Opinion/Editorial
AULD LANG SYNE
From the time of the origin of the human species, after it had aged to the point where it could communicate, deception has been the foundation of its survival. Deceiving other animals and fellow members of the same species has fed the sociobiological necessity of mortal competition. That’s correct, competition to death, which is as obvious and current as can be denied by one and throughout all parts of the world where humans survive. The rising dominance of the species, over many generations over all other animal and plant life has been a group cooperation phenomenon. Only humans can build things of stunning and planet-changing complexity and humans do it by cooperating. Humans cooperate in everything except individual survival and the comfort necessary to assure and make that survivable both longer term and also acceptable, for this survival comes with a psychological price, and that price is called guilt. All humans secretly feel that guilt and it’s caused by not being able to do anything, other than occasionally and accidentally, that does not prefer one’s survival over the same for others. Denial of nature and even the existence of this social result of genetically driven directives plague the future development of the species itself.
A scientist traveling and studying in the Galapagos Islands many years ago returned to his home country and wrote out his observations after carefully watching other isolated species there. Survival of the fittest came from his studies, as well as the reason why all animal life is ruled by the same genetic coding. The explanation for why genes became coded to this brutal method of living was accurately explained by his next area of presentation and that was the mechanism of natural selection. The results of his studies, once published, first revolutionized many of the social sciences before becoming shoved aside to allow survival of the fittest to continue to be pushed to the back of the cultural stages of every species and subspecies on earth.
The passage of time and the development of extreme communication tools like the cell phone, television, and the Internet have brought to the forefront the very argument I am revealing in this article. Lying, committed in public and even on television and video presentations, is denied as being that at all. A lying phrase was created to support it which is generally accepted by many. That phrase is ‘alternative facts.’ Of course, there can be no alternative to a fact, or the thing discussed as a fact wouldn’t be a fact at all. The United States, as much as it tried not to be the dominant ‘survival of the fittest’ country on earth, has become and is exactly that. Larger economy than most other countries combined, with a military greater than all of them put together, with science and weapons building that are so advanced that they cannot even be fielded for fear of killing everyone or simply driving survivors underground. But the presentation of the U.S., very well and almost universally portrayed, is of a peaceful nation only interested in its defense.
How is the reality of this nation’s might so well hidden? Through the elements of communication, I’ve written about. But the U.S. is not alone. Every group of people gathered together in geographic areas of human endeavor called countries is following the very same presentation, although none come even close to having what the U.S. has amassed in overall power. Both Russia and Ukraine claim self-defense in their war, now two years old. Both Hama and Israel claim self-defense in their war, which will also no doubt drag on for years. The U.S. went to war with Iraq and then Afghanistan out of self-defense, as did the Brits against Argentina in the Falklands War. And so on.
There is truth and there are facts out there in the world surrounding you, the reader here. They are simply very difficult to perceive unless a lot of time and devotion is spent in figuring things out. The Mass media of all the world is a shaping device, one and all, today. The ‘news’ is broadcast in such a way as to shape belief by powerful and wealthy figures who have dominated life on earth by surviving to be the fittest and they are not going to surrender that position nor the comforts it brings. Indubitable Indelibility does not exist when it comes to the dissemination of what’s considered information today, nor the acceptance of the lies. What does that mean for the future and survival of the species? That guilt cannot be accommodated forever, as it’s becoming ever more revealed is a given, and any psychologist or psychiatrist will admit to that. The New Year has been brought in, celebrated in the USA by a strange ball coming down a mounted pole. The song sung every year is the same, and there’s only one for this occasion.
Auld Lang Syne, which means ‘times gone by’ in Scottish. Maybe the last stanza of that song has more meaning than anything else as we enter another new year simply because the lyrics should imply that the greatest most powerful advantage that humans have in the universe is, indeed, building together: “And there’s a hand my trusty friend! And give me a hand o’ thine! And we’ll take a right good-will drought, for auld lang syne.”
