I sat through an interesting class last night...we had a guest speaker, and what he had to say really gave me some good morsels of thought to chew on. I'll try to relate his submission to us to you, but am unsure as to whether or not I can properly do it justice. Still, see if this makes sense to you:

The very basis of our society is violence. We don't like to think of it as such, but it is, and here's why, and how it came about, and how it continues to be perpetuated...

Back in the day, back in the prehistoric times and such, people groups were formed. These groups would go out and make progress like building shelters, and accumulating skins and other signs of wealth and so on, and then something beyond their control would happen to ruin it all, like a drought or a flood or a T-Rex would come along and eat them, or whatever. So then the group that was affected by that would have nothing and would have to start all over. They'd be pissed about that, and they'd look over at their neighbors across the way who still HAD all their stuff, and they'd get the idea to go over there and raid THAT village, in order to more quickly get caught up to speed. Some people groups became very adept at the raiding, and in the process, more and more resources would be allotted to warfare (both offensively as well as defensively, depending on the people-group), and fewer resources were allotted for producing wealth. As a result, the raids would progressively get less profitable. Got it so far?

Okay now, add to this, the people groups would at some point have to designate individuals to be the ones to go out and challenge the other people groups. To do this, you'd have to find people who would be willing to intentionally engage an enemy in actions that could get you killed. HELLO??? This goes against our very nature, because no one wants to go out and get killed, NATURALLY. So they began to develop a culture that would basically tell you that if you weren't willing to die on behalf of your people group, then you weren't fit for human company, and you were outcast. As a result, the warrior mindset began to become a normal part of the culture....children were raised with this type of "brainwashing", if you will. But WHO would these people try to turn into warriors? Well, in order to produce one child, a woman has to spend most of a year working on it. However, even a frail old man can do his part in producing a child several times each day. Therefore, men were considered to be reproductively "cheap", and women were guarded as expensive resources. So the men were the ones looked at to be the warriors, because, reproductively speaking, they could be spared more easily. This is essentially the reason men are still looked at as the warriors...we "breed" our males to be the warriors and protectors...the women could just as easily have been the expendable ones, if only it didn't take them so dang long to spit out a kid, I guess. Also, the warriors are taught to "Brook no thwart"...defeat is unacceptable except under overwhelming circumstances. We get to a point where our very identities are rooted in our own purposes.

Okay, now...moving forward with that...set that whole bit aside for a minute. Psychologists have looked at the normal mental growth phases of a human being and come up with something I find really interesting. As an infant reaches toddlerhood, he goes through a mental change that pushes him into the whining-screaming-demanding phase that we're all aware of. This happened even back in the prehistoric times. As the demanding phase is resolving itself, the normal next phase the child would reach is the sexual phase. The child becomes aware of his sexuality, but lacks the knowledge to know what to do with it. One thing that separates us from all other life forms is that we are not GENETICALLY programmed to know what to do with our sexuality. Geese hit the sexual phase, and they start courting other geese. We don't know how to do that, genetically....we learn how to do that through contact with society. So going back to the child, to the child's mind, all that exists is his parents. His parents (in his mind) are not subjective creatures...they have no personal likes or dislikes...they simply ARE. They are static in the child's mind. If nature were allowed to take its course, the child would grow out of the demanding phase, and would begin relating to his parents sexually. Yeah, I know....ick. But it wouldn't be that the child would HAVE sex with his parents...he would just relate to them sexually. Keep in mind that the parents are all that the child knows, and he's now proceeding into the sexual phase mentally, so it would be natural to him. However, here we are back in the cave...the demanding toddler has been having his needs met by mom for some time now, and soon mom is feeling the pressure from society to push back a little on the kid, and finally tell him NO. Well, this is just the end of the world for the child. His predetermined course of action has been stopped, and mom's not reacting the way he thought she would, and he doesn't know what to do with that. As he's begun to associate himself and his identity with his purposes, and his purposes have just been STOPPED, he's thrown into turmoil mentally, and his mental growth and development becomes interrupted. He never reaches the point where he begins to relate to his parents sexually.

You might be saying....WTF??? But think about this....we've all seen mothers who give in to every demand their child makes, and eventually, what starts happening? Soon the son begins hanging all over the mother, or the daughter begins hanging all over the father (mommy's boy, daddy's girl, sound familair?). It's not a BAD thing...it's a natural thing...but it's something that our society isn't comfortable with, to be sure. And why? Because we're a warrior society. Most of the people in today's world are being raised in the very same way as the early tribal people did back in the day....we're taught to protect what's ours, and to never accept defeat. Accepting defeat makes us become outcasts.

The speaker last night submitted to us the idea that if we were allowed to progress through the sexual phase as children, we would learn better how to truly love each other. We certainly do relate to others sexually, but it's rather lovelessly. We don't recognize this, because we're so used to the way things are, and we accept them as normal. However, a mother's love for her newborn child is so overwhelming...it's certainly a different kind of love. We write this off as maternal love, and we don't recognize it as potentially something more than that. Is it possible that we could love each other in the same manner, across the board? What a foreign concept. Is it possible that we could truly have everyone else'e best interests at heart, ALL the time, if we weren't already so ingrained to be warriors and protect what's ours? It's pretty radical thinking.

So...as he spoke, I got to thinking...what would it be like if we started to raise our kids in such a way as to promote the sexual-mental progress and growth? The conclusion I came to was this...most of the world is set in this warrior-pattern already. Sending a "loving" person into that mix would be like sending that person straight to a firing squad...he wouldn't survive. I thought about the character Norman Bates...he had a deep love for his mother, and was challenged by society on that, and ended up flipping over to the other extreme, and killed people. Yeah, I know that's just a character, but I'd be willing to bet you could find examples of that all over the place in r/l. What about the people who go on the shooting sprees, and are later described by others as being "sweet" or "loving" and how the people couldn't believe the person ever did what he did? And how those very same people did NOT fit into the accepted warrior-model of "normal" society? Interesting, huh? So taking that a step further, which would be better? Continue in the warrior-mindset, and continue to have wars and to destroy each other one people-group at a time, or foster a society of "loving" people, who in their struggle to adapt to the warrior-world, freak out and destroy others in shooting sprees and massacres?

Either way, we're on the road to destroying ourselves.

Crazy.