What to save...

There is a dark thought that enters into the mind occasionally. The truth of the matter is that although we are all equal, we are not all equally useful. In various thought experiments, we all have our own notions of what and who needs to be preserved. I recall a group of 30 young men whom would readily cut all funding to the National Endowment for the Arts. Various debates have gone on recently regarding where are priorities lie.

As with anything, nothing is cut and dry. There is simply no boon or drain on society. There is a strange ecosystem. The man or woman on the street will effect many lives during their time here. The birth and development of Einstein, Gandhi, Dr. King, the Kennedy empire, etc. were all a sequence of events involving billions of people. We could not plan it. If we removed things from the equation, the end result may not be the same. The "good" and the "bad" all combine to create what we know.

Our planet is not a dead rock. Although it can have awful consequences, geological activity is necessary. If were able to stop it, the result would be catastrophic. If we tried to remove all the things we considered unnecessary we would cease to grow. Imagine humans that were uninspired by art. Imagine a world where we shut off the lights. Imagine a world without recorded information. Imagine a world where progress in all its forms is halted.

There was such a world. We did leave it. It was a world where any random individual with a weapon could take over at any time. It was a world where meeting another group of people most often meant bloodshed. It was a world where only the strong survived. It was a world where we removed anything we didn't agree with.

It was a rocky path and perhaps there were other ways to get here, but we are here and we got here by deciding that we all have the right to be here. That all things have an importance.

So, at the moment when the dark thought crosses your mind. At the moment when you imagine fighting for resources. At the moment you look on a fellow human as negatively effecting your life, imagine the pinpoint connections in the web. If we look past some odd conception of fairness, we can see that we are changed by those negative effects. These changes can be positive. They can inspire confrontation. They can inspire their opposite. Even if you find no redeeming value in an individual, you must imagine how their life might have effected others.

And so, we have to save it all. We can't predict how it turns out. The resources are not nearly as limited as we pretend. We can save it all. Perhaps, that's the problem. We don't want to save it all. We see an opportunity to negatively impact our "enemies" or "competitors".

We are still so young. We have no enemies. We have no competitors. Our gain and loss is our own. We are simply humans interacting with one another. Shows of strength to gain status is all that is left to us. We have become masterful at making these shows of strength as bloody as possible, but that is all they are.

And so, flex if you wish. Grunt and throw things. But know that we have already won. That you are my brother or my sister. I might not see you as my equal, but I respect you. We all have our role. Forgive me my dark thoughts. Feel free to have your own.