Man's Inhumanity to Man

Watching Rambo, a movie made in 2008, a continuation of the saga started years ago in First Blood. On the surface John Rambo is a killer pure and simple.  Deeper he's more, a philosopher, a man that hates killing and the necessity of killing. Like all movies and most books, there is truth here, but you have to look beyond, or behind the drama to find it.  As I said he hates the killing, but believes that it's the only way to resolve a problem and for that reason always returns to killing.  In the end the other path, not killing, finding another way, is too difficult and so he kills. Which isn't to say the challenges, the evils, the bad guys don't deserve to be killed. In this movie one scene is the Thai military, destroying a village killing or capturing everyone in sight, including American missionaries. Later scenes have them raping, beating, and killing the captives. It would be easy to say, yeah but it's a movie, it's not real. The truth unfortunately is that bad as these scenes are, inhumane as they are, evil as they are, they're nothing to the reality of what goes on somewhere in the world every minute of every day of every year, since humanity began.
The evil that is depicted exists in all of us, to a greater or lesser degree. It doesn't matter how tame or milquetoast you appear, under the right circumstances you're capable of the evil of inhumanity. Some would say yes, but Rambo is saving those being preyed on by the bad guys, he's a good guy.  Well, maybe the bad guys don't think so. It's kind of like we all think our military are the good guys, going all over the world killing the bad guys. But clearly millions throughout the world see them, and us, as the evil, seeking to dominate the world and force our way of life on them. Evil or good depends purely on context.
I know I can relate, because as a kid I had the same feelings that drove Rambo to become a killer, and as I grew older I, like him, realized how wrong it is and unlike him, I didn't just try to turn my back on, or sublimate those feelings, but began a search that's still going on for a way to elevate myself above them. The truth is that I, like most, if not all of us, fight every day not to fall back. I know that if I ever found the expletive deleated that stole my truck, and all my things, or if someone ever hurt someone I love, my first impulse would be to take a knife and... Well you get the idea, to paraphrase a character in another movie, I'd keep him alive for two weeks, if I had to give him blood transfusions.  I like to think I'm better than that, but I'm not and under the right circumstances, any one of you would do the same.
Based on what I've learned all life is vibratory, from mineral which we assume has the lowest vibrations, on to man which we assume has the highest, in this world. As we evolve, our vibratory rate increases until we no longer can remain in this world or level and we start over in the next.  The difference between say someone like Mother Theresa or Ghandi, near saints and someone like Rambo, is that their vibrations are higher than his and they're more evolved. The difference between Rambo, and the bad guys are that he, like us, has started to evolve realizing that something is wrong, not necessarily knowing what, and he's started to seek the answer. The problem is that at the slightest excuse he returns to the old, known, reactions.
Inhumanity whether to man or anything else, is something that is part of us as humans. Why? I don't have a clue. You'd think that our first reaction would be to help, not to hurt. Which is true with some of us, but with too many it's not. This is shown by the wars, and crimes that go on, and have gone on from time immemorial.  As long as there've been people there's been murder, torture, and other forms of inhumanity.

Lee Murray