Haven’t we all wondered why are we such a violent species at least once in our life? What are the origins of humanity’s seven sins? Or have we even pondered over these, ever? Rapes, cold-blooded murders, looting, arson, hooliganism, the comprehensive list ends with the use of nuclear weapons. Right from bullying and ragging in schools and colleges to ridiculing and looking down upon men who cry and cannot endure physical pain, we have all accepted violence as part of our social life. What’s important here is, we have been incomprehensibly brutal to our fellow beings. But why?
The animal world is brutal, without a doubt. Animals have evolved to survive all conditions on our planet. But animals do not kill their own kind other than for mating rights and on extremely rare occasions. Territorial disputes do occur, but they are resolved with fights, not deaths. Moreover, carnivores exist to control the population of herbivores—which in turn prevents wanton destruction of vegetation. The perfection of nature’s design is in the fact that carnivores have taste buds that are evolved only to eat meat and not evolved enough to understand the taste of flesh and blood or rather the lack of it.
Human history is replete with violence against its own kind, and if we look at our history closely, our evolution has been more significant for the destruction of fellow beings. From wooden to nuclear weapons, we have spent bewilderingly copious amounts of time, energy and intellect in creating and perfecting weapons to use against ourselves. We glorify ourselves for the manner of our evolution from cave-dwellers to the technological advances we have achieved in present times, but we do not talk about what we have done against ourselves in the same breath.
From Egyptian civilization where soldiers were killed to supposedly travel with their dead Pharaohs in their afterlives to how the entire group of people and soldiers who dug Genghis Khan’s grave were butchered to keep his grave a secret (for reasons still unknown) to the Crusades to African slavery to all the wars especially World War I and II and the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our brutality against our kind is dumbfounding. What is even more mind-boggling is, we use our superior intelligence to annihilate ourselves whereas less intelligent animals know how to protect and conserve their species. Have we ever wondered why or what drives us towards this unexplained behavior?
The primary issue is in the understanding of the origins of humanity. The conflicting theories of human creation and evolution make it all the more confusing. If we believe in the theory of evolution, there is a massive gap in our evolution that science has not been able to explain. Our intelligence has literally exploded in our evolutionary timeline in a very short period, and more bewildering is the development of our communication skills, especially our speaking ability. There is also the question of how apes evolved into humans all over the world at the same time.
There are no more evolved and less evolved humans among us. If we believe in the creation theory, the story begins from Adam and Eve, and they supposedly had three male children. Now hold on to this thought and then look at the whites, blacks, orientals and all the numerous types of human beings. What is the probability of such humongous human evolution from three siblings and that, too, without any women to procreate with?
Ancient Sumerian texts explain in detail how the less evolved versions such as Neanderthals were genetically manipulated by aliens to create us in our present form. That can explain our evolution in intelligence and communication. But how did we start looking so different, developed different societal ways of life and most importantly, where does this violent streak towards our own kind come from?
It looks like the secret lies in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. There were just humans at the time and not different types of humans. The story goes that the humans decided to build a tower that would rise so high that it would touch the sky and be the bridge between earth and heaven. What does this story indicate? It could be a metaphor for the fact that human development had reached a point where it was at the threshold of becoming equal to that of the creator Gods. So the Gods decided to punish the humans by corrupting their minds and destroying their unity. This video explains it all:
Now, this could also explain why we ended up being whites, blacks, orientals etc. because the same Gods must have manipulated us genetically, created different versions of humans and scattered us all over the world. To add to this, corrupting our minds against one another is where the origins of our violent streak could lie. The premise must have been that the Gods did not want humans to become their equal, or it could be that they believed humans were not ready for what they were aspiring for at that time.
The question is, do we need to believe in yet another fable? We do not need to, but the results are before us in our history. Have we ever wondered why we have so many religions? We could say that newer religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam have more and improved rules for human existence in society, but what have they ultimately done? Fragmented humans even more. Now what we have is situations like white Christians fighting white Muslims. Lower caste Hindus cannot drink water from wells “owned” by upper-caste Hindus even in the 21st century. If the skin colour was the same, caste became the divisor.
Psychological assessments of hardcore criminals have revealed that they are themselves not able to explain how they committed the gruesome acts of violence and have no comprehension of their state of mind at those moments. We are all supposedly having genetic information from seven previous generations. What if the violence was coming from an ancestral gene acting up? Money and wealth tops all other divides now and two new groups of humans are getting created: the haves and the have-nots.
So what can we do about it? Well, understand ourselves first. We are endowed with unlimited intelligence and resilience. We have always absorbed all the aftershocks of violence and moved on, which is why we are where we are now. Every problem has at least one solution, but the first step to finding the solution is to accept that the problem exists. We have to accept that though many factors segregate us, we belong to one species called Homo Sapiens. We have to consciously start looking beyond monetary, political, religious and all other differences that separate us.
It could also be that the creator Gods have put us to our ultimate test. Overcoming all our differences and uniting as one species could take us to our next stage of evolution. Maybe then we could successfully build the tower of Babel or whatever it represented. Advanced civilizations like Atlantis supposedly failed because even though it achieved technological heights, it may not have had a united population of people. All ancient texts talk about the return of someone, Kalki in Hinduism, Jesus in Christianity and so on who would return to unite all humans. If we use our intelligence and common sense, we do not need to wait for anyone to come and remind us that we are humans above everything else. The choice is and has always been ours.