Without recognizing the limitations of anything
                                                which we do, anything which we put forth, and
                                                know it to be imperfect, flawed, and know that
                                                in a fair and just world it will be surpassed many
                                                times over often and soon, nothing which we do,
                                                say, make, or believe will really be worth a damn.

       People are evolving. The smartest person 500 years from now will be smarter than the smartest person today. Born of a humanity and forebearers having done calculus and higher mathematics for many hundreds of years, his or her brain will be more developed in these specialized and analytical skills, indeed in greater numbers of others as well, than whatever fluke random chance has produced today in the more developed brains of this era. The more certain abilities are developed and used in successive generations, the more pronounced they will become.

        The fastest person 500 years from now, assuming an evolution uninterrupted by biological or radioactive weaponry, will be faster than the fastest person today. As each world record falls generally within that persons lifetime, the constant striving, training, and increasing strength and muscle mass and increasing abilities will again be passed on to successive generations, not just in the extremes, but each average individual will be more likely to be faster and stronger as well, than the average person today.

         If these suppositions are true, if not for 500 years, then 5,000 or 50,000 years, if  humanity is at least by some superficial measure improving in a measurable, recognizable way, the implications this assumption has for society and the way in which we view ourselves is enormous. As much as we humans like to view ourselves in conscious abstract terms, a good person, a mind, a soul, something not dependent upon our physical nature, what we are in fact is a measure of its (our bodies) success, gained through generations long before we were born.

         For some the very notion of evolution is anti-religious. It need not be. No one today can explain what causes evolution. Whether it be some directed growth toward some more perfect definitive beings, something in Earth's near endless life energy causing near infinite forms and species, or random mutations, no one can say, at least as yet definitely, one way or the other.

         For each individual though, the idea of evolution can be damning. Whatever we think we can become in our lifetimes, and for most the variations to explore are substantial, we are limited by the body and the evolution previous to our existences, as well as the more obvious amounts of recorded knowledge of generations gone by. It is one thing to know that if we were born a thousand years previous or hence, there would be more or less we would be capable of achieving in our chosen fields due to having more or less accurate information to rely upon, it is quite another thing to realize the best tool we have to work with, our brains or our bodies, might also be more or less up to the tasks. Not that anyone in any given age does not already have such advantages or limitations by virtue of being more or less intelligent than others, stronger, better looking, more gregarious, and so on.

         We each learn to appreciate our capacities, such as they are, relative to others in our times, knowing there are always others with more and less abilities, and hopefully we exploit our given abilities as best we can. If people can be said to have souls, and if those could have been born at another later date in history instead of now, even if the average human then were smarter or stronger than now, one might not have been so fortunate as to be born smarter or stronger than now, even if the odds were better. Such hopes may be pointless wishing one lived in another age but the imagination if nothing else, makes us wonder of such things.

         If anything can be said for the physical and neurological limitations we who live in what hopefully (if we don't damage our species) will be considered our posterity’s primitive past with our less efficient brains, besides feeling fortunate we were not further back in history than we find ourselves, the advantage or neutralizing agent is that those others in our time occupy more or less the same capacities of ourselves. If evolution is real and inevitable, and an average person 500 or 5000 years from now might be a genius and/or a super-athlete in today’s world, we luckily only have to compete success-wise with those others of our own age in history, in intelligence and in sports.

         The dark side of evolution theory, and we have seen much of it in the 20th century, comes in the acknowledgment that we are not all equal. For much of human history it was never assumed that all were ever in any way equal. Kings were gods or god-like. Wealthy persons were of a higher nature than commoners and so on. Religious changes of the last few thousand years have stripped kings of their claims of divinity, and political changes have made those in most cultures come to see all in a society as being equal or at least having equal rights, in theory if not in practice. Though there is much evidence to point out that even in the most egalitarian Western societies, all are not considered really equal and definitely not treated equally before the law if they have greater wealth or status, or if they can hire better lawyers, I will limit myself here to pointing out the most basic and disturbing truths, beyond wealth, status, and other things which we construct which prevent us from viewing ourselves as equals, it is our bodies, our brains, and our differing abilities which keep us from ever being truly equal.

        This everyone knows or has know since childhood. Some people are smarter than others. Some people are stronger than others. Some are better looking. It is just not polite to talk about such things, especially if you are better than average, or want to point out how someone else is less than average. This keeps societies on an even keel. If we feel that we should treat everyone the same, even though in reality we never do and probably never will, it keeps us all feeling like we are comfortable with one another. I do not mean to imply that we shouldn't. Differences are differences, they are there to be pointed out or ignored. A child with webbed toes possesses a physically near meaningless difference, yet will potentially cause much social differences in how they are treated by others, if not corrected by cosmetic surgery out of such very concern. Each difference between others is just one in a mix of differences and similarities, but each has the potential for defining one’s notion of self, whether one likes it or not, in how apart from the norm it is or how noticeable or apparent it is.

