When I was very little, maybe four or five, I read the children's version of the greek mythologies, and quickly the greek gods became my favorite gods.
And I decided that if I was going to believe in a God, I would prefer to believe in those.
I think I named my first pet, Hermes, after the greek messenger God, who was also the God of thieves and lawyers.
The thing I loved about the greek gods were that they were extra human.
They were gods, they were immortal and all of that, but they had all of the characteristics and all the foibles of human beings.
They would get angry, they would get jealous, they would cheat, they would steal, they would lie.
There was this notion of this is all somehow wonderful, wonderful, in part because it just is.
It's inescapable.
We can be better.
We can have our better days, our worst days.
We can have our better representatives of our species.
Our worst representatives of our species.
But the point is, is that we are all of these things.
We have to, on some level, accept that, not just accept it as well.
I guess this is, unfortunately, the way it is, but maybe it's part of the thing itself.
The pyramids had a body count.
Cathedrals have a body count.
In our aspirations towards a kind of magnificence, towards a kind of transcendence of ourselves, we also excel in hurting people.
From luminary media, you're listening to love and radio.
I'm Nick van der Kolk.