BEAST OF CONSCIENCE
No matter how you look at it, the human being is a dynamic creature amongst the many entities placed on the earth by a higher power. We are so diverse in the essence of ourselves that it fascinates me to even elect to write about us in seemingly objective and intelligent ways. What makes us unique is the diversity of our capabilities as a species. However, what binds us together is compassion; not in pity or patronizingly, but as intelligent entities that have learned to solve common challenges in order to guarantee the future. This same compassion for humanity motivates me to write about us with the audacity to stress my belief. Because of great acts of compassion expressed between humans from the dawn of time, we have managed to build tribes, states, and continents of people; hence forming the human race. It seems to be that the purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion with the will to help others. Note of course that this happens when it really does matter. It is not my belief in totality. So far, the most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul. When the human spirit has the right incentives, it has served as the mechanism through which nature has been weakened, through which resources have gone scarce, and species extinct, from which the fear of extinction for our species has been made possible, and by which some of the grandest evils in life have come to be. And when it has been rightly motivated as well, we’ve seen the development of some of the most dynamic evolutionary trends that have helped to shape civilization in positive ways today. Some of such trends may include technology, modern medicine, engineering, and cultural advancements such as religion, political structures, and scientific exploration.
What is clear to me is that human progress continues to be the answer to the success of the human race. Of course, the one or the other can define success in many different ways. Yet, human evolution is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step taken toward the future requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and ardent concern of devoted individuals. What has always been true for all generations of humans has been the uncertainty amongst humans about other individuals. As much as we strive to know one another, the nature that made us has denied us complete knowledge of one another. In short, you can never truly know anyone too well but yourself. We are too complicated to be understood. But as the successful lot of ancestors who preceded us recognized through the ages, we must choose to approach our fellow man with doubt or with an open mind, a dash of hopefulness and a great deal of honesty. We are a special type. We start to understand our rights as persons even when we’ve not been thought those rights yet. Civil rights are a crystal-clear second to natural rights. Natural rights may include the right to be free, to procreate, to roam the earth, or to preserve your possessions. It is innate to know your right to be. To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.
Man is a combatant. To fight is the most self rewarding and self proving discipline for any human in the course of his life. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All people are afraid in battle. Only cowards or the unfit allow their fears to overcome his or her sense of duty to the course. Winning a fight of life is synonymous to victory and duty in battle. Duty is the essence of humankind. This almost harsh characteristic that successful humans possess is one of the cardinal reasons why we’ve come this far upon the earth; over all other species. Human behavior is dynamic. And it flows from three main sources; desire, emotion, and knowledge. While physics and mathematics try to tell us about our beginnings, they’ve failed to predict human behavior itself. There are just too many equations to solve if they tried. No one is proven to be essentially better at understanding the human phenomenon, especially across the genders and races of men.
What is true is that man must continue to evolve. All human conflict stems from the lack there of, or too much of it, on one side or on the other. We must evolve to create a method where human conflict is minimized; such that as humans we may stem from our continued growth the facets of revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method must be love. The human conscience is our antidote to the soul’s fire when it has the right incentives to grow. Be it destructively or constructively. Humans must vow to never be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. Ours is to carefully take sides after a true moral and objective assessment of a side we choose. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so is virtue when it appears from good deed. Just as rain nourishes the earth to birth life, so does good virtue to the soul, which allows wisdom to appear from a peaceful mind. To traverse through the labyrinth of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue. We must understand that human rights are vital in the continuity of the human family. Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, racism or discrimination, but also by unfair economic structures that create huge inequalities. Alas we must to respect the efforts of mathematics in its attempt to express the human mind. It has managed to prove in reflection that the human is composed of an active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Our basic elements as king of the beasts upon the earth are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Man is the supreme beast of conscience.
Beast Of Conscience Great men, and grand women, great people, A Great generation we say. What acclamation? Our kind, their own, our friend, Our enemy’s too; our values. Man, The conscious beast. Rape! Reason, war! Defense, Discrimination! Orientation, Race! Extremism, Slavery! Trade, Holocaust! Religion. Divorce! Mismatch, Prostitution! Living, Man, beast of conscience. All excused, all defined. Yet in our manliness, our beast is sheltered. It is by the virtues of our own culture, that those beasts are beasts. How then can we, as designators of living categories be any more moral? For our conscience is our reason, true leverage of a beast over beasts.
Edmond Arrey
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