to live a full life just don't kill anyone.

A very nice young lady asked a question of me the other day.

"Why do we do things we know are bad for us?"

It is a very simple question with no hidden meaning or wherefores and futhermores strewn through the text.

No this is one sentence is a simple question which would take volumes to answer.

I'll put this in a personal context, I have been told for years that this is bad for my health and I have had friends pass away from cancer and I have seen the effects of emphysema on an aging body yet I still smoke!

Why do I smoke cigarettes?

The easiest answer and a true one is that I lack the will to quit.

This easy answer brings us to a few questions, am I an idiot, mentally incapacitated to the point where reality and logic have flown out the window?

Can free will have a negative effect on the human organism?

Why is there a dichotomy in the will, everyone to a degree has it so why do some inherently have what I would call well balanced lives when there are others like myself who are in the flotsam of humanity drifting endlessly in the fluid of time, intelligent yet drowning from stupidity.

I am addicted to cigarettes, I say that rather than nicotine because I am sure the additives put into tobacco make the physical addiction all the worse, this addiction is hard yet you'd think I could internalize the idea of my betterment through abstinence and it would be over with.

I remember a line from some mid 80's movie where this psychiatrist says that in the world there a people who are smokers and people who aren't, the smokers have tried non-smoking and don't like it and the non-smokers vice versa. The point is that you have to look deep inside and find out if you are non smoker material if not then try as best you can and deal with the fact that you are a smoker. That seems a bit simplistic but as far as addictions are concerned it might be a sensible route for some of us.

So addictions are one thing that can be or not be bad. Of course we have to define bad.

Before we do though lets change the focus a bit.

Lets pick something which 99 percent of us abhor. Murder and mayhem!

Lets face it life would be less stressful if we could pull out a pair of 9's at even the slightest sign of an altercation or even a bad untoward experience. Pop the offending individual who took the parking spot that you had your fat ass eye on and then just resume shopping at WalEWorld.

What keeps us from doing just that, what keeps us from reverting to the marauding hordes of yesteryear raping and pillaging as we please.

Did something change in the brain?

If we go back to Hammurabi's day and try too figure out WTF was going on we get lost in too many what if's and I think's. All we have in the way of figuring out the method of crowd control best liked by the rulers of the day is to read the laws of Hammurabi.

This is beyond dealing with the habitual fornicator or local thug who brawls, this was common law that was meant to deal with the important issues of property and finance, oh yeah and taxes.

If we go back earlier than this law maker and I mean a fair bit earlier to when the brown but not black skinned people settled in the fertile crescent they did something that the hunter gathers did not do often and that was stop. Now from what I gather these people were nomadic herdsman which would bring up a scene something like this. "Hey Jaushiputu I have figured out that we can grow feed for our animals, We don't have to walk for endless miles to graze our livestock and this grain stuff is pretty tasty when you cook the shit. WTF were we thinking eating it raw." Jaushiputu looks over at his fellow herdsman with a look of puzzlement. "WTF do u mean homey, NOT walk like you are all to good for the walking thing. Listen brother we have always walked around and I think we will keep walking. Walking with our goats and our bitches all over the place while you set up the first Hood. FU Rastbishda I'm outta here."

A while later Jaushiputu's kids decides that rather than shuffling goats all over hells half acre he'll spend his time making weapons and he'll go and just take what he needs for his goats. Then he figured why should he even bother with goats when he could just walk into Rastbishda's hood and boost what ever he needed to survive.

Not very nice of him.

Now farming in North America is pretty easy in that you have pretty much one growing season so you have time in the winter to do stuff....like figure out the best method of defending ones self from the gangs ready to plunder the result of your hard work.

The farmers of the crescent had little time to mount a defense that was effective and the most effective is being trained in the black art of fighting. An enterprising gangster thought it would be nice to have a crib in a nice hood where the bitches and ho's are easier to find, don't have to ride those stinking horses all the time. so he struck a deal with the ancestors of Rastbishda and they gave him food, shelter and his pick of the women. In return he and his posse would cap anybody's ass if they tried to attack the farmers.

This is where our modern society started or at least from the data we have it is.

I wonder if like in the bible we had two types of people one who is good and one who is somewhat underhanded and prone to violence. Has this always been?

We know there is inherent good within the human species, is the apparent bad a symptom of something or is it inherent also?

Looking at most religions and going by the insights provided I would say yes good and bad have co-existed within our selves but this view gives mucho power to the folks who want to have you follow a "moral" path.

In the end we have, whether by a divine decree or by simple science, the ability to make choices. We make choices that are bad for us sometimes but we have rational thought and it keeps us from killing each other or in other words making even worse life choices.

For clarity of spirit take the moral high road, to live a full life just don't kill anyone.