Journeyman Philosopher

Recently I was made aware of a quote by the Dalai Lama which I thought was quite interesting. It follows:

“We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.”

Found in Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

This is a very insightful view and perhaps one of the reasons I value the Dalai Lama so much. He does make an interesting point, however at the same time we really wonder if its 100% true. There has always been a majority of hate, however it was aimed at other peoples be it American vs Russia, China vs Japan, Japan vs Korea, etc etc. Many of the reasons these peoples didn’t manage to kill each other was because of the impracticality of the travel due to the distance between the nations, or even the sheer impracticality of the whole enterprise.

In my own opinion I think there is much more love and compassion, its just the hates alot louder.

So which is it: is this the case, or do we breed in order to destroy others?

 What do you think?