I walked into Burnie’s bar one stormy April afternoon and found Max Angst sitting in his usual spot at the far corner of the bar. I saw immediately he wasn’t his usual self.
“Hey Max, how are you doing?” I asked.
My friend glared back at me, a scowl upon his face. “Not well Art,” he muttered after a while.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Once again he sat there scowling, not answering.
“Is it something I did, Max?” I asked.
“Art, I’m three quarters drunk and I feel like cutting somebody’s throat.” He said.
“Jesus, Max, what happened?” I asked.
“I got a phone call last night from a guy I grew up with. A girl I I knew when I was young, the girl who was my very first girl friend was raped and beaten to death last night”
“I’m sorry Max. There are some lousy bastards in this world.”
“I just can’t brush it off that easy, Art. I’ve been going over and over this and its clear to me that humanity is a bunch of bloody monsters. Human brutality runs rampant all across this bloody planet. People are being killed, beaten and brutalized everywhere and it has always been that way. I dragged out a book on genocide at one point during the night and it turned my stomach. In the Congo, in Armenia, In Russia, In Central Europe, In China, in the Balkans, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Dafur today – and this list is not complete—during the twentieth century millions were slaughtered in cold blood. And that doesn’t mention the wars, or the everyday murders, or the political murders. We kill each other so very easily.”
“There are good people, Max. I would say that most people are not murders.”
“What did you have for supper last night, Art?’
“Roast Chicken, peas and noodles, what has that got to do with what we’re talking about?”
“Didn’t somebody have to slaughter the chicken and didn’t you benefit form it?”
“Oh c’mon, Max, it’s not the same thing.”
“ Human life is more valuable than the life of other species, Art?”
“ Other species kill, too.”
“Cows kill? Sheep kill? There are species that do not kill other sentient life forms to gain their food. Humanity, on the other hand is the most successful predator. It has developed the slaughter of other species into an economic science. Have you ever been in a slaughterhouse? Have you ever been on a sheep or cattle ranch or a poultry farm. Everyday we murder millions of sentient beings so that we can have food. And also, as I said earlier, we are bloody monsters to our own species.”
“So, what do we do now, Max?”
“First we have to recognize what we are. Own up to it. Then go and change it. By recognizing the fact of our own bloody proclivities we can began to search for ways to change what we are. Stop killing one another. Recognize we can do better than that. And, if we fail, then with today’s weapons we will destroy our race I know people have been striving for this forever, but we’ve never looked our self in the mirror liked this and saw the monster. Vegetarianism seems to be another way we can go. But, I wonder if there isn’t some way of supplying humanities energy needs through bio-chemical science. Can we create artificial foods that not only feed us, but also provide the kind of entertainment that humanity has developed eating in to. Do these two things and we’ll completely change the Human Race. It might be the next important step in Human evolution.