Shadow Of Apes
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all”- W. Shakespeare
As far as I can tell, conscience is a relatively new feature of life on earth. I am not sure that everything serves a purpose, as such, but it seems fairly clear to me that conscience serves as some sort of instinctive restraint upon beings which have the capacity to do great harm. There seems to be a very practical wisdom to endowing human beings with a conscience; of whispering the proper set of rules to a being that would not know how to behave otherwise. Conscience keeps the threat on a leash and, I can only surmise that on the leash we will stay, until we learn the proper rules for ourselves. It is not good to be kept on A leash. It makes us fearful things, and fearful things are merely the shadow of the potential of what they could become.
Some people don’t believe in “right and wrong”, but for beings with the capacity to end all life on earth, right and wrong are real things. Only if and when we learn right from wrong will we ever be free from the enemy within. Until then we will remain ignorant and confused, powerful but contained.
I don’t know why “nature” gave us power before giving us the wisdom to use our power wisely, but I can guess that that is simply how wisdom grows, from the seed of potential, and by trial and error. There is little doubt in my mind that…
