We Destructive Humans

Live Science yesterday had a post titled: Understanding the 10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors. While not an in-depth look at them, it is interesting to see what we do to ourselves as a species. As the article points out:

Compared with most animals, we humans engage in a host of behaviors that are destructive to our own kind and to ourselves. We lie, cheat and steal, carve ornamentations into our own bodies, stress out and kill ourselves, and of course kill others. Science has provided much insight into why an intelligent species seems so nasty, spiteful, self-destructive and hurtful.

So sad, but so true. The behaviors range from gossip to stressing out to bullying to clinging to bad habits to craving violence. It includes the ancient but oh so postModern trend of tattoos.

Take for example the understanding of why we cling to bad habits:

-- Innate human defiance

-- Need for social acceptance

-- Inability to truly understand the nature of risk

-- Individualistic view of the world and the ability to rationalize unhealthy habits

-- Genetic predisposition to addiction

People tend to justify bad habits, she says, by noting exceptions to known statistics, such as: "It hasn't hurt me yet," or, "My grandmother smoked all her life and lived to be 90."

Sure sounds familiar to this addictions counselor. But there is also this about tattoos (actually all cosmetic procedures including nip and tuck. Didn't see that as part of the same thing until I read this):

Perhaps the strongest motivations nowadays are to be beautiful, however one might define that, or simply to fit in with a particular group.

Oh, so simple. No wonder we miss it. But for me this one is the most telling in human history- craving violence:

Many researchers believe violence in humans is an evolved tendency that helped with survival.

"Aggressive behavior has evolved in species in which it increases an individual's survival or reproduction, and this depends on the specific environmental, social, reproductive, and historical circumstances of a species. Humans certainly rank among the most violent of species," says biologist David Carrier of the University of Utah.

Hurting ourselves or hurting others seems to be something we humans will find it difficult to stop doing. Whether it be politics, war, or self-change we can be a strange breed indeed.