Quiet Ones

Another rampage at a public school. More children dead. A child with unknown motives in custody. A community, and a nation, asking "Why?" The incessant and familiar refrain: "He was quiet."

And as the old saw goes: it's always the quiet ones.

Why? Why was he "quiet?" Quiet compared to what? Was he mute? Did he not raise his hand in class? Did he not talk about his home life, or school, or girls, or football? One girl said: "He didn't speak up for himself much." Why would he have to?

We know what went on here, even if we don't know. Here was a boy who felt he had to deal with whatever was troubling him by exacting revenge in the most violent fashion. He had a purpose, he had a plan, and we may never know either with certainty, but we do know what he did, and his innocence is assured by the Constitution but his guilt is written in blood on a cafeteria floor.

What happened? We know. We know in our hearts, in our minds, in the distant and dim recesses of our memory. We remember high school. We remember cliques. We remember who was popular and who wasn't. We remember being picked on. We remember the unremitting degradation at the hands of and through the words of others. We remember going home to find solace, only to be cast into more turmoil of an even more personal nature. We remember going to a room, closing a door, trying to shut it all out, wishing the pain and humiliation would magically abate, blown away as dust in the gale.

We have felt the pain, the sorrow, the lamentation of another day in those "hallowed" halls, wherein torment lies. We have been witness to it, perpetrator of it, or victim, but we know it. The artificial social environment that is the American high school is a well-oiled machine, grinding up and spitting out children on the doorstep of adulthood, with the same rigorous machinations for children now as existed back when we, too, ambulated among the lockers and classrooms. Names, faces, and sneakers may change, but there is always the undercurrent of "Us" versus "Them" that clings to every surface, that adheres to every nascent Freshman soul, and permeates the atmosphere like a sickly and awkward fog. The subdivisions are artificial, highly dubious, and maintained with a Machiavellian tenacity that survives the generations, not unlike the spore of a virulent plague.

The meaning of Chardon, Ohio is as clear to us as day, but as impenetrable to the popularity-obsessed culture in which we reside as the blackest, Moon-less night. We know in our heads what happened, but our minds will not accept the reality of the situation, preferring pat answers and off-the-cuff observations to truth. We refuse to acknowledge that far from the responsibility of the young man who did the killing, each and every one of us had a hand in this moment, where we could not act or where we tacitly supported those concepts that led to a moment of panic and ultimately, death. We have built the society that glorifies blood, that pampers the popular, that places looks above smarts, and that continues to perpetuate stereotypes that have no business being part of our culture. We give implicit approval to a society that speaks volumes on its problems, but is silent on solutions.

This boy will face his punishment and serve his sentence, both within and without. He will be condemned by our nation, as much as he was condemned to a life that led to these circumstances by that self-same nation, where the well-known problems of our society are left to run riot while we tune in our favorite show on the television, the one where the problems are always solved, or at least, mitigated. We pull down the blinds and peer at our screens, content to live in our world vicariously, while outside the door, poverty, malnutrition, poor education, and the many ills of society wander loose, to collect the souls of the unwanted and the unloved. This moment, like Columbine before it, is the warning; let us pray it does not take another such moment to rouse us from our insularity. Our youth cannot afford the cost.

Societal Myopia

There is a movement afoot – and when is there not – to get the Ten Commandments placed in every courthouse in Georgia, as if the mere presence of this Biblical coda can somehow imbue all those who read them with the moral fiber they lacked previously. Strangely, these commandments have been around for centuries, but they do not seem to have made much of an impact despite the number of adherents to the faith from which they spring. It could be posited that these words contain no power, save where the individual who reads them chooses to incorporate them into their life as precepts to be followed. Other than that, they are simply relics of an ancient time, like hieroglyphs on an Egyptian tomb.

It would do no good, really, to go about putting such holy inscriptions on government edifices or government-supported public buildings, even were it not a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. For, to have any impact, these words would have to be seen, interpreted, and incorporated by those exposed to them, and they could be written on every wall and sidewalk and building, and have no greater affect than they do now, sequestered between the covers of a religious tome. Our society has developed myopia, a collective short-sightedness that does not allow us to see the true nature of the world around us, and therefore, we do not recognize what is put before us.

