Are Humans Warlike?

It has been suggested that humans are inherently warlike and that our future as a species will always include war. Some agree with me by saying "Yes, there will always be evil in the world that we will need to fight." But is war ever an answer to any evil? Or is it just a counter-evil? Are there other options? Are there always other options? Do we seek hard enough for options?

I listen to popular music and look around at society and what we do with our time and what we value and how we motivate ourselves and what we care about, and I am left agreeing that yes, humans have an insatiable desire for conflict that will always lead to war somewhere and at some time. I don't like that answer, but I can find nothing to justify any other opinion.

We love to rally ourselves together into a larger force and that rallying usually, in order to be FOR something, needs to be AGAINST something else. We are not just FOR a cleaner environment, we are AGAINST big oil and cancer causing chemicals and litter and suburban sprawl. We are not just FOR better health, we are AGAINST cancer and influenza and mental illness. We cheer on sports teams even more energetically if they are battling a long time rival that we can be clearly against. The more succinctly we can put a label and a cause on the thing we are against, the happier we are and the more 'good' we think we have done against it ant its 'evil'.

We love to have heroes and heroes have to have a foe and that foe has to come from within an enemy camp. Sure we can have a teacher as a hero, but often even that hero is most known for fighting AGAINST something like gangs in the school or a certain learning disability as opposed to just teaching more and better.

We tried team building in corporations but if the team was FOR a better product, the concept did little to motivate. If the team was placed in opposition to come competitor outside company, or if internal teams could be challenged to excel in come metric against internal teams, the concept lead to harder work and better quality. The 'enemy' had to be in place for the team to rally!

We love to insist that there is a 'force' of 'evil', but often the things we describe as evil are just the same things we do or reward in others. The Muslim terror bomber is giving their life for their God that wants them to act out against what they perceive is an evil of a world gone too materialistic, i.e. US, and yet, we see THEM as evil. At the same time, we revere the 'good' saints who give their lives literally as martyrs for their god or give their lives over to the service to their god. Maybe there is not evil at all, but just an exaggeration and perversion of normal human desires to accumulate goods, to accumulate territory, to protect turf, to protect family. The desire for power in the business world or in a service organization is called ambition and drive and is regarded as a good thing, but the desire for power in some sort of anti-government group is given other labels. But when the same mechanism is at work for something we do not agree with, how can it be called evil when it is admired in another context?

It is easy to think of a world divided by good and evil, but it is more difficult to accept that maybe the person we label evil is doing the same things we are but due to different motivations. It is easy to bomb and shoot, but it is more difficult to find ways that we can peacefully coexist over mutually desired outcomes. Can we find ways to convince the 'enemy' to disengage in behaviors we don't like by finding motivations for other behaviors?

When you get right down to it, most forces we call 'evil' are doing what they are doing for reasons that look and sound a lot like ours, to improve a situation for their people, their families, to glorify or defend their god. In fact, sometimes, they see us as the force of 'evil'. It hardly seems like violence is the answer in that case and it hardly seems like there will or even should be a clear 'winner'. Perhaps tolerance and conversation and more tolerance and more conversation would lead to a discovery of more in common with each other and less judging and labelling?


We somehow think our bombing and shooting is 'good' but can it ever really be?


Peace is hard work and I am frankly not sure we as humans really want it. We love a cause, we love our heroes, we love to have an enemy, we love to have things we can label 'evil' in contrast to the 'good' that we believe we possess and which possesses us.

Maybe if we ADMIT we love our war, then we can work harder to not use it? If we keep insisting we hate war, will we just keep allowing ourselves to justify using it in yet another 'exceptional' case, this one last time.

Do we indeed love war, and at what cost? Young lives lost, young bodies mutilated, young minds scarred. What will it take to make our love of the cause, the hero, the glory of victory, be outweighed by the love of our own individual people? What will make us give up our warring human ways?

