The fact that humans are hardwired to come together out of the necessity to satisfy their most basic biological needs and thus ensure their survival, should by no means negate, or prevent us from enjoying the occasional byproduct and happy accident of the aforementioned deterministic process: love and friendship.
It is more or less the same argument when it comes to science vs. the humanities. Without science we cannot live, and yet without the arts life's not worth living.
It is no use complaining how we are merely nature's puppets, when we have been given the chance to transcend our animality through knowledge, and have let it go with a defeatist resignation.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war, but not with one another. The greatest battle is against ourselves. Everyday we fight against our nature, against our own need to need. And most days we lose and it kills us from the inside.
It is hard to believe in virtue, and even try to cultivate it when your neighbour tramples over its flowers. And it is hard to love yourself or respect anyone that loves you for what you are, when you are as horrible as the neighbour who does so. How can one not hate his neighbour, when he reminds him so much of the self he's grown to loathe and fight against every single day?
It takes persistence, and madness, for only a fool would resist the inevitable. And yet I urge you, to cling to your virtue, and the ideas that keep you alive. Rise above your destiny, by refusing to settle for the script they have written for you.
Make use of your greatest power, to "persevere in that which exceeds your perseverance", and acknowledge your greatest limitation that is your identity, otherwise known as the role to which you have been assigned within this parody of a lifetime.
Do not cling to the idea of who you are, for it is disgraceful to the person you could have been. Do not cling to the concept of self, for that is merely the neighbour you must rid yourself off. Resist it.
Only then can love and friendship take seeds, among equals who have already gotten over themselves, creations as they were of a rotten society that preaches prostitution and its exploitation, and calls it a life worth living. When we treat, and perceive one another as no better than cattle, how can we expect them not to return the favour?
Change takes honesty, and then forgiveness, for we must first forgive what we have become.
I love the animal that I have become
Great article!