Dark Thoughts on Humanity's Dark Heart.

The human capacity for misery
is only exceeded by the human capacity for cruelty.

For every sufferer there is not only a tormentor but many more for whom schadenfreude is only the most visible of delights in another's griefs and tragedies. We can bask in the glow of another's humiliation, warm ourselves at the reddened flesh of someone else's beating, smirk in silence as fortune punctures a rival's happiness. All without lifting a finger. It's the most economical and human of behaviours, gratifying without effort, sustaining without calories.

It's not noted in many other species, and even then it's a rudimentary affair. One chimpanzee crowing over another's downfall isn't unusual. But a Greek chorus of toadies mocking the loser isn't often observed, just sycophantic grooming of the victor, delineating the new pecking order.

No, it's most definitely human to take advantage of another's pain, to take pleasure from misery in a spiritual alchemy of the most base nature, refining a golden inner glow from the dross of another's damage. Injured innocence only adds to the harvest, The more collateral the damage the greater the range of exquisite pleasures we can enjoy. Every dent in another's confidence, every shudder of shame, every indignity piled on drooping shoulders can be savoured over time, returned to in repose, savoured afresh. Our cruelty knows no bounds, even when it's merely incidental to our own lives, yet crucial to another's.

There is no end to what people can do, given the opportunity. 

There is no end to what people will do, given the opportunity. 

And we all of us delight in our own selfish desires and needs.

Is this too morbid a view of humanity? Or merely the product of another sleepless night? Of melancholia and misanthropy fed by sleep deprivation and old griefs held close in the small hours?

Perhaps.

Yet the truth of it is borne out every day.

Some days I despair of humanity
Some days I'm not that optimistic.

Satire is cynicism with a positive attitude. Not the glassy-eyed mirth born of despair and incipient madness. Nor yet the bitter irony of witnessing our own destruction. It's a delight in the subtle patterns of decay, the glistening aurora of oil upon the turbid swirl, the rosy flush of algal bloom. It's knowing that we are the monsters of our own nightmares, and yet still knowing that the forces of darkness, of entropy and chaos will always play second fiddle to the greatest and most creative force in the universe - life.

Where there's life there's hope, and with hope the sun rises better than it sets, blinking on a new day of possibility and promise, redolent with gleam and charm and beauty.

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