Man The Wise

Gifted with cognition and intelligence
we are cursed with emotions. Our thoughts
enable us to interpret and analyze to plan
and to create, to manipulate the riches
available in our environment, yet we are
subservient to our instincts overriding
reason, leading us to acts of unreasoning
cruelty to one another for embedded deep
within our subconscious are the visceral
reactions born of tribal affiliation and the
inhumane grip of jealousy, hostility and
greed leading the forefront of our actions
through survival's prod toward acquiring
all that promote existence staving off
threats of scarcity while depriving others
of the wherewithal to survive for this is
the primeval within, the murderous rage
that others may presume to advantage
themselves with the earthly attributes that
are meant to sustain us, not the despised
and feared 'other' whose existence is that
of a threat to our own. Humanity is its
own threat of annihilation from within.