Human Nature???

Posted on 18 March 2010

I’m having trouble with the concept of human nature today. There is a general sense that I keep getting that at its core human nature is really pretty screwed up. You could call it original sin or the death instinct (ala Freud). You can look at yourself and say, “Boy, I’m really self destructive.” (God knows I’ve done that.) You could look at the Health Care debate from across the Atlantic (where I happen to be right now – in Italy – a little distance never hurts) and say, “Boy, are those Americans really self destructive.”

And it would be easy to just say that a majority of Americans just don’t believe they have the right to decent medicine, to being healthy. You could say that a majority of Americans would rather suffer and die prematurely than to have at their disposal what all their representatives have the moment they get elected (what all the rich people have all the time). You could argue that at least the rich people and the people in government aren’t self destructive because they “got theirs,” but then you’d have to note that they still have to walk around in the streets (or at least take airplanes, et cetera) where disease could get them at the drop of a hat. Or (if they only use Lear jets, et cetera) where at least their children – who are taken care of by housekeepers, nannies et cetera – could have a nasty germ or two sent in their direction.

So what is it? Are we just genetically designed to be self- destructive? Have we been put together by the universe (or whatever) to run off cliffs like lemmings?

But then I look at (again – for a moment – from an Italian distance) the attack on the concept of real Health Care by the insurance, pharmaceutical and right wing industrial complex – the media, et cetera. The incredible manipulation of information and I compare it with the cathedrals I’ve been wandering through here in Italy – the endless crucifixions (the Christ died for our sins-thing so we better do a little dying too for the Church or whomever), the glittering Madonna and child images – over and over and over – and I can’t help but see some parallel…

I can’t help but connect up a dot or two around these beautiful cathedrals, the priests, the horrific child abuse sex scandals that are emerging like a pox here in Europe (not to mention the US), possibly even staining the Pope (it would be about time) – priests using children for their pleasure – and I make a strange link – a quantum strange jump perhaps – that a few people use the rest of us – hammer us with images and ideas – over and over and over again – so that we finally succumb, give up, let them have their way with us…

And then I wonder if maybe someday we will be able to wake up and realize that we are not self destructive at our core at all, but that so many of us are being (or have been) destroyed – from an early age on, like those poor children in the shadows of their altars — being damaged, being fooled, being buried alive in pain and confusion. That at the very core we are good, hopeful, healing – at the very, very core. And that from that core we can perhaps begin someday, if we can wake ourselves up and grow ourselves up, start really healing ourselves (which I suspect we have to do together, by the way) and then we can heal our leaders into really taking care of the situation they were elected to take care of, rather than raping us from the position we put them in. And then after that maybe we can begin healing this planet rather than raping it as well (which I would submit will also have to be done together)