A Violent Human Society, A Gone-Away Thing

My hub, A Violent Human Society, A Thing of the Past, looks at the problem of violence, and suggests appropriate ways of dealing with each instance. But, I now say, there must be a reason for violence, and we only need to liquidate the same before it erupts.

Who is the ultimate culprit behind a violent human society, and how can we contain the same?

Human nature interested me a lot, the non-intuitive, more often that not, taking prominence over the intuitive. In my search for a culprit, I tried to examine different facets of our persona, and every time, the results looked rather unique and enlightening, prompting me produce it as a book.

Summary of the results are shown below along with the book that took inspiration from each such outcome.

My book, Life of Style, attributes to the absence of a unique lifestyle, the issue of human society in a perpetual disarray. I feel, though quite discernible beings we are, we never worked for a distinct lifestyle, since, our wisdom never told us about the importance of having an appropriate one.

My book, Overhaul Life, finds that we have been holding on for no reason, as suggested by wisdom, to all the remnants of the past, and presents as a solution, a periodic overhaul of human life. In fact, but for the wisdom we attribute to all that is long gone, by now, there would have been overhauls, leaving no room at all, for a disarray.

My book, The Unsure Male, finds as a cause for all that is wrong with us, a shortfall found in all that is male. Wisdom never mentioned anything about this, and so, we too, carefully avoided this area.

My book, Human Element of the Human, makes a successful search for the element, the correction to which can also correct, every other misbehaving element in us.

My book, Fathoming the Enigma, tries to locate the unfathomable in us, and finds that corrective measures would have been applied by now, but for our wisdom that celebrated the unfathomable human.

My book, Hubs that Provoke, warns of the harm, in things that wisdom makes us cherish.

My book, More Hubs that Provoke, warns of the harmful, in a few more things we cherish even more.

My book, An Easy Route to Peace, tries to focus on maintaining peace by preventing things that disturb peace.

My book, An Easier Route to Peace, talks of a way to maintain peace without even thinking about peace.

My book, Is Wisdom, a Must?, tells about the pitfalls associated with wisdom. Owing to which, one cannot say, conclusively, wisdom is a great asset. Incidentally, each of my other books points to some danger hiding in almost all things we do that are chosen and guided by our wisdom. In short, as far as a violent human society go, wisdom is the ultimate culprit.

I think, one can clearly see, my books try to examine the falls, traps, and difficulties that are there with our life, and some of those suggest a remedy for the same.

My book, Evolution and the Future of the Unique Human painted our future, if we overlook all of this and continue with the present style of living. Where, I have been trying to show that teaching, especially our style of doing it, is the one that gives us wisdom. And it is wisdom that turned us all into unfathomable ones, by making us quite at home with all the peculiarities and imponderables of life. Or, if not for teaching, human race would have been having a life free of all that is unfathomable, and would have been leading a life as eventful or event-free as any other form of life.

Yes, human is an unfathomable one, is an idea, all of us will be subscribing to very often. Mostly in human oriented or inter-personal affairs, when something takes place that is not in line with whatever we happen to expect, this acts as a consolation or a refrain. But for this idea, each of us would have accepted it as a shortfall in one’s ability to foresee things. And also, we all would have been quite busy in finding an appropriate explanation in such instances, as well as for many of the behavioral quirks, we humans display. Perhaps, we would not have been choosing to continue to celebrate such quirks, if a fitting explanation could not be found.

Why didn’t it happen so? It seems, we all have quietly agreed to remain unfathomable, even when it is at our peril. I found it difficult to meekly subscribe to this idea, and I thought, if it is so, definitely, there is something that is causing it, and the only need is to find it.

And now, one question engulfs me. As suggested earlier, if our teaching style is a culprit, obviously, whatever took us to it is a greater culprit. What made us choose and continue with our current style of teaching? Which element of human life is the culprit here?

I think, our style of teaching being a unique one, the answer must lie somewhere within the attributes that separate us from other forms of life. Then, what separates us from all the other ones?

Well, there are many things that do so. Like, advanced cognitive abilities, abstract reasoning, self-awareness, imagination, language, or culture. At any instance, we take the one that is contextually relevant. However, I think, an obvious choice for the most significant one should be the one that made us do acquire or possess all of these. How did human get an impetus to nurture all this, unlike all the other ones of the living world? What caused it?

