[Kim Seong-kon] Dwelling within the animal kingdom

Nowadays, intellectuals lament that people behave as in the event that they had been dwelling within the animal kingdom. It implies that we’ve got misplaced our humanity and act like animals. An animal’s main concern is to eat and survive. Along with looking or looking for meals, some animals flock collectively and others struggle for dominance over territorial disputes.

In fact, animals even have some admirable traits, equivalent to caring and sharing, however these behaviors are typically restricted to household or people throughout the similar group. Animals hardly show compassion for outsiders. As a substitute, they exhibit anger, aggression and antagonism towards strangers or different species. Sadly, we people take after animals nowadays. It’s a disgrace as a result of people ought to be higher than animals.

What, then, differentiates people from animals? There’s a myriad of traits which are distinctively human. The capability to make use of language for communication, for instance, or the colleges of frequent sense and rationality make us higher than animals. So do decorum, decency and integrity. We will think about humility, consideration and temperance, as properly. A way of disgrace, guilt and remorse, too, can be a part of the checklist. Regrettably, nonetheless, we’re at this time dwelling in an period when these admirable human virtues are disappearing, and as an alternative, bestial conduct and belligerence are predominant in our society and across the globe.

Few individuals would deny that our legislators are primarily answerable for inflicting our civilized society to revert to the animal kingdom. Some politicians preach that “consuming and surviving” is our society’s main concern. It could be true if we’re animals. But, people ought to be totally different from animals. As a substitute of “consuming and surviving,” due to this fact, political leaders ought to give you extra noble goals or with blueprints for our nation’s future.

Different political leaders unabashedly deceive the individuals with lies, populism and hole political propaganda. They divide the individuals into two mutually antagonizing teams and tear the nation aside by brainwashing individuals with their radical political ideology. Additionally they oppress the individuals who don’t assist them and persecute political enemies ruthlessly. These politicians religiously consider that they’ll do something for his or her ideology, together with killing others who’ve totally different ideologies. In that sense, they’re no totally different from dictators who terrorize the nation.

There are, sadly, many naive individuals who nonetheless blindly and ardently assist such malicious, tyrannical political leaders. Some radical supporters flip into fanatic followers for the politicians they like, making a hostile fandom that resembles the Purple Guard in the course of the Chinese language Cultural Revolution. Generally, even intellectuals and writers, too, be a part of the whirlpool of political skirmishes for a place within the authorities, however find yourself merely being puppets for depraved politicians.

Simply as animals do over territorial disputes, there are some political leaders on the planet at this time who begin wars by invading different nations within the title of unification or the restoration of former territories. Others menace the world with nuclear weapons, threatening that World Conflict III is imminent. Sending soiled balloons to a different nation, too, isn’t one thing civilized individuals would do. As well as, there are non secular political leaders who preserve massacring individuals of various religions within the title of God, whereas conveniently forgetting that Christ taught that we should always love our enemies.

In some authoritarian socialist nations, politicians plot election fraud by tampering with or fabricating the variety of votes, following Stalin’s counsel, “Those that vote determine nothing. Those that depend the vote determine all the things.” Even in democratic nations, some political leaders openly defy democracy and grow to be tyrannical. They don’t concede the end result of an election and are prepared to instigate a Civil Conflict to overturn it.

Just lately, a famend Korean poet, Oh Sae-young, wrote to me, lamenting the present scenario, “Nowadays, madness has grow to be frequent sense, hypocrisy has grow to be a advantage, and the non-public vendetta has grow to be ‘justice.’ Furthermore, faux information has grow to be reality, ignorance has grow to be mind, and demagogy has grow to be patriotism. In the meantime, individuals detest and antagonize one another, growl at and chunk each other. Alas! People have become animals nowadays and we at the moment are dwelling within the animal kingdom.”

One other Korean mental Cha Yun, Chairman of Chayun Public Relations, too, deplored the political local weather of Korea and wrote to me currently, “At South Korea’s Nationwide Meeting, we will hear and see our legislators’ yelling, swearing, deriding, insulting and slandering daily. As a substitute of frequent sense, decency and rationality, solely animal intuition to kill and survive is predominant.”

Had it not been for the agitation of politicians, atypical individuals may have lived serenely and fortunately, caring about one another. But, we can not dwell in a world with out politicians. We can not abolish the election system, both, although it has its personal flaws.

Nonetheless, nonetheless, we should always attempt onerous to revive our lengthy misplaced humanity, integrity and decency. We aren’t animals, however people, in spite of everything.

Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul Nationwide College and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth School. The views expressed listed below are the author’s personal. — Ed.