         Morally speaking one could argue that we should stress our commonalties and not dwell on our differences but morality does not necessarily prevail when dealing with differences, especially pronounced biological differences in ability. Anyone extremely intelligent or abnormally deficient in intelligence will and should be treated differently. Again, this too is known and accepted but not a pleasant thing to ponder. The more intelligence a child shows at an early age, the more challenging and geared toward their abilities should their instruction become. Similarly a child with mental deficiencies should receive special and personalized attention too but in a far different manner and with differing aims. With a prodigy or genius, their creativity should be nurtured and be taught not to be afraid to try new ways of thought or not to fear conquering new grounds of science or other disciplines, while those of less sub-standard intelligence ought to be taught as others but with an emphasis on how to work well with others and how to support oneself with occupations they show both aptitude for and interest, and be encouraged in that direction more strongly than those of average intelligence who by luck of the draw are truly able to do anything they might wish, and their educations need not be so occupationally driven.

         This aspect of trying to map out a child’s whole future by early indications of aptitude is fraught with imperfection and can easily lead to negative consequences. One cannot tell with absolute certainty how intelligent one will be at early ages, however those deserving of special attention one way or the other ought to be identified and not be robbed of the attention they need out of some politically motivated need to treat everyone the same when in some important measures, they are not the same and wishing it will not make it so.

        When I mentioned the darker side of evolution theory, it has been evidenced most when extrapolated to entire societies. Each of us spends our entire lives adjusting to the fact that they may not be the smartest, or the strongest, or the best looking, or most courageous, or one of any number of other measures. Accepting of limitations and concentrating on our capacities is a strong component of personal growth. I can accept not being the strongest or smartest or most evolved of my kind, but when someone does, and some inevitably will, extrapolate this to countries or ethnicities, being dumber or weaker, this causes much consternation and justifiably so. National pride, racial pride, and other measures of group identity are very sensitive to such classifications given humanities inhumane treatment of others based on those distinctions. Slavery, colonization, and exploitation have skirted the rules of civilized behavior of their own times with the vindication in the beliefs that inherent biological superiority or inferiority justified unequal treatment. Nazi's claims of greater evolution and intellectual superiority justified to themselves what they did to promote the political superiority of the Germanic people.

         These are areas where biological evolution ran against social evolution, and fortunately for us and our present day societies attempts at fairness, we do not live in a world where biological superiorities alone determines what lives we will live. Our world today is not a free-for-all of every nation or every person engaged in a sort of mortal hand to hand combat against all others with only the strongest or smartest being allowed to survive. Above average people are not slaves of the states, below average ones are not forced laborers or executed. Both of these points could be argued economic grounds, but it is not overt. The reality is that there is some truth in that just as one school may have more children of above average intelligence than another beside it, one state or country or even one race may have advantages over another in any number of areas. Whether such biological facts can be acknowledged without either persecution or even just gloating, or of feelings of inferiority, that is up to humanity as a whole.

        It is when we start dividing up societies by keeping those across all cultures of differing intelligences and capacities apart from each other of their prior societies that we really have much to worry about. If the so-called brain drain, a different more physical dislocation where one nation or nations constantly attracts the best and brightest from other less developed countries, then what would otherwise have been several countries of a mixture of all differing aptitudes, you would end up over hundreds of years with areas of less intelligent and more intelligent peoples recreating racism based on geographic instead of purely ethnic lines. Take all the best and brightest of many generations and move them to another more economically advantaged region and you create a greater and greater disparity.

        To a very real extent it is in the worlds best interest to manufacture as much parity as possible between both all in a given society and among other countries, even if such parity would not occur naturally without special intervention. As the more profound the differences begin to appear, the more easily we are moved away from wanting to maintain it, and economic deprivation becomes intellectual stagnation and ever greater accelerating disparity. In the most desperate of economic conditions the process is well underway already. The more ambitious or more intellectual are fleeing imploding economic neighborhoods and countries, and we allow this by assuming there will always be new ones of equal stature and abilities to take their places. Though the danger from this trend is primarily political what injustices appear if humanity no longer views itself as a whole, however much that can be said of how we view ourselves now, will be social problems, and the more likely we are to backslide to divide up the world between those we deem more and less evolved, more or less human, and we should find that the most disturbing thought of all.