Greater Humanity

If it can be said that there is an overriding issue that drives the confluence of current events, from elections, to massacres, to revolutions, to the news we see on television or read on the Internet every day, it is that individuals or small groups feel the need to enforce their point of view on the rest of us. Terrorists wish to punish us for our perceived transgression of their beliefs. Politicians seek the glory of their party, by viciously attacking the other party while papering over their own faults. A lone gunman decides, for whatever reason, to alter political discourse by attempting to murder a Congresswoman and her staff. Hate mongers spew their bigotry on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Wall Street brokers push stocks to their limit, based on projection, rumor, and guesswork. The people of a nation tire of a corrupt government, and through off the yolk of their oppressors.

All these events, all these happenings, are united through that single thread: they are brought about because one group sets itself against another. The broader scope of humanity is never brought into play.

If I Were A Rich Man

If I were a rich man I would...

...become an unpaid teacher, to shape and mold future minds and help them become the best they can be.

...not allow any person in my town go to bed hungry.

...invest in companies with pro-social and pro-environment products/services.

...encourage people to become involved in local and state politics, to take back control from the machines and monied interests.

...start an organization dedicated to teaching girls that math, science, and engineering can be interesting and fun.

...contribute money directly to research organizations looking at means for curing cancer, AIDS, and autism, as well as other human maladies.

...provide funding to allow the continued exploration of the Solar System.

...give every African family a mosquito net.

...fund a legal service that would serve the interests of those who could not afford legal counsel but have need of it

...build several houses a month for needy families, mortgage-free, solar-paneled, and super-insulated.

...create jobs wherever and however I could.

...donate money to the United Nations to help fund its social programs.

...pay my taxes plus a little extra.

...not keep a penny more than I actually needed to.

If I were a rich man.

No Man's Land

To be a man in the modern age of humanity is to be subject to the same impulses, desires, and limitations as even our distant ancestors, save with one clear difference: we have the power to override the vagaries of our hormones and are encouraged to do so. Encouraged, but at the end of the day, sadly lacking in motivation or courage. It takes conviction to decide that the old patriarchal norms are no longer of substantive value, and that we must place our mantle of societal leadership upon the ground and allow all to have the opportunity to partake of it. We act as if it diminishes us somehow, instead of what it actually does, which is marking us as advanced and enlightened beings. To loose our grip on power that has been ours for so long is not a renunciation of all that we have accomplished, but only a broadening of the scope of possibilities that will make humanity stronger.

Burning Down The House

A house catches fire. A phone call is made. Within minutes, racing red machines blare a warning of their approach, and stop before the conflagration. Men and women leap from their trucks, clad in their heavy, fire-retardant armor, connect canvas hoses to bright brass connectors, and charge forward, aiming pressurized streams of water at the flames, intent on snuffing them out. Hopefully, no one remains inside at the mercy of the inferno, but if they do, these brave souls will battle heat and flame to pull them to safety. It is the ultimate act of selflessness, to give your life -- potentially -- for a stranger, to put yourself in harm's way, casting aside fear and the desire to flee, to rescue someone you do not know from the jaws of the malevolent beast.

Not more than a few in a thousand have the ability, the guts, and the selflessness, to do this. They become our heroes: firefighters, police officers, soldiers. They would risk life and limb, and not for consequential amounts of money, for they are not paid nearly as well as they should be, but because inside them is a commitment to their fellow citizens, to protect and to serve. They do what they do partly out of honor, but more out of a sense of duty.

Then how horrible must it be to know a fire burns, that lives may be threatened, and a family's life destroyed, and to be told to do nothing, because the family did not pay a fee? That is what happened recently in rural Tennessee. A family's home, set afire by the ill-considered burning of leaves, burns to the ground, because they did not pay a seventy-five dollar fee to the local township, a fee required to extend fire department services into the rural areas. The family forgot to pay the fee, and the result was the destruction of their life. The sad irony: when the fire threatened a neighbor's house, the fire department did respond, because they had paid the fee.

Now, having a fire department is not cheap. The equipment is specialized, the training of firefighters is extensive and on-going, and the maintenance of an effective firefighting force is intensive and expensive. Still, few would argue that letting a home burn down for lack of any firefighting force is a good thing; so how could it be that letting a house burn down when there is a fire company available is allowable or even acceptable? Couldn't a portion of tax revenue in the surrounding county be used to provide the service to rural homes? Did someone really think charging a fee was a good idea? What bureaucrat would let a home burn by quibbling over the payment of a fee?