Vices and Virtues: Charity

For all my years as a child, I was hearing my mother sing the praises of a certain neighborhood woman as a woman of charity who gave of her time and talents to organizations and individuals. I vowed to be just like her and become a do-gooder too. But my little heart, I must admit, was mainly wanting to do that so that people would talk fondly of me like they did of this person. My desire to do great works of charity was solely based on the fame that it would accrue me. Later, I figured out that there were better reasons to be involved in causes and give of ones time and I also found out that my mother secretly despised the person as a person. So much for heroes and heroics.

I was called to serve in many capacities, planning events at my software design job that would teach people to overcome race and gender bias, planning Arbor Day celebrations and recommending landscape enhancements as part of a city commission, volunteering on prairie restorations and seed gathering work days, and later, giving talks on natural landscaping, giving prairie tours, teaching art classes, working at the co-op art gallery, spending time on various Kiwanis activities and fundraiser and as an officer and board member, working on a local political campaign, even teaching Sunday school once.

All of these were acts of charity but my motivations were varied and not always good. Sometimes, I was motivated by a desire to be recognized, sometimes by a desire for professional advancement, sometimes even, I was motivated by revenge and used my volunteer positions to get something done to get back at others for some perceived offense to me. Even at my most pure of motivations, to make the world a better place, it was to make MY world a better place, and to make the world that my children would be left with a little bit of a better place.

Exclusively, my volunteer efforts were a result of ME seeing a need and offering myself to it because I valued a thing. Never did I approach a random person or situation and say "What do YOU want or need today?" Nobody does that. That might put the conservative Christian giving the welfare mother a ride to the abortion clinic or reading comforting words from the Quran to the mourning Muslim neighbor. We don't work our charity based solely on needs of others but on the needs WE think are important and WANT to contribute to.

One of the first and greatest 'charities' people give to are churches. But church charities are by and large to promote the goals of their church, to swell membership, you don't much see the Lutherans volunteering at the Catholic food pantry or the Catholics volunteering at the Lutheran gift drive for the youth home. Each church builds their reputation with their own interests and then lists those 'charitable' activities on their 'resume' to promote themselves to prospective members.

Charity of money or time to the church itself is more like dues to ones health club than true charity, for it gets services for ones self in exchange for doing services for others of same faith and interest. Lead the bible study and get Sunday school for your kids. Serve as an usher because you enjoy church service. Donations that pay the utility bills and the cleaning service and upkeep on the gutters are much more like dues to the golf club than any sort of real charity.

And what of the do-gooder who does good at the expense of family and friends and other responsibilities? The doctor who spends so much time in the children's cancer ward he does not know his own kids. The wildlife researcher who sends her kids to boarding school so she can save the habitat of the Amazon floodplains? If time spent on the charitable activity is used to avoid other things we should be doing in our lives, it isn't all that noble of a virtue.

Charity therefore must be examined for the motives of the charitable which is not to say that self-serving charity does not also do others good, but if one really desires to do good, one should at least be aware of who is benefiting and how the needs served by this charitable activity stand against the needs served by other. Volunteering at a church fashion show might not EVER count as true charity in light of other needs in the community, for example. And charity needs to be evaluated for its true costs. Charity costs to the giver, but also to the giver's family and friends who maybe ought to have right of first refusal on more of the giver's time and resources. If others are harmed by your 'charity', it ceases to become a virtue and crosses the line to vice. Or is there really any true line between vice and virtue after all?