        One could argue that in a country with 20% literacy, if education were improved on the same level as countries with 95% literacy, their test scores on intelligence would be roughly on parity if cultural differences were to be taken into consideration. However, imagine that same discrepancy of literacy and in geographic areas over the course of ten or twenty thousand years. A discrepancy would develop, use of written language causes certain areas of the brain to adapt to perform these tasks. If you had on one area of the globe people having and expanding on these tasks, and another area where such use among the most populous poorer offsprings did not occur, were never exposed to reading and writing over the course of a hundred generations, what might have been a solely environmental difference could become a biological deficiency.

        I am not using this as a justification for racism. We are fortunate that most people around the globe are at near par in terms of biological development. What minor differences may exist are in no way pertinent to what any culture, race, or country can accomplish simply by a more efficient management of its human resources better than any other. We do stand at a crossroads however. What was many different cultures developing at their own paces now must confront globalization.

        If we think of humanity as one culture, one people, we can begin to exhault the successes of other, what are now considered different cultures, as equally as our own, for their successes would be our successes, and it would not matter from what part of the globe they came from or the color of their skin. Or we can view ourselves by ethnicity or nationality, always pointing out that more geniuses come from this country, the best athletes from that country. Give the best educations here, accept illiteracy there, and allow humanity to develop more and more unequally. All men and women may not be created equally and never will be, but we either will glory in that unpleasant fact and remain unapologetic to treating each other as such, or we can make a real effort to put in place standardized quality of education making all nations literate and educated to keep ourselves focused on the fact that we are one species, equal in our inequalities, and it will take great strength and commitment, vast amounts of time and resources, to keep us on track to developing as one species.
 

                                           To each branch cut
                                              the tree owes its shape
                                             guided by the gardener
                                               toward its intended state

                                            For the health of the tree
                                              the dead wood is stripped away
                                             taking what could cause disease
                                               and for the best it gives way

                                            But the gardener seeks not
                                              just the health of the tree
                                             he wishes it to fit a mold,
                                               some ideal state he wants to be,
                                              so he cuts away the living
                                                growing, striving parts of the tree
                                               guiding it to be not what it would otherwise become
                                                 but instead some butchered version more pleasing to see

         If you don't look at human beings as individuals, natural selection is a wonderful thing. Each generation now maybe billions of combinations of DNA get tried out, most never even get born. To some extent, each ones success is determined by how well that combination gets lined up, how suitable their traits are to succeeding in surviving in that location and culture. We in the West cherish the individual, the one equal part of God in relation to all others, the one mind which in a sense is a reflection of what consciousness is itself. This perspective is good and is ideal in cultures which can afford to nourish and cultivate individuality, and thus become enriched by it. However this is not the only view.

        Even cultures which claim every life is holy, divine, and hold killing another as the greatest sin, can and do kill others that they perceive to be a threat to public order or well being. They weed out, in the most graphic way possible, that part of their own society or make up which they feel is cancerous and will negatively affect the whole. When other cultures than ones own seem to use less care, and its pruning of negative elements within its own society seems too wanton, widespread, or unjustified, they can be looked down upon by other cultures that perceive themselves to be more prudent and limited in those that they choose to dispatch from existence. Executing murdering criminals some cultures hold as acceptable but would find other countries which execute people for more minor offenses to be barbaric. Not all cultures value life as highly, and most don't value it as much as they pretend, at least not those which cannot distance themselves from killing yet also consider killing to be wrong.

         The degrees to which a country can consent to kill its own varies, and I am trying not to address this in moral terms, simply instead as how it decides which parts of its own culture, its own body, can continue to survive and reproduce or influence others, compared to those which it feels must be terminated. Country or state (A) might decide to execute only those who have murdered in a particularly graphic manner, and think that this distinction separates them from country or state (B) which may execute anyone convicted of any murder, no matter what the degree or circumstances. Country (B) may not consider themselves as bad as country (C) which may execute people for rape, espionage, or treason, and not limit its executions to only those who have themselves murdered someone. Country (D) may wish to also execute horse thieves or unfaithful wives. Country (E) may wish to throw in members of a radical political party or religious sect. Unless you are the last culture or country on this logical list, you will always think some other goes too far, and yours is morally superior to theirs because of who yours does not kill, such as, hopefully, those who disobey traffic signals or don't return books on time, should any society seem to one day go that far. That may sound extreme but how far apart is (B) from (C) or (C) from (D) in the examples above? Each prides itself on not being as "bad" as the one further down the line.

