The Price of Survival's Instinct

Humankind did not forge itself

out of nothing, did not have a hand

in forming and creating the creatures

we now are, a race of thinking

awareness that seeks knowledge

and answers to the questions that

begin with why, how, where and when.

We know the where and the when

and we think we know the  how

but it is the why that bedevils us and

eludes our understanding. A simple

enough question, an elusive response

for nature does not willingly divulge

her creative process, much less the

flaws in her design. Unknowable and

remote nature devised the creatures that

we are, a race of quarrelsome, suspicious

acquisitive, inquisitive and emotional

beings that has seen fit since primordial

times to the present to lay waste to what

others have built, to loot their possessions

murder and enslave those not of their clan.

In our conceit of perfection we make no

effort to reverse the order where emotion

supercedes intelligence, a condition which

endures and victimizes the entire race 

reducing it to superficial intelligence

readily overturned when barbarity erupts

and civilizational mores collapse.