The world is a truly wonderful place, if only for its diversity and for the change you will generally find around every corner. In nature alone there is a multitude of strange and utterly unique things to be discovered and learned about. Take the three toed sloth, for example. Here is a creature that spends pretty much its whole long life of 30-40 years hanging upside down, covered in green algae, and when it does, on rare occassions, go and actually MOVE, it does so incredibly slowly. Imagine spending your entire life just hanging with your mates, upside down, doing everything you have to do (including toiletries and mating) from that position. Makes me wonder what a typical three toed sloth THINKS about all day :-)
But I think that the most unique form of nature on Earth has to be us. Homo Sapiens. Humans. Those of us with opposable thumbs, with the ability to think for ourselves, to communicate, to procreate or choose not to, to take responsibility for our actions. Now, I'm not saying other forms of nature don't do a lot of this - I'm sure the big cats in Africa put SOME thought into whether they'll let the sick go and just take down a big'un or vice versa, when they are hungry or just bored, but humans are different. Or at least, we like to think we are. Just because we don't understand the language of plants and animals doesn't mean they are not communicating - just that we haven't figured out how to listen to them properly, yet.
What I want to know, though, is why we felt the need, all those millenia ago, to take the fighting instinct to such heights. The rest of the natural world keep it as a "fight or flight" mechanism. We seem to take great pleasure in actually doing it for FUN. Is the true difference between humans and the rest of life on Earth really our opposable thumbs? Or is it the new heights to which we bring warfare and fighting? For centuries, men and women have thought up new ways to blow each other up, to wound each other, to kill each other. But why? Because of the adrenaline rush involved (that is actually part of the fight or flight mechanism, and helps to keep you alive), or a need to be better than every other human out there, or what? I doubt, these days, that it really does have much to do with an overriding urge to keep our fellow man (and woman) safe, anymore, and more to do with how strong a particular country appears to be in the eyes of the rest of the world.
But warfare is an interesting subject anyway. Right from the days of pelting rocks at dinosaurs and shouting "uggh!" a lot, to the sophistication of archery and mediaeval weaponry, even up to today's standards where it seems every year our militaries are issued with new machinery designed to be even more destructive and precise than those that came before, we've been interested, it seems, in finding ways to wipe our race off the face of this beautiful earth. War is a very sad thing, and I will never say it is a necessary thing, but it exists, and has done for an incredibly long time, and so we live with that fact, I guess. I will also admit that warfare, in all its forms, has been a fascination of mine since early childhood, and so, every so often, I do a little research on the topic.
Recently I came across a page that had some very interesting photographs on it. It was an army website for one of the major players, and for the most part they were normal every day photos - the army saving little kids, the army delivering troops...the usual things you expect to see. But every so often, there would be a photo among the hundreds that made me go back and take a second look. Sometimes it would just be a face, in camoflauge paint and helmet, and all you could see was a stunning blue eye. No idea of the sex of the person the face belonged to, and no idea of age, either. But that eye is burned into my mind for all time to come. Then there was another photo - two soldiers standing in a cave, with three or four openings around them. Granted, they were pretty much just standing there, doing their job, and truthfully, I don't think it was really those two young men that made me keep going back to that picture, but more honestly, the surroundings they found themselves in. Every single time I went back for a second or third glance, I saw something new, and felt something new. Perchance, a slight awakening to what those two men perhaps felt, standing there, wondering what would come next? In another photo, there was a certain urgency to the shot. Almost as though it was taken just moments before something truly big and horrifying happened. But again, there was no sign in the photo that anything at all was about to happen - just, as I said, a certain urgency. Looking at these photos made me think of how, over the years, the various wars have been shown to those of us left at home, wondering about the safety of our loved ones who are overseas and fighting on our behalf. I can understand the need to make us believe all is well, and to not show us the real stuff - the gory truth of war - but sometimes it would be nice to know a little more of the "need to know" truth, and less of the "for public consumption" truth. Because when the military tell us "all's well" and yet seem to be losing thousands of men on a regular basis, to me, that signifies that things are definitely NOT "all well". Those photographs, though, while very obviously cencored to keep the nastier side away from the gentle public, still had enough truth in every OTHER shot, to make me at least feel a little more secure.