         Countries that don't value individuals rights as much as others may see little wrong with killing all those who threaten it from within or to "poison" its culture with foreign ideals. Humanity itself can act this way. If evidence appeared which clearly indicated the actions or intentions of one smaller manageable country negatively affected the prospects of survival of the species at large, nations would rise up and either forcibly reverse that nations action, modify its culture or political system which fostered such actions or attempts, or failing those modifications would, as it were, attempt to take out such a subversive, in this case anti-human, element. This may sound unrealistic but what if one country’s culture or political system was a sort of suicide cult pledged to take out all of another culture through uncontainable biological weaponry as an eventual end? Humanity as a whole would try to contain it, keep it from advancing scientifically, but in the end it would either risk being destroyed by it or would decide that such a culture would be too dangerous to let exist if it could not be contained, and would declare war on and / or seek to destroy such a culture. I don’t endorse this, but as one with imagination, I can envision humanity one day forced to confront such a scenario since such groups exist today but do not dominate cultures or governments, hopefully.

         A society, humanity as a whole, all the groups that we can define, are made up of individuals. Individuals each begin with a throw of the dice. One somewhat random rearrangement of amino acids defining ones capability of survival. A major defect and one does not get born at all or survive birth. You, me, anyone who could be reading this, they were lucky. Their DNA as well as circumstance allowed them to survive birth, survive their first infections, diseases, any number of which could have been fatal any number of times. That some survive and some don't is not accidental. Humanity is throwing as many darts at the wall at once as it can, or seeds sown in a field if you prefer, some will stick or take, some will not, and the ones that do take build the foundations for what comes later, stronger because of not having the ones which did not.

         It is hard to write this. So many might think to say such things is to revel in them or advocate certain points of view. That is most assuredly not the case in this instance. These are aspects of this reality we do not like to think about. These pages are trying to speak to a reality, not an opinion. I like that those least able to survive are helped. I am proud that disfigured and mentally challenged people sometimes incapable of taking care of themselves are allowed to have children even if it means they too might be similarly disadvantaged or worse. It is a measure of how far we have risen above, or attempted to rise above, the parameters of the universe we inhabit. However, I know that my opinions are my own and the universe follows its own course separate from mine, yours, or anyone else’s opinions of its morality or lack thereof. Should a plague kill me, or all my descendants a hundred years from now, or kill 90% of humanity, it will be because I or they could not adapt to survive it, and the world belongs to those who can adapt, and those, just as us now by virtue of our own existences, they will be stronger for having overcome it, as we are for what we individually and as a species have overcome until now.

         Only that which can survive, does. Of that which survives, what dominates is what is stronger. Be it individuals, nations, cultures, some will prosper better than others and often at the expense of others. But what traits enable one to survive or excel at one time or age may not be as valued or required in another. As successful farmers have known throughout time, the more diversified ones crops are, the more likely one will always have something to eat should some crops fail. Humanity’s diversity has always been its greatest asset, allowing it to adapt to almost any climate, any set of circumstances, and hopefully we will always understand that it is that diversity both to which we owe our existences now, and to which the future may someday rely upon, or not come to be at all.
 

                                            From the babe to the boy to the man
                                              from being to becoming that which I am
                                             yet to describe all that which I was before
                                               as simply a prelude to this and nothing more
                                              is to underestimate those of me as I was then,
                                                of not being the best and most as was possible back when

         People are processes as well as, perhaps more so, they can be said to be physical beings. Stop a rock in time and it is still a rock. Stop a human in time, their heartbeat, their chemical processes, and what you have frozen in time cannot be considered human until and unless time for it resumes. That may seem like a too easy, too cute example, and it is, but it is a place to start. A human does not exist, for that matter all life, does not exist in time, they exist through time. It may not seem like a big distinction but it is the biggest of all distinctions possible.

         Take anyone at any given moment in their life, where they are, their shape and size, their age, what they are presently doing, what they are presently thinking that instant, and it may not only be unrepresentative to their life as a whole, could any such method of summation ever be devised, it may not even represent other moments in their life at that approximate period in time. What we are always is in flux. That is what enables us to one day become more than what we were before. One moment may lead to the next, and in some sense predicate or predict it, but cannot control or predetermine it. Each moment, each age, finds and determines its own destiny.

