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A Conflict of Essences
NMB, Florida October 14, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
A CONFLICT OF ESSENCES
It seems to me, now that I have my thinking cap on, that all of history of
our kind is one where essences are battling one another. In the marvelous
invention of Jane Auel in the Saga of Earth's Children, she is preoccupied
with the notion that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon humans believed life is
started when a man's "essence" overcomes a woman's "essence" and that
intercourse between a man and a woman is not responsible. This also
involves "totems" or the spirits of animals whom people closely resemble.
We can only guess what early human populations actually thought. We find
enough evidence of what their physical appearance might have been and that
their use of stone tools was quite sophisticated. We know that they were
clothed but mostly in skins in a cold climate and that they adorned these
garments to please, not primitive sensibilities, but quite modern ideas of
how things should look and of what beauty consists. This is a story that is
quite unlike the Garden of Eden.
The essence thing is interesting because you can distill a society down to
a few crucial essences and compare them to the essences of another society.
The exercise is a good one and one that should be investigated thoroughly.
All things human are human-like but society is not necessarily a good place
for human activities. Those societies that demand sacrifice of life to
satisfy their need to placate their god are not like other societies that
defend the sanctity of life.
Despite our quarrel amongst ourselves over the morality and legality of
abortion, we still get upset when an automobile crushes one of us and we
consider the act as killing a human being. This is one of the worst actions
one human can take against another. We have the injunction "Thou Shalt Not
Kill" which some interpret as you shall not "murder".
Today we are busy killing - not murdering - those who harbor murderers of
thousands of us - we are killing them and justify it by scripture that is
the essence of the same two civilizations that are in conflict today. What
do you think? Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10.
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