That this was a shameful occurrence was bad enough; that people are making light of it in national media is worse. A family's home is destroyed, their pets are dead, their possessions gone, and they find themselves homeless, dependent on the kindness of others. What makes this a situation for mirth and offensive humor? Apparently, if you are Glenn Beck, champion of our nation's "honor," that it happened, and that it serves them right. Yes, apparently, if you don't pay your fee, you deserve to have your house burn down:

And it goes nowhere if you go onto “compassion, compassion, compassion, compassion” or well, “they should’ve put it out, what is the fire department for?” [...] If you don’t pay the 75 dollars then that hurts the fire department. They can’t use those resources, and you’d be sponging off your neighbor’s resources. [...] It’s important for America to have this debate. This is the kind of stuff that’s going to have to happen, we are going to have to have these kinds of things.

So, yes, the social contract, which is at the heart of organized society, that says despite our differences we shall live as one nation and obey all the same laws and rules, is nothing but a fabrication of "socialism," a desire for the poor and weak to "sponge" off their country. This is the "debate" that Glenn Beck wants to have.

Well, Mr. Beck, I will take you up on your challenge. I will have this debate with you, any time, any place. Because my reading of the Constitution, which makes the general welfare of the people a paramount priority, and my understanding of the social contract, which was the basis of so much of what would become our Constitution and the laws of our land, and the desire of our Founding Fathers to build a nation that ran through the good graces of its citizens, goes contrary to this idea that somehow services that benefit all American citizens are sponging. If anything, the rich in our country are sponging off the hard-working and dedicated employees of the companies that make them their fortunes. Still others are sponging off Americans by filling the airwaves with abject ignorance, petty nonsense, and unsupportable hypocrisy, but you wouldn't know anyone like that, would you, Mr. Beck.

For someone so concerned about the faith and honor of his country, Glenn Beck treats Americans as disposable commodities, nothing more than a cigarette butt to be ground under his heel, as he blathers on, filling the hearts and minds of the sycophantic with delusions and demagoguery. He is more than happy to sit atop his piles of cash, bemoaning the "socialism" he sees as rampant in this country, apparently unaware that the whole idea behind unity as a nation is the support of our fellow citizens. His claims of a need for restored faith fall on deaf ears, where his hypocrisy is so transparent, perfectly willing to watch Americans suffer and do little of substantive value to change the causes, even as he pins targets on the backs of those trying to make the changes necessary to keep our country afloat.

remediate the lives of those touched by misfortune. It is not just the way of religion, but it is the way of the human, our human duty to do whatever we can, however little it is, to help our fellow humans. It is that core value that made civilization rise up from the dirt, and it is a lack of humanity that now threatens to cast us back into the dust. Humanity is burning, and it's time to pick up a pail and put the fire out.

Inhumanity

A woman was killed last night in Virginia, killed by the State, killed for planning and perpetrating a heinous crime, the murder of her husband and stepson by killers she hired and apparently, had sexual relations with. She was apparently of a lower IQ, and her lawyers made the case that given her more limited mental capacity, her punishment was far too harsh. No one agreed with them; even the Supreme Court of the United States refused to stay the execution. It is interesting to note that she did not commit the murders herself, but the men she hired have received life sentences, and not the death penalty.

There is no reason to argue the merits of the case here. Justice in America is an imperfect system sometimes, and no matter what we may think of it, as long as the system operates as intended, we cannot argue with the result, having given our tacit approval to it by electing our representatives, who are responsible for the statutes enforced. The simplest way to change how justice works is to change the laws, and to do that, we must vote for the right representatives to do it.

What we must discuss, once and for all, is the need for retribution and vengeance in the name of the State. The idea is as old as humanity: an eye for an eye. You kill one of ours, we kill one of yours. You attack our tribe, we attack yours. Death is still, sadly, the ultimate currency of justice, and the belief has survived the millennia, that the murderer must die to make up for the life or lives they have taken, as some kind of appeasement of God or the universe.

Murder is the most heinous of crimes. To take a life, with malice and in violence, is to stain the soul, because once taken, it cannot be restored. Death is the ultimate doorway to whatever lies beyond, a door that only admits, never releases. Once the murderer commits the act, they are persona non grata in human society.

Then comes the hammer of justice, to strike them down. The murderer can expect little sympathy and faint mercy at the hands of a justice system that marks them as the worst of the worst. Even where there are mitigating circumstances, the fact of relieving another human being of life leads others to look down on the person whose hands are covered in innocent blood.