        One could look at ones life as a whole and single out one moment and think that is the penultimate moment, that is really who they were or what their life was about. Or at least find one that shows them in the best light, to think that is what I wish to be remembered for if or when I should be thought of at all. It is nice when life accommodates this, when one is remembered for some heroic act, some great work, not for how one lost his temper, made some public embarrassment of himself, or for his or her greatest failure instead of their greatest success, but this is often beyond our control.

         But to be remembered for one moment, great or miserable, or for one attribute, or for what one did or how one was at only one age of their lives, it is to know nothing of them, simply a word out of context fallen to the floor, a random word off a random page signifying nothing. An overstatement surely, one might think. There are moments in peoples lives which we can single out and feel comfortable that they sum up someone we knew or some aspect of their character which we think sums them up as a whole. Surely not everyone is so changeable that they continually change their stripes or go from being one kind of person to another. However, such determinations are subjective. What and how I might remember one person for might be different than how another might remember the same person knowing him or her over exactly the same time period. A hero to many might be rightly considered anything but one to another who was mistreated by them or suffered because of something done unto them by that person, intentional or otherwise. One moments negligence behind a wheel of a car can, to one person affected, wipe out a whole lifetimes worth of good intentions.

        And time, as always, is the key to putting it all in perspective. To remember the hero for one heroic act, to possibly wash out memories of years of bad behavior, to think that one moment counts more than any other to defining who one is or was is wrong. Sure, some moments have greater resonance by affecting positively or negatively one or many others in a great or life affecting way, and some moment can be for each one of us as individuals, more important, more life affirming or more tragic, more insightful or more confused, than others, and can possess to us greater significance but that is because we choose to see it as so.

         To the one remembered for losing his life in trying to save others, equally important are the moments in his life which lead him to that time and place to make such a heroic decision or choose such a course of action. Each fault he or she had, each tragedy they overcame becomes that much more ennobling because it lead them to being in what others considered a selfless state of mind when they were tried the most for what they were, for who they were, at that moment which happened to be their last. Had they lived another week they may have died under less noble circumstances, or have been wittingly or unwittingly involved in the cause of someone else’s death in a traffic accident or a fit of rage, and that would seem even more tragic coming after the accolades justly deserved for the actions the week before.

         Each moment, each age, and to some degree each different person we become, for those honest and thoughtful enough to realize the kind of person they were at 8 or 18 or 28 would have little in common, each of these selves cannot stand on their own to represent anyone. There is a saying, justice must be absolute or there is no justice at all. The same in a way is true of people. They must be known, to really be known at all, by themselves or by any other, for whoever they were and for whatever they might become, not just for what they are or only how just once they were, or you know nothing about them at all. If you know one thing or one age, it is like a chapter, but what lead to that and to where it may be leading is equally important and often far more revealing.

         When someone dies, particularly when one is young, we mourn not just for the loss of what they were, but for all that they might have been, for what they might have become. We see the loss of a being, but more importantly, we see a process interrupted. Sure they would have died one day further down the road, but what stands out as much as what they did, is how much was left undone. If they were bright or in a position of leadership, we can readily imagine all the great things they could have done were there more time.

         What each person is at any moment in time is not what is most important. It cannot be easily ascertained if at all. They are forever in the process of becoming, not of being. What they will become, what they can grow into depends on some degree to the paths they choose, but to also the length and flexibility each of those paths provides. Each end is different, but each end has an overshadowing and unrepresentative view only by way of having happened to be the last moments, in the end no greater or more important or more telling, than any in the beginning or middle.

         Many will say, be who or what you are. I have a problem with that. I am, should I be lucky enough to see another day, I am less than what I will be tomorrow. I know less, I have experienced less, and by some minúte measure I am less, especially over the long term view. If I am to focus on being what I am it takes the focus away from becoming that which I want to be. If one does not wish to be more or to be a better person, they should at least wish to be someone who did more, accomplished something more, saw more, or experienced more, than they have today. Who you are and understanding that is not as important as who or what you are becoming. If you don't know who you are now, thinking about it won't change it, and if it does change it you will have to start all over again, because if suddenly realizing who you are does not change everything, what does? You are not the same person you were before knowing that, and so on, and so on.

         Only after you have done all that you will do can any true perspective be applied and even then not unbiasly by you. Enjoy being, really truly fully enjoy being, but take it as a given, as if you always have been and always will be, and see it only as a necessary precursor to what you will become. What you are now is like 8:45:36 which is absolutely meaningless without having an 8:45:35 and a 8:45:37. Processes, not particles. Becoming, not being.
 

