Humans Are a Disaster

ABSTRACT The centuries-old reality of human-human violence is a violence in which one human sees and treats another human as “the Other.” Antagonism toward strangers is a biological disposition. Human violence is furthermore apparent in the human decimation of non-human animals, hence of biodiversity, and the decimation of planet earth through deforestation and climate change. Wars of territory exacerbate the destructive pursuits of humans. Wars are the cultural elaboration of what is evolutionarily given, namely, male-male competition and the elevation of “alpha males.” Human beneficence is a counter to human violence and is strikingly exemplified in a Palestinian doctor’s treating all humans as “human beings.” The second sapiens in the evolutionary categorization of humans as Homo sapiens sapiens specifies a more mature intelligence hence a being basically capable of self-knowledge as specified in Socrates’s observation “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” A being capable of “true wisdom” thus acknowledges its own strengths and weaknesses and the ever-present uncertainties of a future that lies ahead.