Not a proud history of mankind

The history of intelligent humans has been a shameful one.

Since the beginning of evolved modern humans, as far as historical record can take us, it has been a history of fights, stealing, killing, deceit, plunder and gross violation of what we call now human rights.

In those days of nomadic wanderer and later on farming, when there was only a vague concept of good and bad, stealing and plundering of food and livestock was rampant. The seeds of greed were sown from those times. Even stealing of women from within the tribe and from other tribes were prized possessions. Life those days were basic and rudimentary but the nature of humans was the same as today.

When small and bigger kingdoms started to form then the scale of stealing and plundering increased, now more was at stake. So was the need for more protection and more plunder. With time these fights and battles increased. Where as a couple of hundreds may have died in the nomadic times, now a couple of thousand died in those wars. Life was expendable, resources were expendable, only to grab more resources including human resources.

It was like if 3000 men died in a battle, then the winning side will get more man power from the captured land. Thus creating more expendable human resources and it will be further used to create more expendable resources.

This continued from BC to AD. Now the kingdoms became huge in size and now about more than 20 thousand could be easily sacrificed. Slavery also became an accepted social norm. Men, those were fit for war was taken as soldiers and others worked in the fields and mines and building new cities and roads. The men and women were bought and sold as other commodities. Women folk mostly ended up in sexual slavery or for domestic errands.

After around 15th century when kingdoms spread across present day continents, slaves were taken to far off lands to work in the fields and mines. After so many centuries they have now become a part of those new countries with roots still in their home country. From India slaves were taken to Africa, South America, Caribbean Islands and also the Far East.

Captured populations in thousands were taken back by the winning ruler to their kingdom as slaves, converted their religion and used them as per their whims and fancy. In north eastern Afghanistan there is a mountain range named Hindu kush, it means Hindu killer. Due to the extreme weather and terrain, Hindu people who were captured by the invaders from the west, died in hundreds on this mountain.

The early industrial revolution period till as near as 19th century is a particularly dark period as slavery became one of the main pillars of a well oiled industrial development of a handful of countries. The natives of present day USA and South America were almost wiped out of existence, and many tribes actually became extinct.

As time moved forward so did the greed and power of humans. The latter half of 19 century saw the development of modern fire arms. Now more than 50,000 deaths in a war was common thing. The world war saw deaths in million, all for gaining more power or stopping the other from gaining more power. In many cases the people from the third world country became the cannon and fodder for those wars fought by the industrialized nations.

Now the nuclear weapons have become the tipping point. The world is hanging on a precarious balance weighed down by the immense destructive ability it has in its hand. It is only a matter of time that this threshold will also be crossed. The nuclear winter is coming.

All through history mankind has only caused self inflicted harm to itself. Whatever industrial, scientific and technological development that has taken place, its misuse has matched that progress.

Whichever aspect of earth we have touched we have started ruining it.

We are burning our own house so that we can use that fire to burn others home.

If God is indeed somewhere out there then what must it be thinking seeing acts of the most prized thing it created? If I was that God then I would be ashamed of my this creation.

Is this the sign of intelligence?

Or is the instinct of animal better?