A paradise of peace and harmony is an unnatural state and impossible in the real world. As Isaiah once prophesied (Isaiah 11:6-9),

The wolf will live with the lamb.
The leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together.
And a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den.
And the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all of my holy mountain.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

The wolf will never let the lamb in peace, nor will the cow and the bear share a meal. It is not in their nature to do so. Despite our efforts to achieve a utopian society, it still eludes us. We have the means to give everyone an acceptable standard of living, but somehow we keep on fighting and fail to make Paradise a reality. It is in our nature.

The struggle for life in nature is brutal and chaotic. In nature, cells cooperate in organisms to compete with other cells. Organisms, as you might know, are plants and animals, and humans are animals. And they cooperate with others to compete with other groups of organisms. As organisms compete, the strongest or most well-adapted survive.

There is a balance in nature, as there is in a market. If the fox preys on the rabbit, the fastest rabbits and the smartest foxes survive. When there is a surplus of rabbits, foxes can catch them and eat them; foxes multiply and eat more rabbits, and the surplus turns into a deficit, and foxes die off.

It is a brutal process in which rabbits get eaten, and foxes starve. The introduction of a new species, such as a viral disease that kills off rabbits, can change the balance. That indeed happened with the help of human interventions. The foxes, being smart animals, adapted and sought other sources of food, often not as speedy as the rabbit.

In this way, the rabbit’s demise sealed the fate of other animals, such as the Nijverdal grouse, which went extinct. It would have been possible to preserve the grouse by shooting foxes. That would create a paradise for the grouse, an unnatural order, so a park rather than nature. Indeed, a Paradise is like a park rather than nature unhinged.

Foreign species can disrupt the balance of nature. Many die off, but some thrive, replacing native species and becoming pests. Humans are the most disruptive species, murdering countless animals and plants to create living space for themselves.

It is a matter of competitive advantage. Humans took over because they could, and their genes, rather than some command in the Bible, drove them to exploit their environments and multiply their numbers. The spread of humans resembles the spread of pests.

When Europeans gained a competitive advantage over others, their genes multiplied and they spread across the world, thereby usurping others’ land. Later, after they had created a paradise for themselves, others came to their lands. While Westerners were busy maximising their utility, the immigrants’ genes took advantage of the situation.

Westerners require spacious housing and perfect spouses and may forego having children to lead a good life, causing their numbers dwindle. Immigrants may settle for small spaces and simple lifestyles, have arranged marriages or don’t marry at all and just have sex and babies. In this way, descendants of immigrants gradually replace the native population.

In both cases, relative advantages and disadvantages disturb the balance. You can compare both situations to the development of a pest. In both cases, it promotes unease among the disadvantaged group, making them feel overrun. The competition between genes drives these feelings. Nature doesn’t care who lives in your country in the future.

We imagine orders and base them on myths. Within these orders, institutions such as laws, police, and courts regulate our affairs peacefully. These orders compete with each other, so the Law of the Jungle still applies. Orders change over time. If they don’t adapt to changing circumstances, they will crumble.

Paradise, in the Hegelian sense, is that social justice causes have run their course, and that everyone is fundamentally equal. It is a world without bigotry, including racism, misogyny and hatred of LGBTQ people. We are xenophobic creatures, so it goes against our inner nature, but culture can go a long way in overcoming our inner urges.

Permanent peace is possible if everyone lives under a single order, shares a common set of values, norms, and rules, and agrees to a social contract to end the competition. It must be a stable situation as if time has stopped. That only happens in fairy tales. Isaiah already said so, ‘For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.’