Symbiosis sometimes looks like viciousness. Motivation is sometimes realized through the mechanisms of hunger and fear, violence and competition. Energy must be expended—transferred—and pressure exerted to maintain a cycle's flow. This is sometimes Nature's way. But we must guard against understanding Nature's harsh necessities as cruelty, as that casts us in the misguided role of the Overseers; and we must guard with a heightened vigilance against scapegoating our elective and premeditative human capacity for baseness and cruelty as manifestations of Nature beyond our control, as that wrongly absolves us of culpability for our Selves and our actions.