                                              He is, she is, they are,
                                                busy doing what must be done,
                                               occasionally pausing to really live
                                                 and look around at what they’ve become,
                                                what they tried to make themselves be,
                                                  what was they could not change, what was left undone,
                                                 ever incomplete yet forever redeemed
                                                    for between them a new life was begun

                                              Into he which is born unto them
                                                exists all that has ever been done
                                               by them, by all others who have lived before
                                                 the result of every battle waged, every victory won
                                                and carrying forth for them every dream never realized,
                                                  every hope dashed, every song left unsung,
                                                  the representative of the past to the future
                                                    shot forth like an arrow into what has yet to come

         The moment you are born. The moment you die. That which separates the two. Time. But what can time mean outside of those points, before birth and after death, whether  being beyond just our births and deaths or beyond the universe’s? Outside of time, timelessness, all of time ceases to exist. The whole lifespan of the universe passes in an instant, as if it always was and never was. Time is a means of definition but only a temporary one pertaining to one limited aspect of existence. So what is accomplished then by life? Change.

         Living changes reality. Lives around you are changed. The world is changed. The universe itself is changed. I am not saying anyone’s life in particular is so important. I am saying each life in particular is so important. Perspectives are changed. Triumphs are achieved or thwarted. Tragedies are averted or realized. Pages of history are written, life and order endlessly rearranged as if always seeking perfection which can never be achieved. And ideally, creating another link in the chain of conscious beings marching forth into times approaching horizon, becoming more aware not just because they have learned more, or because their DNA's are altered by learnings of previous generations to make their brains work more effectively. Nor becoming more aware simply by the combined sum of human knowledge recorded in history and compounded scientific achievement, they will be more aware simply because the universe is becoming more aware, and they just happen to be a little further along its road.

         When we consider great men or women of the past we take into account the worlds they were born into, the level of knowledge common to their times and existences. The less knowledge they had to work with, the less developed science, mathematics, or philosophy they had with which to build up their own ideas or inventions, the more remarkable their achievements can seem. For a child to draw a triangle or square and ponder its significance today seems inconsequential but for the first human who did so, no matter what their age, how remarkable indeed! With that began geometry, which begat trigonometry, which made space travel possible, not only possible but even a logical conclusion to one prehistoric human scribbling shapes in the sand millennia ago.

        I am not implying we humans are the first to discover this, nor that new species elsewhere or here on Earth will not make such similar journeys from latching onto such simple concepts with limited brains and basic levels of understanding, and taking them as far as they can go to what eventual ends even we now cannot begin to even dream of, for so little and recent is our own journey down that road. Nor am I implying that future species first steps down this road will be any less remarkable or amazing since it had all been done before by another species in the past. But I am saying it will be easier for them, and happen more frequently, and at faster rates as time goes on, as it is for us, as it has been done countless times before us all around our galaxy.

         Once ideas exist they are out there, not just in written, spoken, or genetically mapped ways passed down to our progeny, they are in the air, the ground, they fly from one end of the universe to the other and back again in less than a nanosecond, and made known to any living thing capable of understanding them. They pile up, one idea upon another endlessly, from beings anywhere and from beings everywhere until they are made known and realized again somewhere, some when. Perhaps thought itself is alive and seeks to guide life, to drive it to evolve enough to understand it and to add to it.

         Given the length even of what is now thought to be the age of the universe, certainly every great discovery such as the secrets inherent in geometric shapes, or of the atom, or of space/time, or of transdimensionalism, surely all of these have been discovered countless times before and will be rediscovered countless times again after humanity has gone.

         And if time and the universe are infinite in ways we cannot yet begin to fathom, giving birth to itself or new universes in yet another endless cycle of life, if it then could be that nothing can be done, said, sung, drawn, theorized, or lived which had not been done before, it still is no more or less incredible. Thoughts, ideas, dreams, experiences, aptitudes, ambitions, ignorances, and discoveries constantly rearranging themselves trying to come up with something new, something exciting, something different, always failing and yet never really failing completely.

        However many universes are born, or galaxies, or solar systems and planets, however many new species are born and mature enough to contemplate it all, it always is as new and as fresh and as wondrous as each new being born and seeing it all with amazement and joy for the first time, again.
 

