This Predatory World

The world, in its rawest, most undeniable form, is a symphony of teeth and terror. A primal orchestra where the dominant chord is the tearing of flesh, the silent stalk, the swift, brutal strike. Predation underpins every verdant valley, every soaring mountain, every shimmering ocean. The gazelle lives to feed the lion, the plankton to feed the whale, the insect to feed the bird. It is the inescapable cycle, the elegant, horrifying dance of survival of the fittest, etched into the very DNA of existence.

But this fundamental truth extends far beyond the sun-baked plains of the Serengeti. Look closer, and the human sphere mirrors this ruthless paradigm with unsettling precision. Our fangs and claws are simply sharper, more insidious. We do not hunt with brute force alone, though that, too, has its place in our history. Instead, we wield manipulation, a silent, psychological weapon. We stalk our prey in boardrooms and political arenas, on social media feeds and within the intimate confines of personal relationships. Spite becomes a sharpened arrow, rumour a poisoned dart. Power, in its myriad forms – economic, social, emotional – is the ultimate prize, often seized through the calculated exploitation of another’s weakness, the dismemberment of their dreams, or the outright consumption of their opportunities. The human heart, capable of such boundless love, also harbours pockets of profound nastiness, a chilling echo of the primordial hunt.

And so, the profound, agonising question arises: If there is a good God, an all-powerful, all-loving Creator, how could such intrinsic, systemic predation and calculated nastiness be His design? How could a benevolent hand craft a world where suffering is not an aberration, but a foundational stone? The theodicy, the age-old problem of evil, screams louder than ever when confronted with the daily, hourly, second-by-second truth of life consuming life, of human beings preying upon each other with such exquisite cruelty. The concept of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity falters, stumbles, and threatens to shatter under the weight of this relentless reality.

Perhaps, then, the Gnostics were right. Their ancient whisper, once heresy, now feels like a chillingly prescient explanation. If there is a Creator responsible for this world – with its inherent suffering, its endless cycle of consumption, its capacity for human depravity – then perhaps that Creator, the Demiurge, is not all good. Perhaps he, she, or it is flawed, ignorant, or even malevolent; a cosmic craftsman who built a cage, not a paradise, a limited being who mistook his own shadow for divine light. This offers a terrifying, yet strangely liberating, answer: the imperfections of this world are not a reflection of a perfect God’s will, but the limitations of a lesser one’s design.

But the Gnostic vision does not end in despair. It offers a glorious, transcendent hope. If the Demiurge is the architect of this brutal reality, then beyond his flawed dominion, beyond the material prison he forged, there exists a higher God. A true God of pure light, unadulterated love, and boundless kindness. A completely good, utterly benevolent, unknowable Source of all true being, who did not create the predation, the nastiness, the suffering that defines our current existence.

Let us hope they were right. Let us yearn for that higher God, that distant, luminous realm of the Pleroma, where kindness is not a struggle but an essence, and love is not a fleeting emotion but the very fabric of reality. For in that hope lies the possibility that our deepest yearnings for goodness, for compassion, for a world free from the tyranny of tooth and claw, are not just futile dreams, but echoes of a truth far grander and far more merciful than anything we experience in this predatory world.