After 5 million years of evolution, since our ancestors in Africa started to shed most of their body hair and to gain intelligence, I believe that to this day, animal instinct still rules over human intelligence.
As it is with all the living beings on this planet, our behaviour and most of our actions are motivated by instinct, both at the individual as well as at the social level. The only difference compared to other living beings is that we are smarter. We would be superior if intelligence were motivated by and at the service of good. But since it is smartness motivated and put at the service of lower instincts, we end up being worse than animals. Animality directs, dictates, inspires and motivates our intelligence, and not as it should be, intelligence directing our animality.
Science tells us that human life begins the moment a male half-cell called spermatozoid unites with a female half-cell called ovum, forming a human cell with a unique genetic code. This zygote immediately subdivides and multiplies over the course of nine months to form a complete human being, it only needs to be left alone for this to happen. Despite knowing this, we are the only animals that kill our own offspring while it is still in the mother’s womb and we do it by the millions every year. The same people who claim that science is the truth and should have the last word in everything, go against science to justify this abominable act.
Animals do not kill their own kinds; they may fight among themselves to prove dominance of some sort, but they do not kill their own species for the sake of killing. We humans, since Cain and Abel, have been killing our own brothers and sisters, and even those who gave birth to us. If our behaviour were dominated by reason, conflicts like the Arab-Israeli and others that have been going on for many years would have been resolved long ago.
The Germans who regard themselves as homeland of philosophers and very rational people, have Hitler, the ultimate exponent of reason at the service of irrationality. By murdering 5 million Jews, he took human intelligence at the service of anger to uncharted territory. And the irony is that he thought he was freeing and purifying humanity from an evil race. Contrary to this antisemitic ideology, Jews have won more Nobel prizes than any other people including the Germans. Hitler is joined by Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and all the dictators and tyrants throughout human history.
Not long ago, the self-proclaimed Islamic State raped women and children with immunity, even cutting the heads off the citizens of our countries in front of television cameras with a hair-raising coldness. They do so with complete immunity because, although they hurt our sensibility, they do not hurt our economic interests, so… why should we bother?
Individual anachronism
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Romans 7:15
St. Paul was already aware that we are anachronistic beings: we do what we know beforehand to be wrong. And since it is irrationality that directs our lives, to justify to ourselves and to others that we are rational beings, we use what in psychology is called rationalization mechanisms. We justify the evil that we do in order to hurt ourselves less or to silence our conscience which accuses us. We do what the fox in the fable did with the grapes: instead of accepting its inability to reach them hanging on the vines, the fox declared them unripe and thus not worth getting.
We know that certain foods are bad for our health, and yet we consume them anyway. As we see ourselves naked, like Adam and Eve after they ate the apple, we defend our gluttony by saying, "Forgive the evil it does for the good it tastes", or "Live life to the fullest, for the future is uncertain" or even "we have to die from something so why not this". If an animal had self-awareness and could speak, it would say this very thing.
Social anachronism
Somebody said once: “Stop asking “what type of world will we leave our children?” and start asking instead “what type of children will we leave this world?”
As a society, we confront our irrationalities by adding them up, instead of confronting them individually. Since it is the lower instinct that inspires our intelligence, most of the inventions that have made our lives more comfortable were not born out of peace, but out of war.
First the atomic bomb was born and only later was its peaceful application of producing electricity found. The microwave we use to heat our dinner was born of the radar system used in World War II to detect enemies; GPS was not born to guide us on the roads, but to guide missiles to their destination.
History has proven again and again that we are much more creative in doing evil than in doing good. In the budget of almost every country there is more money allocated to promote war than to promote peace.
The so bright country of the United States of America is hostage to a second amendment that gives its people the right to own any types of weapons, even those that are used by soldiers. This “bloody” second amendment has already killed thousands of students and teachers in schools, and yet it seems like the amendment cannot be changed as if it was a kind of gospel that cannot be rewritten. All other countries can change their constitutions and update them to modern times, but not so the United States.
