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Billy Conde Goldman
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Posted: Dec. 17 2012,00:45 |
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(in reaction to the mass murder of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut this week)
The following is from Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon's Ring
Morals and Weapons
"When, in the course of evolution, a species of animals develops a weapon which may destroy a fellow-member at one blow, then, in order to survive, it must develop, along with the weapon, a social inhibition to prevent a usage which could endanger the existence of the species. Among the predatory animals, there are only a few which lead so solitary a life they they can, in general, forego such restraint. They come together only at the mating season when the sexual impulse outweighs all others, including that of aggression. Such unsociable hermits are the polar bear and the jaguar, and, owing to the absence of these social inhibitions, animals of these species, when kept together in zoos, hold a sorry record for murdering their own kind. The system of special inherited impulses and inhibitions, together with the weapons with which a social species is provided by nature, form a complex which is carefully computed and self-regulating. All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole.
"If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?"
"Wordsworth is right: here is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition. That being is man. With unarrested growth his weapons increase in monstrousness, multiplying horribly within a few decades. But innate impulses and inhibitions, like bodily structures, need time for their development, time on a scale which geologists and astronomers are accustomed to calculate, and not historians. We did not receive our weapons from nature. We made them ourselves, of our own free will. Which is going to be easier for us in the future, the production of the weapons or the engendering of the feeling of responsibility that should go along with them, the inhibitions without which our race must perish by virtue of its own creations? We must build up these inhibitions purposefully for we cannot rely upon our instincts."
people about to explode
guns guns guns out of control
people about to explode
guns guns guns out of control
out of control
so much wrong
so much right
meteor shower lights the night
bless the ground
curse the day
wish wish wish wish it away
people about to explode
guns guns guns out of control
bring the flag
closer in
raise it up till it happens again
blindsided
sun in fear
make it go away make it disappear
people about to explode
guns guns guns out of control
people about to explode
guns guns guns out of control
out of control
about to explode
about to explode
about to explode
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