Vices and Virtues: Gratitude

Gratitude is the most poorly expressed of the virtues. Thanksgiving is the worst of holidays.
We set up a holiday that is to make us think about what we are grateful for and then what? We go to church and thank a deity for those things and then we go home and eat until we are sick. Does that make ANY sense?
What is the point of gratitude? The point of gratitude is not to just FEEL thankful but to express it. But where do the things you are thankful come from? By and large they come from people. The home, the clothes, the food, the stuff, it all comes from people. There are stores full of sales people and cashiers and baggers. The stuff got bought with money. Provided by your employer and with the help of your employer's accomplices, your co-workers. If you run a business, you have clients or customers who provide the money. There are countless other people who provide services that make your life comfortable and enjoyable. The house got built and repaired and maintained by people, often members of your family or your friends. Your kids have teachers, you have doctors and nurses and dentists and hairdressers and other people everywhere everyday that enrich your life. Even nature is there because someone preserved or cultivated it and you probably enjoy nature because someone accompanies you on excursions into it. Natural areas have caretakers and people who keep them clean and safe. Farmers cultivate the beautiful fields and your neighbor cultivates his beautiful garden. If you are thanking a god and eating too much due to your annual gratitude, you are bastardizing what gratitude is supposed to be. If your god has all the qualities you claim he does, he does not need to be thanked, but the people out there do! It would make their task a little lighter to know someone appreciates it!
Figure out who, which people, are responsible for each of the things you are grateful for and express that gratitude to those people. With a note in a card, with an email, with a phone call, with flowers or a gift. And don't do it just once a year, but do it on a regular basis, year around, often and always. When you receive the 'gift' from them is best but any time later that you think of it is really nice too. Live a life of gratitude by sharing it with everyone everyday all the time. An eat a nice light salad on Thanksgiving Day.

Vices and Virtues: Never Quit

I am sure you have fallen victim to this one at some point in your life: Don't be a quitter! Stick with it! Finish what you start! The virtues of commitment, diligence, perseverance. Yet imagine a life where you were never allowed to quit anything that didn't work out? Imagine how much time would be wasted in pursuit of useless things. Gone to the store for Dial soap and there is none? You can buy the Dove or you can drive all over town looking for the right brand. Imagine the risks that would never get taken if you had to be sure up front. We would never try a new art or skill, never start a risky project, never meet new people or enter into new friendships if we didn't have the power and freedom to bail out of it if it wasn't working out. Never quit! Hah! The trick is to find the balance between what to give up and what to stick with. It is, yes, a wise course of action not giving up on a truly good thing just because the path to it turns out to be a little difficult. If it is going to take a little longer or be a little harder or require a little help from someone or require a little more work or effort or difficulty, but if it is truly achievable and worth it, then by all means, soldier on. Do what it takes, rally the forces, give yourself a pep talk and keep on keeping on. But if it is a lost cause, taking more time or energy than it is worth, causing unforeseen damage or harm or pain, turning out to be less important or less valuable than initially thought, by all means, give it up and move on. Move on to things more worthy of your time and effort and more likely to yield good benefit in proportion to the input required. It can be difficult to recognize that point in time where something is no longer worth it and it is time to give up and move on. Or it can be just as difficult to recognize in time of discouragement and pain that the thing really is worth never quitting on. But to recognize that we possess the free will to decide that and to reexamine and re-decide it frequently throughout the process is a valuable realization indeed. Never Quit. Unless it makes sense to quit. Then quit promptly, clean up the mess, and move on to something else. Guilt free, because sometimes quitting really is the right thing to do.

Of Vices and Virtues: Procrastination

Talking to an artist friend the other day, we explored a concept familiar to the creative person: Procrastination. Self-help books and articles covering procrastination lean to attempts to aid one in 'overcoming' procrastination or 'eliminating' it from your life. Organization and time management are seen as the weapons against procrastination, as though it is an evil that needs management. And yet, as my son studies practical economics, he is finding that delivering too much too early are not good business models. In the arts, procrastination is a tool that allows maximum creative time and minimal production time. Doing the job too early often results in the desire to redo. Obviously, if one were to just ignore the creative project until the last possible moment, there could be problems, such as under-estimating the time needed for the project and failing to finish it. But in my experience, most creatives look at the problem early and then let it sit in the back of their minds where they think it through and muddle it over and try various options and possibilities while they work on other things. So at the 'last minute', quite a bit of mental work has already gone into it and a number of versions and alternatives have been explored. So for most creative people, procrastination is not a vice, but the virtue of optimization of time and effort and the realisation of the best quality work we are capable of. Is it time to move it from the list of vices to the list of virtues and explore and understand how useful procrastination really is?