, people who have never raised a gun against an enemy in their lives?

We ask again. What if our initial assumptions are wrong? What if this violence we see all around us does not come from within us, from within people of conscience, but comes from another source?

What if the evil we see around us in the world is not born from human nature?

Our studies on psychopathy, and the work of Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski on the dynamics of psychopathic political systems, suggests very strongly that everything we "know" about the dark side of human nature is wrong, that the primary source of the violence and active harming of other beings on our planet comes not from mankind, but from an almost human species in our midst, a species that looks human, but that is missing that which we would say is the defining characteristic of humanity: conscience.

Two types of human species? You know, it really doesn't sound so far fetched considering how much the scientific community still doesn't understand about mankind's genetic composition and how many personal experiences can be recounted regarding interactions with others who seemed to have no conscience whatsoever.

Food for serious thought..

Tagged: Current Affairs, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Psychology, Terrorism, War.