Every person comes from the intimate depths of the divine Creator and from the great unwashed wilderness that lies in the pit of hell.
Rasputin, crazy Russian

Whereas formal education, conventional self-help, government forces and most religions try to focus on the development of your good, pro-social, conformist side and repress or negate your primal side, it’s who we are as human beings.

All the way back to Greek mythology and beyond, I constantly see references to the dual nature of man. We can’t get away from it, it’s our true nature as human beings, a bit of wild animal, a bit of divine inspiration, Cain and Abel.

That’s why I’m so sure that the only way to save ourselves is to use genetic engineering to makes us less evil and violent, better morally and kinder than we are now. I’ve seen so much man’s inhumanity to man that I’m positive we cannot go any further as a species until we re-engineer ourselves.

It’s not necessarily the opposing forces of good and evil. Most people aren’t really evil or at least don’t act out their evil thoughts in real life.

It’s more like selfishness versus benevolence. You can be selfish without being evil, in fact, most people in a capitalist world are if we’re to judge them by their neighbors in the ghetto who need their help but they don’t want to give it even though the pain and need there is quite obvious.

We all like to think we’re nice, kind, generous, selfless people but I tend to think that as individuals and as society as a whole, objectively, we’re not as kind and good as we think we are. It’s a great self-delusion.

Due to our self-preservation nature and the nature of the capitalist world we live in which encourages us to get all the stuff we can for ourselves and call it success, we’re automatically hooked on selfishness and vanity (to try to appear cool and attractive to others), the pursuit of innocuous pleasure and comfort for ourselves (like bowling, ice cream, video games, new clothes, amusement parks, movies, etc. ) and get mad, sad, angry, violent thoughts if anyone interferes with our efforts to get what we want for ourselves right now but most of the time, we don’t openly act on our negative thoughts not necessarily because we sincerely love our fellow man but because we don’t want to seem anti-social and/ or go to jail.

Capitalist ideology is all about you going for your dreams no matter what and if anyone interferes or competes with you then you have to crush them any way you can in order to stay on top of the pile.

This is the American Dream, try to be superior to everyone else in some capacity to earn you your cash and if it means crushing opposing forces, so be it. Never mind the old Buddhist statement, “Be the best you can be but don’t try to be better than others. ”

With the American Way, you’re brought up to be a competitor intent on superiority if you’re to become a winner in modern day society but don’t forget to carry your pleasant, phony, pro-social mask around and put it on whenever it might benefit your cause – you.