Atomictumor

“I prefer peace/Wouldn’t have to have one bloody possession/But essentially I’m an animal/So just what do I do with all the aggression?”
-Gnarls Barkley

I was driving back to work today, listening to music, when I had what alchoholics refer to as ‘a moment of clarity’…

I’ve been listening to a good deal of G.B., and I think I’ll be listening to more for the next little while. Yes, I’m the last person on Earth to do so, and this is because of my ingrained punk rock notion that whatever is popular (and make no mistake, this junk is popular) sucks.
Yes, sometimes I feel the ghost of the ol’ mohawk up there as I have these reactions. Oi.

However, after hearing that the Raconteurs did a good cover of ‘Crazy’, and seeing Of Montreal do an AMAZING encore rendition of it in Chattanooga last weekend, I figured I’d have to give the record a whirl. I had borrowed the CD a few weeks ago, but never got past the first song. I stuck it on the machine at work, and have been listening to it in a working, half paying attention fashion, but had it in the car today, when I heard that line about aggression, everything clicked, and I froze.

What do we do with the aggression?

Does the human creature, by simple nature of its perceived superiority (spiritual, intellectual, take your pick) move out of that animal aggression class? Or is that stuff still in there, working itself out either in our dealings with other people (like, on online forums, where its easy to vent aggression on strangers, at the price of looking like an anonymous jerk), or our children and loved ones, or in our worldviews, leading to wars, indifference to suffering, and other bad news.

See, sometimes I forget that we’re dealing with a good few million years of mammallian evolution (and this is not the place for an evolutionary debate, we’re all going to assume that the Pastafarians are wrong, and our great x grandparents were amoeba). We have tried and true aggressive instincts baked right in, and 10,000 years of walking upright and wearing furs doesn’t completely wipe it out.

Could that be the big drive behind the immigration thing? Not to reopen that can of worms, because we’d have to buy a new one after our discussion yesterday, but what if the real, deep down problem with immigration isn’t racism, like myself and my bleeding hearted comrades intimate, but territorialism? Lord knows I’m as territorial as the next guy. I glare at new neighbors, I chase stray cats off my lawn. I don’t even like peeing in a urinal next to another guy (now you’re thinking of me peeing at a urinal, aren’t you?).

It most certainly is the drive behind the whole middle east thing, where you have borders that probably were originally set by people in furs marking them with urine that people today, in the enlightened 21st century, still kill each other over.

I think once you remind yourself this, and really reflect on it, you start seeing things differently.

So, OK, we’ve got the aggression.  What do we do with it?  Can we get that peace that we aspire to?  Is that the human condition, to constantly try to overcome the hereditary obstacles (that were created originally to be beneficial, keep in mind) to gain a peace and happiness?

If so, thats weak.

The rest of the song is great too, but in another vein.  Maybe that’ll be a post one day.