My goals are very simple, what is necessary to protect the children, the aged and those that are infirm. That is all I worry about and that is all I'm looking at. We humans have done a terrible job over history of protecting the children, but modern civilization keeps making lifer better for them. I don't want to lose those gains. I am not a stoic.
Those are wise words for the individual to heed when there is no threat. But history has shown us quite clearly that the foundation of civilization, that has increasingly put an end to massive pain and suffering human history has endured, without respite for all of history as far as we know, is based on knowledge directed perception. I.e. knowing how to make humanitarian decisions. Understanding what humanity is.
When you say a person has to choose wisely, I would argue that people have to know how to choose wisely. If you study history closely, you'll see that history is replete with our barbarian behavior. For the last 12,000 years at least, people were routinely enslaved, tortured, beaten and murdered for no reason other than the "inability" of people to know how to put together social systems to protect themselves. They did not know what to do and were victims of their own brutal instincts.
History is quite clear about this. When the ancient Greeks invented the modern alphabet 3,000 years ago, and written language, that was the first time in the history of humankind that people started to think about developing a social contract to protect themselves from Tyranny. It was when the human species started it's inexorable march toward modern civilization and humanity.
That is when the human species first realized, that they did not have to be subject to the brutality of tribal chiefs, dictators and kings and queens. That they had a right to pick the people they wanted to represent themselves. How they picked those people and the kind of judgment they used depended on how well they could think. As simple as that. No where in history is there evidence people can build good humanitarian societies without knowing how to think.
And history tells us again, that it has only been a few decades since we have even reached a modicum of basic humanity i.e. allowing women the right to vote, gender equality, getting rid of slavery and segregation and recognizing he civil rights of gays. Make no mistake, the reason those things existed for all of history, was because people did not know how to adequately think.
And now the great irony, it was the people primarily that did not know how to think very well that gave us Donald Trump who will probably set us back 60 years and cause the most terrible suffering
Especially, as Hubert Humphrey once said:" a society is judged on how it treats those in the spring of life, the winter of life and those who live in the shadows of life."
The truth is, the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could care less about human suffering.
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Survival of the body at the expense of the soul is an unfortunate choice. Bodies are clay, souls are divine. We choose what is our priority. I believe choosing the latter will save the former. Humanity has yet to find the courage to choose wisely. Now is a good time to make a wise choice. Now is the only time... |