Herein lies the issue that vexes us even now: do we take from the murderer, the life that they so easily took from someone else? Does a murderer, by committing the act, forfeit their own life by fiat? Is there true justice in killing the killer? My mind always told me that those who found it so easy to take life, should realize that to do so, meant the forfeiture of their own. In this way, the idea would prove a natural deterrent to murder. Now, I am not so sure.

When you watch shows on television about cases of murder, what invariably strikes you is that, even in states where the death penalty is prevalent, murder still goes on, and goes on in a profusion of ways, from the simple murder by a robber surprised by a store clerk, to the cold, calculated murder of the serial killer, reeling off victims one-by-one or in droves, to the person who has become unhinged by circumstances, and seeks revenge for perceived injustices in their life by taking the lives of others, often in armed and brutal slaughter.

Murder is not the result of the higher, thinking brain; it is a relic of the primitive animal brain. Deep down, instincts from millions of years ago, the kill-or-be-killed, fight-or-flee kind, still lurk in the dark recesses of human consciousness. Triggered by childhood abuse, chemical imbalance, brain injury, drug abuse, psychological torture, or even conditioning, the murder of another is the ceding of control of the cerebral cortex to the primitive medullar regions. The instinct, the need for self-preservation, bubbles up from its hiding place, overwhelms reason and logic, and takes even the most decent of people to a place where taking the life of another is almost a requirement. In essence, the idea, the instinct, the drive to kill another being is a part of everyone of us, and only those of us with the strongest wills can overcome whatever urges it may flood our higher logic centers with.

Given that it is a hard-coded piece of our primitive past, and that the act can be triggered in so many fashions, is it any wonder we are still plagued by it, even in the calmest and quietest of communities? Some of the most peaceful nations on Earth still have murder, though perhaps not at the rate found in the United States. It is there, hiding in the bushes, waiting for its moment. For many of us, that moment never comes, and the instinct slowly dies, fading and wasting away to nothing, smothered by more reasoned and logical impulses.

So, from a rational standpoint, the idea that proclaiming that a murderer will be hoist upon their own petard, subject to the most singular and permanent punishment known, in order to deter further murders, is folly. The instinct to murder is welded too closely to us still, to be so easily stamped out by our commandments or laws. While our rational selves know inherently that taking another life is wrong and amoral, even that knowledge is sometimes not enough to overcome a deep-seated desire, biding its time in the darker parts of our primitive brains. To kill the killer is to place no greater stricture on murder than can be reasonably taught to any human being through parents, teachers, and clergy. For some, no matter the environment they are immersed in, the urge to kill will not be sated or starved. If we are to consider ourselves a civilized race of beings, then we must also live by the stricture we would have others live by. For the State, or even a citizen or citizens, to decide that murder is a justifiable punishment for murder, is to violate that tenet we hold so dear in our hearts: thou shall not kill.

To Run The Gauntlet

You would think that women's suffrage and women's liberation, by tearing down the previous barriers between women and their rightful place in society, would also tear down the misogyny women were exposed to. Sadly, with women breaking the chains that held them to their homes and lives as only mothers and/or homemakers, the chauvinistic tendencies of men, which expressed themselves behind closed doors at home, followed women out into the streets. Now, a woman had nowhere to turn to escape it; all around her, men were seeing women and concluding that their attraction to them as sex objects was allowed to be expressed when and where they chose, and that women would find it "flattering."

It was the mistake of men to conclude that "women's lib" was some grand scheme to allow them to be more sexual in the presence of men. Far from forbidden fruit, women were now out in the world, able to show themselves off, and men were eager to lap up the sudden preponderance of femininity. So, the misogyny of the past took on new forms, and invaded the workplace, the supermarket, and worst of all, the street. Now, there appeared to be no barriers to the machinations of male libido.

A working woman could potentially be forced to literally run a gauntlet to get from her home to her job. Mashed together with others on the bus or train, she might be subject to the depredations of those who gain excitement from rubbing against her, or talked to death by a man who is sure she is impressed by him and his life. After that, simply walking the street, she could be subject to leers, whistles, and even shouted implorations for sexual acts and professions of "love." from all quarters. Even making it to work, she is not completely safe, for hidden amidst her male co-workers, are those who do not see her as a colleague, but a concubine, who are more interested in her physical form, than the form she needs signed. And after a full day, it is time to run the gauntlet back home, to close the door and shut out the horror... until it must be run again.

