Essay:The Incoherent Ramblings: Chapter 1: Why We Are

Pardon the long title and the implications of this being a multi-part series, but I feel as though it is appropriate for what I believe. Why we are who we are. Why we do what we do. Why we go where we go. Why we are.

''Foreword: This is a massive train wreck of an essay. Some parts are more incoherent than others. Do not read if you are not thoroughly inoculated for incoherent rambling.''

I've been here on this Earth for a good 18 years now. In those 18 years, I've experienced a wide array of human emotions. From rage to amusement, from lust to loneliness, from sadness to overwhelming joy. Yet I have much more to experience. I have yet to witness it all. I've yet to witness my own downfall, my own death, my own marriage, my own success. But even so, I have a rather strange - albeit tenuous - grasp on the world and why it is how it is.

To be human is a strange thing. We laugh at the face of invariable doom. We cry when we're overwhelmed with joy. Why? Simple. We are.

But what do I mean by "We are"? Simple. We are humans. Whatever we do is just us. What we always do. It's ingrained into our brains. People think that it's taught, but our actions are sealed into our brains. Is it our Götterdämmerung? Our downfall? A threat to society and the world as we know it?

No.

If this was our device of our own self-destruction, surely we would have used it long before now. And yet we still stand. As though we were on a powder keg with a lit match, dangling it just above the very material that would kill us all. But I don't believe that this is the case.

Humans have been here for only 600,000 years. And yet we worry about the morality of us, even though there are animals that have been here longer than any man. We evolved over the course of billions of years. In that time, many other species also evolved, survived, and died. It could be entirely possible that if humans did not conquer the Earth, that other animals could have achieved higher level thinking and using tools to better themselves. Dolphins are a good example, as they are some of the smartest animals to walk (or in this case, swim) the planet. They could have evolved and lived on the surface much like you and me, and they'd still retain what they know. How they act, how they communicate. It's hard wired into their brains. One could argue then that if dolphins evolved into something similar to modern man, then they could have the potential to destroy each other. Wars between pods lasting generations, and yet this is not considered evil. It's considered to be nature. Animals constantly seem to be warring. But this is not evil per se.

As hard as this is to grasp, people are inherently born to be impulsive and destructive. It's what we do. It's a cruel and harsh reality that none of us want to imagine, but this is the truth. And this can be said about other animals, too. That they have as much destructive capabilities as you, me, or anyone. We can't change that. It's who we are. No more, no less.