The Conqueror's Society

But why is it so? Why have power and greed taken over us all? Why could it not be any other form of life? Or way? Why must it have been power and greed? Or the pursuit of them? If you look at it from a view of the evolution of human societies and culture, the one which craves for power, or the one which runs on greed, is the one that has been the most fit, the most adaptable. A greedy society is a powerful society: it is the one which optimizes for success and survival on our little blue planet.

Surely other types of societies and peoples have survived before, or existed. But when measured against a group who are greedy, or greedier, then what are the chances of survival? Who will win? Evidence shows us the greedy will persist. Or we would be otherwise, right? When one is greedy, we seek for it all, to gain it all, to have it all, and to take it all, no matter what. What we care for is conquest of it all, to be the one that has it all, the reigning supreme victor. And if you are not of the same blood, or the same mental type, what chance do you stand? If you are not built to be aggressive in the pursuit of conquest, how could you stand up against one that is? The result will be conqueror and the conquered. We are the standing result.

Which is why we all seek power, and are greedy. Which is why greed is a silently celebrated trait of us all. We love to be greedy, and we celebrate it shamelessly. Because greed is what has propelled our species to the forefront of life. If we were not greedy, we would have been trampled time and again until we perished. Most likely the result of many who had to face us: many extinct we do not know of. Greed is our most powerful trait. But it is quite a disgusting one. We all can be selfishly greedy. It benefits us, but it also destroys us.

Yet the opposite, a life of love and peace, of togetherness and sharing, is not a realistic one in the world we live. Living together with all as one, as equals and fair, is all a fairy tale dream. Foolish to be honest. Life is not fair, nor is the world. And all it would take is one greedy one to shatter it all. Seeking for fairness and equality is equivalent to seeking for perfection and balance. Not possible. We live in a chaotic world and grew up as such. We are chaotic; and the pursuit for more, for conquest, the love of conquest, is what has built and expelled ourselves from simple to complex. We owe everything around us to chaos and the corpses of the many beneath us. Could we have simply lived as other animals, or life, and still have gotten along? Surely we could have. We could have stayed as our ancestors millions of years before us—there is no real need to have become us—but we have; why have we? To make certain our survival, to guarantee it? To make it easy? In a way, yes.

We have become more complex and thirsted for conquest for the purpose of expanding ourselves and guaranteeing a foothold on life. For our survival. For the continuation of ourselves and our families. To have wealth to ensure their survival, on and on. To have strength, power and safety. That way we can live. Which of course comes at a cost: the cost of others around us. But we value ourselves over them, so it is an okay cost, something we are willing to live with, because we will be okay and we do not care for their experience. It is okay if they’re not okay, we do not feel it.

All wildly spawned from a need of survival, came the buildings, structures and rules of human civilization, with greed at its helm, resulting in a powerful society: powerful and quite sick in many ways. We’re all dying in some way or another. We’re little apes, who would live best if like our predecessors, but together, ape strong.