By Ben Harney
When I ask you why justice and equality will never be embraced by humanity, you respond with an answer that sounds as if it has been rehearsed in your head one thousand times:
"Human nature, of course. It is evil, it is greedy."
And now a sly smile creeps onto your face, you have just won the debate of the millenia. A tidal wave of release has swept through your soul; this response is almost a confession, but an easy one for you at that! To you, this nature is an infallible god. Think on what you have done, friend! Somehow, you have just redeemed the suffering of billions with one fell sweep from this Nature; and with its omnipotence comes your own liberation. Anything is justified with this Nature on your side. Somewhere, in one of the deepest caverns of your mind, one demon sighs with relief upon hearing your message from this new deity. He thought his work would have to be done in the dark recesses of your soul, but now, he knows, he is free!
The speed of your answer to my question betrays the intensity of how desperately you hold onto it. Why? I suppose there might exist some dragons within you which truly revel in this nature of yours. Or is it yours? Maybe it belongs to the others, just not you, O virtuous one! No, these dragons remain a part of you, they grew up with you; in your bed, at your dinner table, in your Church, in the yacht club, in Prep school. They whispered fire into your mind when you strolled by some fellow brother or sister sleeping in waste on the soulless concrete. They clawed and lashed at your eyes when you saw a cousin with a darker complexion. These dragons took a hold of your throat and cackled when you glared at that worn traveler or worker. The beasts within now have made you their own; your society nurtured them, and you never fought them.
I can only assume you to be a genius! Alas, you know the nature of all humankind! I wonder who told you, whoever has that kind of wisdom; I should like to talk with them.
In this answer, you have confessed not the nature of humankind, but yourself, my friend. Human nature is evil? It is selfish? No. You are evil, you are selfish. From that tower of yours, you look down on the stalwart people who carry on, and you spit. You look to your father, some banker perhaps, and orgasm to his success. Do you call him evil, is he selfish? Your eyes say no. Ah, I forgot, the nature you speak of applies only to the unwashed rabble, not your high kin! But wait, you do embrace it. The grin you don when such a question comes up is the real horror, but, evidently, you delight in this. The chains are broken, and you are let loose; make those millions, ignore everything else.
It seems that your own self, under the watchful guise of the wretched system which planted seeds in your psyche, has gorged on the pleasures of fear and laziness, of apathy and greed. You bow to one thousand generations of tradition. You bow to things as they are, you bow to suffering. Pathetic submission is your roll call, and this false creation you call 'innate Nature' commands you. Instead of seizing your sword, pushing forward with all your might, and ascending the summits of yourself in order to confront the dragons which now call your own mind their dominion, you act as their humble servant. But this is the rule, not the exception. The articulated and painted social existence which you were immersed in, one which if the surface is scratched at only slightly the rotten and tortured flesh below is revealed, has created a perfect mind for this kind of disease to flourish in. You and your neighbors all pat each other on the back in celebration of the evilness of humankind!
Do you say it is human nature for billions to endure exploitation, to endure a constant war for their dignity, because you, yourself, have become a slave to cruelty, to laziness, to the filthy heads of this hydra? But do you know that starving goes against human nature? Do you know that dying from black lung is in direct opposition to human nature? In the least, the nature of humanity is to live and thrive, just like any other species. Equality, freedom, now these are the philosophical pinnacles of human nature, you and your system has made it so. There is nothing more true than the rage and pain a mother may feel when her child is hungry. And there is nothing more unnatural than being relegated to a certain life because of the amount of a certain compound in one's skin. You say our present system is in harmony with human nature. I say this system makes billions cry out against it in one billion different ways for one billion different reasons, but all of these tears and fists can be traced back to the root, to the foundation. The coming revolution will be the culmination of five hundred years of pain and suffering and hope and unity, what do you have, what will you have, and where will you hide? Your nature prevents you from realizing a new society where the masses of humanity hold the torch of power in their own coarse hands.
But it must be known, to everyone, that your nature, the nature of the Reactionary, is the nature of the coward. There is no courage, or fire, in that soul of yours. All I can see is a fat and bloated devil which scrambles to bow the lowest when his master comes to him. It takes no strength to justify the pain and rape of one million souls, no bravery to be settled with the current state of things, when the 'current state of things' means no pain, and only pleasure, for you. But perhaps you do need some strength, I grant you, which you must use to hold up the unbelievable quantity of unseen cruelty within your heart. That must be a heavy weight.
To revolt means to first hunt down the socially implanted demons which lurk in one's own heart. If you confess that your own nature is to submit to these demons, to greed and evil, then you have already lost that battle. The beasts have slain you before the hunt even began.
So be it, you cannot accept justice and equality. But Humanity's nature is not yours to brand.
