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The Human Condition is a common term for the situation that all
human beings find themselves in when they emerge as babies. The Human Condition is that set of beliefs, conditionings and instinctual passions
that form the habitual and neuro-biological program by which human beings currently operate and have done so, with few significant changes,
ever since the emergence of the species.
The Human Condition can be likened to the ‘rules of the game’, defining the
parameters and limits of what it is to be a human being that have been established, and embellished, over thousands of years. These rules ‘set
in concrete’ both our instinctually-based behaviour patterns as well as the beliefs, morals and ethics that have been passed on from those
who were here before us. Thus the gender, family, tribal, spiritual and world views, concepts and attitudes of each and every newly-born human
is, without exception pre-established at birth.
The Human Condition is deemed to be a fixed condition, so much so that it is
universally accepted that ‘you can’t change human nature’.
The most striking, persistent and enduring attributes of the Human Condition are malice and sorrow
– both at a personal level and a global level.
Malice and sorrow in humans are the direct result of the instinctual animal
passions of fear, aggression, nurture and desire ‘in action’.
The range of the Human Condition of malice and sorrow is marked by resentment,
frustration, anger, violence and warfare at one end and melancholy, sadness, depression, despair and suicide at the other.
The history of Humanity, both past and present, is essentially a history of continuous warfare
between various tribal groups on the basis of territorial disputes, religious and ethical differences or acts of retribution.
Human malice is much more vicious and vindictive than the innate aggression obvious
in other animal species due to human inventiveness, cunning. Furthermore in the human animal much hatred, bigotry and spite is also passed
down from generation to generation as a social conditioning that is layered on top of our instinctual animal passion for aggression.
There is no evidence that human malice is abating – quite the contrary. The last
century was the bloodiest and most savage to date. To call the brief periods of ceasefire that occur between human wars and conflicts ‘peace’
is to completely misuse the word.
These are indeed the Savage Times.
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