Good at heart?

Gordon Brown, current Prime Minister of the UK, recently stated that the massive undertaking that commenced on D-day, June 6, 1944, shows that man is good at heart, capable of selfless endeavours for the greater good. Please, Mr. Brown, has history taught you nothing?

WW2 was a terrifying chain of events that was set in motion by a horrendous brute by the name of Adolf Hitler. His attack on Poland, September 1, 1939, would eventually lead to the mind-boggling loss of some 50 million lives. But Hitler was, arguably, the exception, being abnormally evil. Or wasn't he? Certainly, he was bad enough. And if you compare your own obscure deeds to his highly publicized crimes, you'll definitely come out on top, won't you? If Hitler is the definition of evil, then - by all counts - you and I are quite decent and respectable people, judging by the Good Book. Right?

I'M NOT THAT BAD, AM I?

Wrong. Most people inhabiting the surface of this planet would never dream of killing another person, although a disturbing number of people seem to think that extramarital flings may even be good to your relationship (Norwegian poll taken a year or so ago). And telling a fib every now and then to save your neck cannot be that wrong, if the other person never learns of your attempt to cover up your own - shall we say - mishaps?

Because after all, the existence of such great people like Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Marie Curie and Mahatma Gandhi surely proves that humankind has also contributed to the spread and advancement of science and civilization. And we most definitely cannot be that degraded if the efforts of such illustrious minds have entailed that hundreds of thousands, or even millions, are alive today that wouldn't have been breathing were it not been for these altruists?

OOOPS, I DID IT AGAIN!

Yes, we're capable of the most admirable of feats and good deeds, but an honest appraisal of the human heart cannot lead you to the affirmative conclusion that we are good at heart. You see, none of us go through life without lying at least once. None of us while away our days without at a given point in time entertaining fleeting sexual fantasies involving someone other than our spouses,

A surprisingly large number of people are willing to resort to cheating, or deception, to further their own ends at the expense of somebody else, . And most of us quite comfortably close our hearts and minds to the abject poverty so rampant in the megacities of Africa and Latin America, quite succesfully kidding ourselves into believing that the destitute are always to blame for their own miseries.

ROTTEN TO THE CORE

Well, you may retort, still I'm not a bad person at heart. Sorry to disturb your peace, friend, but the Good Book uneqivocally states that our human nature is degraded behind our more or less civilised exteriors. We miss the mark, we fail to live up to God's superior standards, so often that we should, by now, have concluded that we are infected by that generational virus called sin.

Gordon Brown spoke against better judgment, or perhaps he just voiced our perennial ambition to improve on humanity: Adam 2.0, so to speak. There's no idea trying. If we have spent thousands of years massacring, starving, raping, cheating, lying, hating, it's not because our brains cannot come up with anything better to do. It's because of this incurable defect in what we're made of.

Oh yes, there's hope. But not in self-effort or therapies that will polish your manners. More about that soon.