Have you ever noticed how, whenever you watch or read about the news, there is always something there about war, crime, or some other kind of conflict that is going on between people? And how all too often, the same people who commit crimes and seem to relish conflict turn around and mention something about “God”, or end up desperately crying to their “God” when they are dying or are being made to face the consequences of their actions?
To me, this is a very interesting irony. In the competitive “dog-eat-dog rat race” that many of us are caught up in as we go through life, we often seem to let our more “animal survival instincts” get the best of us. But oddly enough, it seems that when people are nearing the end of their time here on earth (in other words, when they’re dying), then they turn around and start crying to their “God”.
I guess the animal instincts deep within us help us to survive in this world, and the almost universal tendency to cry to some “god” in the final moments of life on earth serve to hopefully gain us entry to a better place in the “next world”, if there is one…
This ironic tendency of human nature seems to bring up the often asked question – Are we ultimately the product of Evolution (and hence just another species of animal), or were we created by some kind of “God”? OK, I know that this can be argued and debated pretty much until we end up going extinct, but still, sometimes I’m amazed at how much like animals we behave when we are in conflict, and yet how desperately people often end up crying to their “God” when they are dying.
I tend to call this the “Survival Paradox”…
The Survival Paradox
And it goes something like this:
Like the animals that they evolved from, human beings love to fight…
Like the Animals that they Evolved from, Human Beings love to Fight...
…And yet when they’re dying, then they start crying to their “God”.
...And yet when they're Dying, then they start Crying to their "God".
All in all, it’s a very intriguing part of the enigmatic characteristic of Human Nature…
NOTES: Someone once asked me why I use “Bird Characters” in these kinds of contexts, rather than “Human Characters”. Actually, there are a number of reasons. For one, it seems to cause the “ethos” of the article to lean more to the “humorous” side, rather than the “morbid” side. The use of the bird characters gives it a kind of silliness due to the sense of nonsense involved; whereas, if I used human characters here, I think people would be more likely to put themselves in the place of the character, and may get thus more of a morbid kind of feeling as a result. At this stage, I still want to keep things a little bit on the “light” side, even though the subject being dealt with is actually more on the heavy side.
The bird characters actually represent “Human Nature”, which in my opinion is built upon “animal nature”.
(Wanna see some other posts involving bird characters? Click Here or Here .)
INTERCONTEXTING: You might have noticed that there are little icons in the corners of the frames that surround the images:
The Survival Paradox
The central image within each frame is made by combining these little icons in context to form larger pictures…
(You can see more stuff on Intercontexting in the Intercontexting category of this website.)