                                             Never is ever* ever enough
                                               for life itself is in the extreme
                                              surpassing itself time and time again
                                                for that it is
                                               and for that must it always be
                                                 as this or that comes to rule
                                                each moment becoming that time
                                                  while chaos itself reigns supreme
                                                  for all that may no matter what,  no matter when
                                                   must bow to this

                                             Time becomes time again
                                               defining itself anew each resurgent light
                                              as all of creation falls down to this
                                                until it was
                                               and then never again would it,  could it be
                                                 paved over by insatiable lust for life
                                                driving those others over that which drove it
                                                  seeking to become that moment,  become that life
                                                  which by turns gives life and feeds off of it
                                                   living by giving what does

* Ever- when used as a noun- meaning all or all points in time, opposite of never, as in every, ever-after, everlasting, and forever and ever

         At the core of every living thing is the overwhelming need to exist. We can, when the time comes if we must do so, suspend this out of conscious rational efforts if we need to risk or sacrifice our lives in order to achieve some desired effect, but usually not without great effort. This need beyond desire is the force which keeps us alive, fighting off diseases, overcoming illnesses, and when it wanes we are already lost. A component of that need is the desire to dominate.

        Existence requires constant surmounting of intangible obstacles of circumstances, weaving through near catastrophic potentialities sensed but never seen, shadowed but never known. Life succeeds by believing it is greater, or craftier, than that which can destroy it, and while it succeeds in remaining alive, it is. What keeps life alive varies immeasurably, even seemingly the opposite of dominating, total submissiveness, is often a road leading to a seeming victory of outlasting what you oppose and would seek to destroy you. Just living itself can be a form of dominating if by existing you are continuing to keep something alive which would otherwise be banished from reality, some ideal, some hope, some wish for the future which others might seek to eradicate or convert. In this instance, just surviving another day with oneself intact and defiantly uncompromising is a victory, and outlasting is dominating.

         When we think of domination though, it is usually more overt. It is thought to be lording over all, unreachable to obstruction, invulnerable to contradiction. And yes, this is domination in its purest, most unadulterated form. Also one can dominate simply by always getting ones way, conceiving of goals and always achieving them. The goal need not be to rule over all to be dominating, simply to overcome all obstructions. The larger goal, the greater the will must be, and if the will is great enough, the pieces will all fall into place.

         But why this impetus to rule reality, to make life conform to your expectations, desires, and will? That, each person has to answer for themselves and most quite frankly haven’t got a clue. Life is like an heirloom handed down  countless generations, both worthless and priceless depending on who is doing the evaluating, yet what it is or does no one is really quite sure of anymore. It doesn’t necessarily go with anything, yet no one wants to throw it out either. Unless one is aware of some plan of what they want to do with their lives, they simply grow, acquiring skills and artifacts which give them greater control, greater flexibility, should something seem necessary one day to do or to have or to be.

         That growth can be self-destructive. Without greater meaningful goals to direct these growing resources of power and abilities toward, it becomes an end unto itself and slides into personal despotism. Life seeks to do something, and the more one holds back, the more abilities go untested, the more one becomes irrelevant, simply taking up space oblivious to meaningfulness.

         So much is done simply to see if it can be done, for good ideally, but most often just to test the limits of what is possible. Both the greatest strides further in human advancement and the most horrific, often were born out of pondering the simple most intrinsic concept in this reality, completely summed up by two small words, "what if"?

         What is this universe if not of an endless intricate web of innumerable what ifs, and time but a selected path through them? What if there was a universe, what if there was an Earth, what if great apes discovered nuclear weapons, what if there wasn’t an Earth anymore? What if there was a you, what if there wasn’t? The universe loves the questions so much it cares not what the answers might be, for whatever answers result simply create an endless new array of what ifs to ponder based on that one result over the other.

         Maybe in the greater scheme of things it is true that everything which can happen does, but to our minds, experiences, and existences, little of what can happen actually does and our knowledge of reality is greatly limited to and by this weaving of vast potentiality and openness through the concept or experience we call the present into a single string of time, then into a fabric of stitched history, moment upon moment, row upon row. But even if reality were to be infinite it would then only match our curiosity of it, for whatever could be, whatever is possible, or whatever somewhere might exist, someone somewhere no doubt would like to know of it.

         So we grow in experiences and we grow in wisdom of how best to achieve our goals tempered by every failure and dead end we embark upon, and with this wisdom we grow in abilities and hopefully we grow in accomplishments, successes, actual concrete works or simply making existence more comfortable or meaningful for someone else, which is quite possibly the greatest of all possible achievements. Knowing that our time here is finite, it is natural for one to wish others continue on with our work or the memory of what we did while we lived if we were to be proud of it.  No greater means by which that has ever been achieved is the producing of heirs in blood or in philosophical traditions. By having others walk the road we traveled further than we ourselves could go, immortality is assured as long as they or those that follow them shall live, our steps will still have meaning. The same forces that cause rulers to set up dynasties and the masses to expect it, cause others to feel honored when their children take up occupations the same as theirs, knowing all that their offspring will do will keep what they did alive, or gives testimony to its importance.