But I think that the most unique form of nature on Earth has to be us. Homo Sapiens. Humans. Those of us with opposable thumbs, with the ability to think for ourselves, to communicate, to procreate or choose not to, to take responsibility for our actions. Now, I'm not saying other forms of nature don't do a lot of this - I'm sure the big cats in Africa put SOME thought into whether they'll let the sick go and just take down a big'un or vice versa, when they are hungry or just bored, but humans are different. Or at least, we like to think we are. Just because we don't understand the language of plants and animals doesn't mean they are not communicating - just that we haven't figured out how to listen to them properly, yet.
What I want to know, though, is why we felt the need, all those millenia ago, to take the fighting instinct to such heights. The rest of the natural world keep it as a "fight or flight" mechanism. We seem to take great pleasure in actually doing it for FUN. Is the true difference between humans and the rest of life on Earth really our opposable thumbs? Or is it the new heights to which we bring warfare and fighting? For centuries, men and women have thought up new ways to blow each other up, to wound each other, to kill each other. But why? Because of the adrenaline rush involved (that is actually part of the fight or flight mechanism, and helps to keep you alive), or a need to be better than every other human out there, or what? I doubt, these days, that it really does have much to do with an overriding urge to keep our fellow man (and woman) safe, anymore, and more to do with how strong a particular country appears to be in the eyes of the rest of the world.
But warfare is an interesting subject anyway. Right from the days of pelting rocks at dinosaurs and shouting "uggh!" a lot, to the sophistication of archery and mediaeval weaponry, even up to today's standards where it seems every year our militaries are issued with new machinery designed to be even more destructive and precise than those that came before, we've been interested, it seems, in finding ways to wipe our race off the face of this beautiful earth. War is a very sad thing, and I will never say it is a necessary thing, but it exists, and has done for an incredibly long time, and so we live with that fact, I guess. I will also admit that warfare, in all its forms, has been a fascination of mine since early childhood, and so, every so often, I do a little research on the topic.
Recently I came across a page that had some very interesting photographs on it. It was an army website for one of the major players, and for the most part they were normal every day photos - the army saving little kids, the army delivering troops...the usual things you expect to see. But every so often, there would be a photo among the hundreds that made me go back and take a second look. Sometimes it would just be a face, in camoflauge paint and helmet, and all you could see was a stunning blue eye. No idea of the sex of the person the face belonged to, and no idea of age, either. But that eye is burned into my mind for all time to come. Then there was another photo - two soldiers standing in a cave, with three or four openings around them. Granted, they were pretty much just standing there, doing their job, and truthfully, I don't think it was really those two young men that made me keep going back to that picture, but more honestly, the surroundings they found themselves in. Every single time I went back for a second or third glance, I saw something new, and felt something new. Perchance, a slight awakening to what those two men perhaps felt, standing there, wondering what would come next? In another photo, there was a certain urgency to the shot. Almost as though it was taken just moments before something truly big and horrifying happened. But again, there was no sign in the photo that anything at all was about to happen - just, as I said, a certain urgency. Looking at these photos made me think of how, over the years, the various wars have been shown to those of us left at home, wondering about the safety of our loved ones who are overseas and fighting on our behalf. I can understand the need to make us believe all is well, and to not show us the real stuff - the gory truth of war - but sometimes it would be nice to know a little more of the "need to know" truth, and less of the "for public consumption" truth. Because when the military tell us "all's well" and yet seem to be losing thousands of men on a regular basis, to me, that signifies that things are definitely NOT "all well". Those photographs, though, while very obviously cencored to keep the nastier side away from the gentle public, still had enough truth in every OTHER shot, to make me at least feel a little more secure.
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