We know that meat raised with growth hormones in half the time, and vegetables and fruits treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides are a major cause of cancer increase in Western societies. Yet we do nothing rational to solve the problem. We create a parallel organic farming, not with the intention to watch over public health, but as another way to make money.
The funny thing is that the word “amendment” comes from the Latin word “emendation” that means a correction, an edition or something added. So, the second amendment is something that was already edited and corrected but it can’t be corrected anymore. Very strange…
Car models using alternative energy source to petroleum appeared but were immediately removed from the market, because they were hurting the interests of big oil companies. It is said that there are cures for various diseases and that they are not made public because the pharmaceutical companies are making tons of money from these diseases and, for these companies, health is of little interest.
We do not yet know the ecological and human health impact of GMOs, but we already use them on a large scale because they are so profitable. At the forefront of transgenics is the seed company Monsanto, which to create dependency in the poor of the third world, has modified the seeds so that they produce only one harvest, forcing the poor to buy seeds from them the following year. Over time, the seeds that God created disappear, that is, those that result from the previous harvest and germinate for a new harvest.
Unsustainability of our development model
Mr. Adam Smith, in his book The Wealth of Nations, said that everyone should seek their own interest since an invisible hand would seek the common good and interest. He must have been very happy with his cleverness when he discovered this theory, but if we think about it, it is nothing but the intellectual version of the law of the jungle.
Capitalism has never sought nor wanted the common good. In fact, if Mr. Smith were alive today, he would know that already in 2016, the 1% of humanity owned more wealth than the remaining 99%, that a handful of people owned exactly 54%, that is, more than half of the world's wealth, he would be ashamed of his theory. Where then is this “bloody” invisible hand that would bring equality?
From a political, economic and even ecological point of view, our development model is unsustainable and unviable. Our planet will die long before we have the ability to transport ourselves to another planet. There are those who live in denial and argue that climate change is due to normal cycles of our planet. They deny that the rampant air and sea pollution has any effect on the health of our planet.
There are precedents and these should make us think. The Mayan civilization is an example of a development model that was unsustainable and, as such, came to an end. The pyramids, palaces and monuments that the Mayans were able to build had already been swallowed up by the jungle by the time the Spaniards arrived there. The Mayans, dispersed, had returned to subsistence agriculture.
In the face of this tragedy that is about to befall us once again, we still behave like animals. Some think like the donkey that said: “No more grass should grow after I die, I won't be needing it anymore”, let those who come after take care of themselves; others prefer not to see, like the ostrich that hides its head under the sand so as not to see the danger: What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over, and there are occasions when the truth is just too bitter to swallow. So just don’t swallow it and stupidly or irrationally trust your luck.
I didn't want this panorama to seem so bleak, there are people here and there throughout human history who have subjugated instinct to the service of intelligence and have been capable of great deeds. But these are only a few swallows, not enough to make a summer.
Only Christ can save us from ourselves
In our sheepishness, like a flock of sheep, we move inexorably towards death and death itself is our shepherd, says the psalm mentioned above. We are suicidal and we don't even realize it. Only God can save us from ourselves.
It is by obeying God's will and not our own that we can free us from ourselves. God likes us more than we like ourselves, He defends our interests better than we can; it is love for God that saves us from ourselves. The unhealthy love we have for ourselves leads us to our own annihilation just as it did for Narcissus.
In its entirety, humanity has not yet reached adulthood; it continues to behave like a frivolous, irresponsible child, doing whatever gives him the greatest pleasure, completely oblivious to the consequences in the future from the present orgies.
For Freud, human maturity is the passage from the pleasure principle to the reality principle; that is, abandoning behaviours that produce immediate pleasure (pleasure principle) for the knowledge that we have of the harmful effects that these behaviours will cause on the long term (reality principle). Fundamentally, Jesus had already said this when he stated: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23
Conclusion – If, knowing what suits us, we do whatever we feel like, reason is at the service of instinct. Only when we manage to postpone the immediate gratification of our impulses and do what suits us then we can put our instincts at the service of reason and we can be genuinely human.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
