Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thought. Show all posts

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Have we learned nothing about the damned Human Race?


excerpts from a Mark Twain essay - 1905


Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning.
In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scottish Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping.

Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh–not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.


Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion–several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.
He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet’s time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France for a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary’s day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light.................. he is at it today, in Crete, occasioned by the battles between Christians and Muslims.

He will be at it somewhere else tomorrow. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.


Who is the Higher Life Form?
The difference between an man and an animal is that the man is cruel and the animal isn’t; and that the man wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the animal doesn’t. This seemed to suggest that the animal was not descended from the man. It also seemed to suggest that the man was descended from the animal and had lost a great deal in the translation.
There is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly, they are not.
Among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.


Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concubines; therefore no harm is done. Men keep harems, but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster.


Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity–these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed.  Man is the only animal that blushes.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals.
The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses, except to obtain food. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. Animals are territorial and will gather in mass to expell an intruder, but the animals will abandon the task once the intruder has left. Man will continue beyound his territory to hunt them down for no good reason.


Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country–takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him.
Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another, for wages, service, nobility or ancestry.


Man is the only animal with the "Moral Sense". The ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to do evil; for there can be no evil act without the presence of consciousness of it in the doer of it. And man will try to explain it away as an animal instinct or an insaine act like an animal who doesn't know right from wrong.


So....It obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.


The Damned Human RaceMark Twain Essay, published in 1905
http://www.zengardner.com/the-damned-human-race-mark-twain-essay/
DON'T BE BLUE
to the United States Congress


"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil ------- is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke, among others.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Think Happy Thoughts

Don't let it bring you down.


If someone should hurt you and say a thing unkind,
Remember those happy times, and keep these thoughts in mind.

For everyone that makes you cry, there are three who make you smile,
And a smile will last a long, long time, but a tear - just a little while.

Don't let someone who hates the world, cause you to hate it too.
Behind those stormy clouds is a golden sun, and a sky that's full of blue.

If someone said a thing that's cruel, don't dwell on it or let it get to you,
Your achievements are greatly numbered, and your faults - are very few.

So, if life gets you down or a certain person should act a certain way,
Think of those who love you and are loved by you, and don't let it spoil your day.


DON'T BE BLUE