A Rambling Christmas Essay

-->

Standing on the precipice staring into the abyss for too long wrapped up in our collective fears and prejudices our humanity is stretched beyond the breaking point. The animal instinct to view the stranger, the unknown, and the different overrides our better angels and we only see the world as a place of horror and danger. In this state we all too easily abandon our compassion and our conscious for the easy rationalization that only our small group holds the God give rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or even worse, come to believe that we are God’s only chosen people.

Such justifications have allowed every nation, tribe, or religion to subjugate and enslave those weaker than themselves. Such actions only result in a bitter harvest because those that dominated now will in time through inherent human weakness only fall from power and change places with those that were once slaves. This cycle only feeds on itself condemning our children to a continuous reign of terror where only the names change.

When the world was much larger and people were fewer such cycles could be contained but the world has changed and our numbers have exploded and our new toys have become a danger not only to the human race but the earth itself. But our ways have not; we are still the same violent and ignorant race that only a few thousand years ago looked out at the night from the cave fearing the darkness and what demons lurked beyond the safety of the fire.

Figures through history have warned us of our primitive and destructive ways; only for those messengers of peace and love to have their words bent to serve the needs of those seeking power and dominance not only of their fellow men and women but of the earth itself.

Still we go on clawing our way on top of each other sacrificing the many for the benefit of the few. The words of peace and love curiously both strained to serve our own purpose and ignored when they become inconvenient to what ends we wish to justify, the greater glories of creation forgotten for the shallow and tepid joys of material goods and to serve our egos.

It is hard not to see warnings in the wind with a few worried people crying out that we can’t go on very much longer like this. A few understand that it is our time to grow up and learn that we are no longer a scattered band of savages struggling to keep our small group safe from the dangers of a world we did not understand. That denying the basic rights and needs of others for reasons of power or to please a distant and quiet God does nothing but seal our own destiny in sadness.

Despite our intransigent ways change does come, although the pace is slow with setbacks and blind alleys as we fight with ourselves over which changes should come first. Let’s hope that the second decade of the twenty-first century can be a time of changing the course of our violent history, realizing that while we cannot change our nature we can begin to understand that it can be controlled and channeled for more productive results.

Such efforts to tame the worst aspects of our nature are by far the most important task we can undertake. But we have no other option; we have to answer this challenge because we say we love our children, that we hope for them at least the happiness we enjoyed. But such happiness is everyday more tied to the lack of happiness of some lost soul on the other side of the world living in fear and need.

Failure will only result in the eventual fall of us all. To change and alter our history for the better we will have to embrace the stranger, the unknown, and those far different than ourselves. Words will no longer suffice, actions and painful efforts will have to take their place but truth be told this has been known all through our civilized existence it’s just that the stakes have never been this high. In the end its more than just about simple survival, it’s about being the people we have always wanted to be, it’s about finding that spark of the divine God created inside each of us.






-->