This is not to say that every man is like this, or that every woman must run this gauntlet, but that it happens at all is a sad commentary of just what progress society has actually made in gender relations. It was not enough for laws to be written and passed, if they are not enforced. It is not enough to enforce laws if the knowledge that come with that enforcement does not permeate the larger society. It does not matter what efforts are made to bring about equality between the sexes, if that equality is not enforced in the home. Young men and young women must be taught from the earliest possible age that there is no difference between them, save their gender, and each is capable of whatever they set their mind to. They must be inculcated with the idea that women are just as deserving of respect as men. Young men must be taught not to harass women, and young women must be taught that they are not expected to suffer the harassment of men.

Of course, none of this is easy, as preceding decades have shown. Human society, being locked in a patriarchal mold from almost the beginning of organized humanity, cannot simply be undone in a few decades, or possibly, even a few centuries. Attitudes require wholesale adjustment, at all levels of society, starting from the very beginning of life. Until each generation is composed of more and more citizens who have learned the lessons and precepts of equality, until the old mores become smothered by a more sincere and level-headed humanity's acceptance of the truth, women will still be subject to the gauntlet.

Women do not have to surrender to it, however. Far from it, for in order to impel the changes that must occur, women and men must fight it here and now. Women must stand up to those who marginalize and minimalize them as sexual objects; men must stand up for women, calling out their testosterone-driven brethren for their incivility and innuendo. Men and women, working together, can begin, must begin, to turn the tide of human ideology from its patriarchal course. In doing so, they will pave the way for a better humanity, a humanity where we shall work together to support and nurture each other. We shall create a future where everyone's contributions will count equally, and where women will no longer have to fear for themselves. In this, will come the true growth of humanity.

What It Is, Ain't Exactly Clear

Sitting on the beach over the weekend, basking in a late Summer sun, a cool breeze slipping over the sand, surf pounding the shore, I was struck by the thought of how the sand I was digging my toes into, the sand that kept getting on our beach blanket, the sand my daughter was forming into castles, started its life as hard, seemingly unyielding stone, a million or so years ago. The pounding surf, its roar at times physical as well as auditory, even at its weakest, could be seen pushing large stones onto the beach. The sand, the stones... they had been part of mountain ranges or continental shelves at one time, huge expanses of upthrust rock, exposed to the elemental forces of nature, the friction of surging water, scouring wind, burning heat, and bitter cold. The titanic forces which shaped the Earth, gave it the substance and form we know today, were now replaced by the slow and inexorable forces of erosion and decay. No thing, even a thing built by the universe itself, can withstand time and tide.

We triumphantly declare that we have built our homes, our cities, our governments, on "solid ground." We see only the surface, not unlike the metaphoric iceberg. We act as if the ground will never move, never change, will stand for eternity. Nature shows us otherwise. It shows us the true face of the universe: change. Sir Isaac Newton enumerated and outlined the ways of the universe centuries ago, and even though Einstein supplanted some of Newton's knowledge on the scale of the very small, on the scale of the very large, the Laws of Thermodynamics still apply. In essence, they tell us that things will never, truly, stay the same, that everything will run down in the end. Order becomes chaos.

It is, no doubt, why evolution works via the auspices of natural selection, and why those organisms that can adapt to change most readily, tend to survive. Those who adapt, spread. They grow in number, consuming resources until the resources dwindle and natural forces take over, causing the population to decrease, and forcing the organisms to adapt to the new set of environmental circumstances.

What sets Mankind apart from most organisms on Earth is not just our supreme adaptability, but our constant attempts to impose order on our environment. Cities, roads, laws -- these are all products of our desire to make things better, more efficient, safer, more productive. Rather than be subject to the vagaries of natural forces, we seek to mitigate them, block them, or make them work for us rather than against us. We have taken natural selection to a new level, a level of self-selection and self-invention, straining against the limitations imposed on us. We seek to carve order out of the chaos.

While it has created much success, and allowed us to become masters of our globe, perhaps it has also filled us with hubris, believing we are somehow beyond the grip of the mundane world. Every so often, via hurricane, or earthquake, or tsunami, nature reminds us, that it is not so simple.

