Homo MAGA Trumpithicus – colored pencil on 8.5 x 11 cardstock – New American Journal graphic by Walter Simon [Art Market Place]

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

Love versus hate. Peace versus war. Empathy versus apathy. Altruism versus selfishness.

These are the fundamental struggles between humans and their evolutionary nature on planet Earth.

There’s always lots of talk about love going on, but it never seems to hold the power to conquer hate. In fact, some of the people who promote religious love, Christian love, seem to hate their fellow humans the most, those of other religions and skin colors anyway.

“Love they neighbor as thyself,” doesn’t seem to work very well as a commandment or a philosophy when people don’t even know how to properly love and take care of themselves, except to hold onto an arrogant, self-centered narcissism and a “belief” that they as individuals know what’s right and anyone who disagrees is wrong — and maybe that those who are “wrong” deserve to die for their “beliefs.”

Peace Versus War

World peace has long been an aspiration of good people everywhere. So why are so many countries and cultures still at war with one another, even at war within countries?

“Wars and rumors of wars” is not so much a prediction by prophets as it is an objective observation of the human condition.

Homo sapiens have been fighting each other over food between tribes since they chased down antelopes, gazelles, wildebeest and other large animals on the African savannah at least two million years ago.

It’s been a part of our culture for so long it influenced the development of our genes over the centuries.

As time went by, we fought each other over land, food and energy resources, even over whose god was the “real” one.

Peace has always been a temporary reprieve between wars, not something humans seem to be able to achieve over the long run.

It makes for a fine aspiration, however, as well as a potentially winning political slogan.

But a priori, on the face of it, pinning our long term hopes of survival on love conquering hate seem doomed to fail.

I had to tell a fiancé once that “love does not conquer all,” including family and capitalistic affairs.

Ask Shakeaspeare, not Solomon.

Empathy Versus Apathy

Half the human population seem bogged down in an apathy so deep that it will be up to the other half of the population to learn empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.

This might help some in the struggle for survival, but it won’t be enough.

The Selfish Gene

People are guided in large measure by the “selfish gene,” and many of our cultural institutions seem to reinforce this trait in our species, even if it is a blind support. The more we fall for the subliminal notion that capitalism is one and the same thing as democracy, the harder we will fall and fail. Corporate advertising, which funds most traditional forms of media, only seek to “capitalize” on this trait.

Democracy and Capitalism Are NOT One and the Same — A Review of Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’

As we continue to try to find solutions for war, fighting deadly viruses, and reversing global warming and climate change, we should also be working on ways to diminish human selfishness.

I wrote about this before the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States last winter.

Can Altruism Trump Selfishness to Save Democracy and Planet Earth?

Whether or not you “believe” that Russian hackers, Facebook and other social media platforms helped the most selfish politician in the history of the world come to power in the U.S. in 2016, there can be no doubt that Facebook especially reenforces the selfish gene.

If the selfie itself does not prove this to your satisfaction, never mind all the other ways it promotes selfishness, then think about it some more.

If only the programmers who developed it knew more about this and not just how to write code and get people to sign up and hit “like,” it might have been possible to develop a social media platform that could help “bring people together” around a more altruistic mission.

But I guess it’s too late now. I offered to try, but so far no one wants to fund it.

Clearly the only thing that will save us now is to find a way to suppress human selfishness. That may mean promoting empathy, peace and love. But at the most basic, fundamental level, only altruism can combat selfishness.

Either we find a way to do that, or our struggle to survive on planet Earth will be over, and soon.

Here’s another take on it. I’ve been writing about this for some time. When will the rest of the news media in America and around the world finally realize this is the most basic, fundamental struggle? Everything else is clickbait.

Alabama Song Writer Grayson Capps on the State of the World and Religion