Look, what exactly sets man and all the others apart? There may be many answers. But, the most significant one is this = man enjoys something called freewill. At any instant, what a man really will be, is decided by nothing else but one’s freewill. Where, of course, freewill could signify one’s choice as well as what one chooses to influenced by. Or, freewill is the one that is making us the unfathomable ones.

To confirm the above, suppose there was no freewill. Would there be any remarkable difference between the human and any of the other versions of life? I mean, difference more pronounced or evident than whatever can be noticed as existing between any two species of life. Absolutely nothing!

So, all the we celebrate as unique human attributes, abilities, and all other vagaries of our life is nothing bur manifestations of freewill. Or, freewill is the one that separates human from all others. But, since we see or experience freewill mostly in expressions like that of appreciation, rejection, anger, or sorrow, we tend to register all of those with the same. Or, overlooking freewill, we register the presence of all other elements of social transactions, reactions also occurring naturally. The melee of those elements and reactions term our society, violent.

What did we miss? Freewill? What exactly is it? One answer I get is - freewill is the ability to make choices that are not entirely determined by external circumstances, fate, or physical causes. Say, choices that are, at least in part, under one’s conscious control.

Is that all? I think this is only a tip of an iceberg. This perhaps could be the freewill as it matters to the rest of the living world. But, for us, there is nothing where freewill can’t enter. And, in our case, freewill expresses itself in combination with a lot of other attributes or abstractions that are human-specific. Or, unknowing to all, freewill is constantly in action all the time. Therefore, a thorough understanding of freewill is necessary for a better appreciation of our life.

What is freewill? One answer I get is - freewill is the ability to make choices that are not entirely determined by external circumstances, fate, or physical causes. Say, choices that are, at least in part, under one’s conscious control.

Is that all? I think this is only a tip of an iceberg. This perhaps could be the freewill as it matters to the rest of the living world. But, for us, there is nothing where freewill can’t enter. And, in our case, freewill expresses itself in combination with a lot of other attributes or abstractions that are human-specific.

Or, freewill is constantly in action all the time, and is an integral part of us, in whatever we do. We register and acknowledge the presence of freewill only in those circumstances, where, we go against the flow.

Now I feel burdened with another thought. If all this is so, is freewill an integral part of the human? Isn’t it possible that we fell upon freewill as an excuse to deviate with impunity from established paths and procedures? Isn’t it evident that for all that we do as part of the essential or established activities of living one’s life, like breathing, there is no room for freewill? And freewill has a lot to do, when we need to put up with something harmful, either for ourselves or for whatever is there in contention. So, isn’t freewill, an expedient for social living, where, frequent deviations or adjustments or both are necessary to accommodate conflicting priorities of all who constitute a society?

Yes, this is where freewill was of some help. It facilitated the formation of the earliest human society, when there was nothing in existence that could evoke a common cause. Thereafter, it acted like a versatile trump, adding and removing components of social exchange, like happiness, sorrow, anger, or respect, at the will and pleasure of all those that are part of the society. As time went by, while our societies flourished, we continued to derive fresh causes that endeared us, new and newer opportunities of deriving pleasure, and many different strings that bind us.

Naturally, freewill is losing its prime position, incrementally replaced by the successes we continue to derive in all our endeavors. However, we humans take no notice of this, and cultivate freewill as the ultimate mark of expression. In this process, not only that we elevate the returns from freewill to levels the are too grand for common people and their transactions, but also fail to derive all the fruits of the successes we achieve. The former makes us cherish and guard freewill to glory, even though there is no discernible returns. The latter does something worse by making our real achievements to go waste.

Now what? By now, it should be clear. Freewill does not add anything real to one’s life, though it can make one contented much more than things real. Hence, it would have been a matter of great value, in the days when we were yet to make things of value. Now we make easily things of value, but, if only freewill does not labor to devalue it. It looks like it is overstaying its useful life, and, unless we ourselves find for it, a decent place to take a final rest, like a loose cannon, it might end up playing havoc.

My view is that we need to consider freewill as an inseparable component of all that we do, which does not have an independent existence as another abstraction, as it is now. However, it can very well remain as a silent and unobtrusive part of the human, as it is with all other forms of life. And, where freewill does not roam free, gone will be the culprits that hinder peace, while we all remain calm and serene.