One Less Predator

Man’s most fundamental and earnest desire is to live. He will go to great lengths to survive. For primitive man, survival required a full day’s work and more. Here he was, somewhere on the surface of an undevel-oped and unforgiving planet, faced with the enormous and relentless challenge of perpetuat-ing his existence.

Let’s examine some of the basic things he needed in order to sustain himself beyond a few days, which, by the way, is what we call security, another of man’s fundamental interests.

First he needed a reliable and plentiful source of water and food. Life, he knew, was unsustainable where these necessities were beyond his reach. His first task, therefore, was to locate an area where these essentials were reasonably accessible to him and where he was free to acquire them without great difficulty or undue interference. After all, even back then there were only 24 hours in a day. If he couldn’t gather up each day what he needed to support himself for a day, he was going to run into trouble.

Upon finding a place suitable to his needs, his next order of business was to erect a shelter. Man is simply not equipped to withstand the elements without some form of protection. After venturing out each day to secure a livelihood, he needed a safe and comfortable place to come back to--a place where he could rest and recuperate so he could go out the following day and do it all over again.

And finally, his long-term survival depended upon having reliable weapons and other implements so he would have a fighting chance in his daily quest to acquire food and other indispensable items. It is a fact of nature that the animals he was seeking for nourishment also wanted to live and, therefore, did not make themselves readily available to him. Additionally, he needed weapons for protection against predators, both animal and human, who also were fiercely committed to their own daily struggle for survival.

Once he had these basics tenuously in place, the primitive man enjoyed some level of stability in his life, and he felt a little less anxious about his survival. Nevertheless, he could never totally relax, for now he was faced with the endless challenge of holding on to what he had worked so diligently to acquire--an area in which to work and live, some essential tools and weapons, and his own home. Through brains, initiative, courage and determination he had carved out for himself a place upon God’s green earth. It was his because he found it, secured it, and drew his livelihood from it. But it was only his so long as he could hang on to it. And the ways in which it could be lost were almost endless.

In this way modern man differs very little from primitive man, with one salient exception: Primitive man had one less predator to contend with. He had no federal government plotting feverishly and doggedly to rob him of his livelihood and undermine his security.

“Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.” ~Ogden Nash