So, too, is it with our social order. For if we strive to adapt the world to our needs, we also seek to adapt society to our wishes. Some people, some groups, feel that things must be just so. Those groups and people are opposed by others, who wish things to be some other way. Each person, each group, sees the world clearly, through their eyes, tinted by their beliefs, and has the blueprint for success for the whole human race. No matter how well-meaning, inevitably there is conflict, for not everyone believes the same thing, or if they do, they do not necessarily believe it in the same way. Compared to the mountains, human will is even more unyielding.

It is amazing that human society has managed to survive for millennia, given it's propensity for turning on itself. No matter what order we may create, we eventually give in to pandering, proselytizing, fear, and our animal passions, and tear down that which so much effort created. Empires rise and fall. Nations come, and go. Communities live, and die. The cycle goes on, for what is torn down is invariably plowed under, built over, and new things rise from the ashes of the old. Change marches on.

America is currently seeing a swelling of outrage, the like of which has not been evident since the isolationist movement, which intended to keep us out of WWII, or the civil rights movement of the 60's. The ruckus and uproar over changes in government policy, the attempt to reform and build up universal health care, to add new life to the Supreme Court, and handle the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan differently, leads some to believe that their country is somehow being pulled out from under them, a conjurers trick meant to strip them of their liberties and destroy the "American way of life."

This is nothing new.

While some have intimated -- with some degree of truth -- that much of the acrimony is stirred by sour grapes, inherent racism, and partisan politics, the fact is, the over-arching cause is simple: change. Inevitably there is change in America, and Americans don't like it. Presidents come and go. Policies that are upheld by one administration are reversed by another. Things that were considered political suicide gain new life. The ebb and flow of life in America remains the same -- only the details change, as years pass. If many in this country are said to be angry, one only has to look through the past 200 years and more of our history to realize that at every stage, people were angry. Voices have always risen in opposition to change, whether it was women's suffrage, slavery, Indian affairs, the taxes on tea, the prohibition of liquor, the price of gasoline, entry into any one of many wars... the list goes on. When Americans feel that the direction of the country is wrong, they stand up, and they say so.

Whatever you may think of the motivations, the messages, and the actions of those who protest, it is the very fact that they can protest that means this country is doing just fine. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Who Are You?

What matters most to people? How much money you have? The kind of house you own? What you do? How you look? Your IQ?

Right now, society has a case of weight sensitization, which is taking on proportions that would have it seem that issues such as war, poverty, and global climate change are mere bagatelles. The chatter about what is healthy, what you should eat, how much you should eat, how large you are, how fat you are, how skinny you are, ad infinitum, is such that people are being reduced from feeling beings to sacks of proteins, fats, amino acids, and other chemicals.

This goes beyond the divisive and elusive ideal of beauty, to a fundamental conception that, like intelligence, health can be boiled down to a single characteristic, trait, or even number. That soon, we may be nothing more than a set of numbers like IQ, weight, BMI, etc., is both frightening and perverse. It is the modern reflection of inherent classicism that continues to plague us. We feel a need to place people into convenient, calibrated categories and to organize them on a continuum that allows us to determine exactly where we stand in relation to "them."

It is no longer enough to judge people on the scale of "beauty," but to break down and quantify the qualities that make them "less beautiful" or "less attractive" than someone else, or even less "like us." A person must conform or be condemned.

This rush to judgment, this desire to force society into some absolutism of type, feeds on our more destructive impulses, those dark demons of our ancestry that marked different things as threats, to be avoided, shunned, or killed. Given our evolved state, where we have the mental horsepower to override our baser instincts, it is sad to see how easily we are seduced by them, turned from reasoning individuals into fanatical mob. Even as we strive for greater tolerance of race, sexual orientation, gender, et. al., we turn inward and succumb to the intolerance of our animal brain, chopping people down rather than reaching out to pull them up.

In the end, the success and survival of human society is predicated on our ability to throw off the shackles of our evolutionary past and reach beyond our instincts. We must look past the face, the body, the eyes, and see what is inside people. And not just see, but learn to tolerate the differences, no matter how radical. This will prove to be a far greater struggle than the switch from hunter-gatherer to agrarian society, but the rewards for success will be immeasurable, compared to the possibility of our species becoming nothing more than a cosmic footnote.

Crosses To Bear

The acme of ignorance is to feel that your beliefs are beyond reproach. Nowhere is that represented more fully than in organized religion.

