In balance with this life

I cannot but help seeing humanity as being permanently poised - it is our dual nature that makes us human. On one hand bestial and cruel, incapable of collective reason, permanently terrified, aggressive - and on the other seeing, perceiving, creating secret harmonies, cohering, constructing: eminently capable for progress and reason and art. If we would one day be able to choose the one or would irrevocably revert to the other, we would seize being human. This is very clear, but it also makes history a prison as I have argued here. We cannot escape our two natures or the fact that it actually is a single nature. Thus history, really, really, is not only a crime but a punishment for one. And that is why we should hope that we would one day be able to end it.