Don't kill people

Some things are complicated. This isn't.

There is no reason to kill apart from self-defence. Full stop. Whatever justification you think you have means exactly nothing.

This is a pitifully simple dictum, and yet it proves elusive on even a casual survey of the Google News homepage. Headlines like;

Ivory Coast: UN warns attack could reignite civil war

Teenager shot dead by gang

Two Christians killed in wave of Baghdad bombings

I am in general optimistic for us, as I have said before, but there are times when I feel like disowning my species. Surely, I think, I can't be cut from the same genetic stock as those who maim and slaughter like it's the norm? I know I am not alone in this.

The human mind, as a rule, is fickle and easily manipulated. As much as we would love to believe that our mind is a temple which no other may enter, it really isn't true. Ideology, social pressures and pathology can overcome even the most deep-seated aversions and principles. Perhaps if more people were aware of how easily they can be controlled they would be more equipped to fight against it.

Regardless of what we might like to believe, us humans are quite fragile organisms. A bullet, a stab wound, a particularly nasty fall or a particularly violent infection is all it takes to end us. All the more reason to take extra care.

It isn't naive to cherish life.

Love

I don't believe in love at first sight.

Allow me to clarify. I know that you can see someone for the first time, and feel they're special. It's happened many times to me. It's just your evolutionary history talking, subconsciously evaluating their appearance and their mannerisms, but what does it matter? So what if you're programmed to feel this way about certain kinds of people? It does nothing to undermine the feeling itself.

When it happens, I know that my brain is being gently bathed in dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, and that's what makes me feel this way. But I don't care.

I do believe that the feeling grows over time - maturing from infatuation into love. Oxytocin is a powerful thing. With experience, you get closer. You find out more about the other person. They find out more about you. You share new experiences. You get closer in each others' memories. The times before you met get blurrier. A neurochemical connection is forged between the two, courtesy of your biology. After time enough, you don't remember and can't imagine life without them.

I don't think there's one person out there for everyone. I think that you meet a candidate, and then you have a chance to make them yours, just as they make you theirs. Love is a thing best seen with hindsight, not foresight. I guess what I'm saying is I don't believe in love at first sight, but I do believe in true love.

You start with an infatuation, picked out by your biological programming, and from there you're in the driver's seat.

Isn't it beautiful that our evolution is capable of producing something so sublime and intricately brilliant? If if wasn't an undirected force of nature, I'd thank it.