Violence... The story so far

Why We Must Tame Our Instincts to Save Our World
Arthur Blech
Book Review with commentary

Blech could not be more in tune with the primary challenge of the 21st Century. Our instincts are indeed consistent with evolution--but contrary to morality. Morality is one basic feature most of us would invoke as setting us apart from the animal world. But what is morality? Are we really all that moral, the way we treat the biosphere and each other? Our morality lapses in other ways as well; corporate treasuries are raided; oil is looted such that ruling despots get rich as America guzzles far more than its proportionate share. Why?

We quote from Blech's introduction:

For the actions of men and women, if unhindered in the struggle for self-preservation and seeking material prosperity to attain the desired level of creature comforts, give rise to self-made obstacles in their quest to defy the natural order. We humans are the cause of hazards to our existence created by overpopulation, environmental degradation, and injecting various toxic substances into the food supply; we are the designers of an unbalanced economy whose stratification favors the well-to-do to the detriment of the disadvantaged, keeping most in a state of turmoil; we are the contrivers of religious systems, some of which are responsible for the most unnatural crimes committed by humans against humans; last but not least, we are the instigators of mass slaughters resulting from wars fought in anger, causing ever increasing casualties and destruction reaching totally destabilizing magnitudes. These acts bode ill for civilization.

Humanity, that flawed creation of a flawed nature, in bondage to survival instincts and a virtual slave to circumstances beyond its control, nevertheless possesses the capacity to free itself from some of the burdens imposed by the natural order to rise above the gravitational pull confining all living species. We must discover that our welfare and that of society depend on the rejection of the natural order, so as to be freed, however moderately, from nature's evolutionary competition and the struggle for the survival of the fittest, an order totally in conflict with morality. For the aims of morality are antithetical to nature's imposed scheme of things, reflecting the conflict between our aims and natures designs.

Arthur Blech (Los Angeles, CA), a commercial real estate investor and cattle rancher, is the author of The Causes of Anti-Semitism: A Critique of the Bible.

Blech is also a fearless and independent thinker.