Now, before I am crucified and told what a bad human I am for spouting my blasphemies, let me say that I have nothing against religion and religious conviction, save where such conviction is twisted toward purposes that are against the greater good of humanity. There is a great deal to be said for having faith in something, and I have struggled for many years with my own Catholicism, accepting and rejecting it at various times. I have studied many of the world's major religions, most recently having the good fortune to listen to the Dalai Lama speak of the path of faith in Tibetan Buddhism last summer. I think I got the most from his talks, because he emphasized that Buddhism shares so many commonalities with other religions of the world, and to find the true path, one must start with one's own faith. In other words, the Dalai Lama is not out to make everyone a Buddhist.

My belief is that you must have faith in something. Being a man of science, I have delved into the workings of the universe, from the tiniest atom to the most distant quasar. Einstein's equations have spoken to me of a universe governed by a set of unalterable yet malleable principles, that allow it to function, separated from the need for oversight. Set in motion, the grand cavalcade that is the march of the galaxies has been going on for billions of years, guided by simple equations and knowable forms. My core faith tells me that the universe will continue to work as intended, without the machinations of its creator. Who that creator is, and by that I mean I believe there was one, remains a mystery. The signs are there in the stars.

If you find the strictures of an organized religion more palatable, there is nothing inherently wrong with that... unless you are unwilling to question the tenets the religion is founded on. If the universe teaches us anything, it is that nothing remains static. So too it should be with our beliefs. When the evidence of our senses and our cognition tell us that the tenets of our faith are misaligned with the way of the universe, we must be willing to alter those beliefs. Strict adherence to beliefs in the face of contrary evidence is anathema. Science teaches us that lesson ever day; in fact, it tells us that no matter what we think, we must be able to subject our beliefs to critical testing in order for them to remain strong.

And while the average person can see clear to believe what they need to, in order to live a harmonious life, altering core beliefs to better fit their view of the world, it is the zealotry of some which unfortunately tinges religion with an unsightly pallor. Blind adherence to beliefs, whether religious or scientific, creates the illusion of power over the world. In science, it is too often the case that someone will try to make the universe fit their theory, rather make their theory fir the universe. The course of science is marked with ideas (Terracentrism, the ether, perpetual motion, constant creation, etc.) which held on far longer than they should have, given that scientists were sure they were right, and could not adjust their thinking until the preponderance of evidence made it folly to maintain the belief. Even then, some went to the grave certain their ideas were not incorrect, merely misinterpreted.

Religion, dealing more directly with personal faith in ideas, finds it harder to yield to fact or even to the idea that one faith is not necessarily the faith. While the adherents of a religion are often able to navigate the schisms caused by differences between daily life and religious teaching, far too many people are trying to force daily life to fit their religious beliefs, not just for themselves, but others. The friction caused by this is seen in much of the political debate in the United States over issues such as abortion, sex education, and school prayer. While it is good to see people take their faith seriously, it is disturbing when they take it so seriously that it blinds them to fact or causes them to feel that they must force others to fall in line (either through law or deed).

Now, my beliefs have been shaped over the many years of my life, and while in youth they changed frequently, as I have become older I find them becoming more set, less malleable. I am still able to change them, do not get me wrong, but the level of evidence and discourse required is much greater, and I put a greater premium on how someone approaches me in an attempt to change my mind. I find that a knee-jerk reaction is very off-putting; when I voice a contrary opinion, it is not an attempt to denigrate what someone else is saying, only to stake out the grounds for discussion. Those who cannot stand to hear a contrary view, who leap immediately to an offensive mindset rather than engage in discourse, very rarely will hold any sway with me. I do sometimes wonder if my views of the world have become too rigid, to the point of limiting my flexibility, but finding it hard to step outside myself as I once could, and forced to take my queues from others, I tell myself that I am being as scrupulous in that regard as I can manage. I would like to think my view is right most of the time, but I am the first to admit when I am wrong. Or so I would like to think.

It is my desire to see harmony in the world, and that cannot be approached until we are willing to set aside our differences. There is room enough on this planet for every type of belief (or non-belief), without the need to exhort against any one system, or to attempt to legislate them away. For whatever you or I might feel about any group's beliefs, at the core we owe them the respect that we wish to be accorded for ours. We will disagree, we will see others as perhaps misguided, but in the end we will extend the hand of friendship and goodwill, because it is for the greater good.