The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human.
Interpretation
Humanity inherently carries the potential for violence and conflict.
This quote by Jeffrey Kluger suggests that the nature of being human comes with the capacity for both good and evil, implying that violence among humans is not due to external circumstances but is a fundamental aspect of humanity itself. It prompts a profound reflection on human nature and the moral complexities that arise from our very existence.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the nature of humanity during a philosophy class.
Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them.
Marriage is a lot of things - a source of love, security, the joy of children, but it's also an interpersonal battlefield, and it's not hard to see why: Take two disparate people, toss them together in often-confined quarters, add the stresses of money and kids - now lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of your natural life. What could go wrong?
There aren't a lot of ironclad rules of family life, but here's one: No matter how much your parents deny it - and here's betting they deny it a lot - they have a favorite child. And if you're a parent, so do you.
There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?
Never - no, not for one moment - believe that any human being, with sense in his skull, will love or respect you on account of your fine or costly clothes.
Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.
When people evaluate their life, they compare themselves to a standard of what a successful life is, and it turns out that standard tends to be universal: People in Togo and Denmark have the same idea of what a good life is, and a lot of that has to do with money and material prosperity.
Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature.
No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
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