Homo Sapi-apes

Good news! I’ve actually found a benefit of getting older, ok it’s just the one at the moment, but it is a big one. 

The body creaks and aches and pains are always a reminder of the passing of time (and fitness), but between the ears hidden deep away there is this great little benefit called memory and experience.

This week the horrific terrorist attacks in Brussels brought the usual response  as society tried to come to terms with the madness of the few. Political rhetoric of ‘clamp downs’ and ‘determination’ and ‘unity’ and all the other things we expect to be spoken at such moments of grief and anxiety. 

Images of human pain and despair mixed with acts of courage,compassion and real unity. 

One thing stuck with me, and that was the feeling that ‘I’ve seen and felt this all before’ not exactly the same, but very similar moments and feelings of despair and anger and solidarity all mixed together and racing through my brain. 

I heard one politician say “this will not end shortly, we will have to live with the threat of terrorism for a long time” , how many times have I heard that ? 

In my own experience I have- in my lifetime-heard politicians say the same thing about 9/11, IRA attacks, ETA in Spain, who remembers the bomb explosion in the Bologna train station ? all moments in time when the world seemed to be falling apart and becoming a ‘living hell’. 

Even further back, the Oklahoma bombing of government buildings in the USA, attacks on a Japanese subway, Nigeria, .... in fact all over the world, almost on a weekly if not daily base we hear of atrocities. It’s never until these acts of hate and barbarity are suddenly on our doorstep that we truly stop to think about them. 

There is never, and should never be any excuses for the slaying and maiming of people who have nothing to do with the ‘terrorists of the day’ and their perceived injustices, aims or holy missions, no excuses whatever.

Just as there are no excuses for government intervention and bombing of countries for economic gain. Terror comes in many forms and takes on many guises and always ,always has an ‘excuse’. 

We humans are the greatest of all beings on this planet, or so we like to think. 

What we haven’t completely come to terms with is our ‘nature’ our ‘being’ ,the way we are. We see acts of violence and hatred as being ‘inhuman’ as if these acts are something new, something that is rare and not human,yet they have always been part of our make-up, part of us. 

Personally I like to think that generally we are ‘ok’ and we are gradually (in evolutionary terms) getting to grips with ‘us’ and how to get along with the growing number of us living on this relatively small rock in space, our shock at seeing and experiencing hate , violence and destruction increases because generally we have banned it from society. But we are still human, the sad,angry,violent,loving,caring,hating,egocentric,compassionate ape.

The more crowded this rock becomes the more we will ‘irritate’ and ‘annoy’ each other, the more of us the more tension that will arise. 

The organization of society (politics) ,the actual meaning of life or the lack of the necessity for meaning (religion,philosophy,etc) the fight for survival (rivalries for food and existence) will all be driving us toward endless conflict and forming of new alliances.

So I look at the terrorist attacks of this week, misguided,well armed psychopaths on a ‘religious’ mission have tried to destabilize the society we live in, they have a hatred for this society we have created, for whatever reason, they have no other desire than to destroy the way we ‘get on‘ ,they are prepared to kill themselves in the quest for what they think is a better life, for a comedian that is ‘ironic gold’. 

Society, the way we get on, is not perfect and never will be, we can only try to get it as good as we can, so many of us, so many opinions and ideas, so many different views on how the world should be, it’s almost impossible to see it ever working, and yet it does. Society may creak and groan under the strains of all our differences and injustices but ‘in the main’ it works, because of that ‘human experience’ the survival gene ,call it what you like. 

Hatred ,violence, terror are all part of our being, but even more so are being loving,caring, helping, united. So don’t let the actions of the few allow us to lose our faith in the many, we need each other to survive, always have. We were the weakest , became strong because we learned how to work together to overcome our physical handicaps, our brains developed and we learned new tricks (as apes tend to do) to survive and grow old. 

As far as I’m concerned one of the greatest inventions is the mirror, it gives us the opportunity to look at ourselves, and we should do that, and at the same time ask ourselves the question “what sort of ape was I today? did I do anything to make stuff better? or did I fall back into the pattern of destructiveness ? Because after all I’m just one of the many homo sapi-apes that roam this earth, and (even) I have to keep all that ‘human-ness’ within me under control”.