         Yet almost no other institution is as much reviled in our age, and not without volumous validation, as supreme authority dynasties of Kings and Emperors. Should a politicians children take up the same occupation, to some minor degree their successes must rest upon some ability. Similarly, one business tycoon could achieve gaining his or her heirs to head up their enterprises, and thus preserve the memories of their lives in a financial dynasty, but should they actually have to run such financial empires and not just in title only, it would require them to possess at least a do-no-harm competency. Yet the god-like reverency of royalty, since it cannot be rationally explained, it cannot be taken away, nor passed to anyone else by such quantifiable aspects such as ability or worth.

         Yet this occupation, better than everyone else by lineage, more fit to govern by birth or by being born into the right family, survives and though disappearing, may never fully be eradicated. Weaker offspring of politicians benefit from the desire of the common people to have a known quantity in their governance, as well as a bridge in the volatile future to some stability in the past. In times of great turmoil some strong personality often is chosen or imposes himself upon the situation and immerses himself into the flow of events becoming a dynamic around which much else is defined. Whether by force, coercion, or corruption, or by common consensus, alternatives to such leaders or regimes vanish for their own well beings. Ironically the more successful one is as a leader, the more indispensable he or she may seem. The better one seems in relation to the alternatives, the greater the let down when someone succeeds them. By myth, by tradition, fallacy or fact, those related to those great leaders have been thought to be more able because of those ties, being more, or being better than those of less remarkable family histories.

         Whatever limited physiological evidence there may be to support such beliefs pales in relation to the risks societies engage in when basing systems of governance upon such precarious foundations. Though it is almost innate of us to think such things, our ancestors all over the world, however recent or long ago, were wise to reject notions of royalty, and the implications that some are more or less deserving of deference towards them by virtue of who their parents were or were not. For those who support and perhaps live in such countries dedicated to keeping alive such antiquated systems of governance, take heart that humanity, no matter how far it thinks it has progressed beyond it, it is at best always only one small step back away from it.

         What dominates is not that which rules. It is that which permeates all persons thoughts and beliefs. Rulers die, tyrants and tycoons die. Empires, financial or geographic one day will be plundered and dismantled. What people believe is what survives. Hopefully our beliefs have more worth than the reverence of those who spoke them provides, and hopefully each future generation will do more than just preserve the past, more than just be the 20th or 200th generation of greatness past, and to do more than just that, to be more than just that, requires not being afraid to develop all abilities to the fullest. Not to hold back, not just to think what if? To do, once one is relatively decided what should be done. To dominate, not to dominate others but that which is negatively affecting your capacities to do something in your lifetime, something memorable even if never remembered, something valuable even if not treasured, something succinctly you.
 

                                                      Born without expectation
                                                       I am free to be
                                                        whatever I might wish to be
                                                         and the uncertainty
                                                          which surrounds and defines me
                                                           is but a boat traveling a wilder sea

                                                      Born into great expectations
                                                       I am ultimately to be
                                                        fated to the path chosen for me
                                                         and say the words
                                                          which must be heard
                                                           knowing no one will really know me

         Eugenics, breeding humans as one would sheep or cattle, cloning, few concepts disturb people more viscerally than these, provoke a more gut-level revulsion, and cast a greater shadow of fear for the future, perhaps greater even than destruction itself. The idea that people will be manufactured to order, to fill some occupations better, to be guided into existence not by random chance, nor by God, but by men deciding well in advance who should and will be born and what function they should serve. Scary stuff indeed and not because it is inconceivable but because it seems all too possible to happen and even unfortunately, likely to happen, if not here then somewhere, if not in ones own culture, then in another.

         I do not claim favor to it happening nor to employ that time worn but time effectual argument that the unthinkable ought to be realized first by ones own society rather than risking falling behind some imaginary or real less scrupulous enemy coming to possess an advantage we lack. I do not agree with such selectivity or guided births of predestined consequences yet I know too well this is not unfamiliar territory for humans to enter into. It is all too well an everyday reality already.

         Cultures where ones parents or communities selected who one would marry are not in the distant past of any culture, though in many it does lie in the past indeed. Though the trend has been in recent centuries toward the individuals who are to be married to choose their own spouses, the overall and almost universal constant previously was that marriages be arranged, for those of any status, by others. Even where people did or have now some limited degree of say in the matters, matches were precluded if one did not meet any number of social class prerequisites, such as education, ability, income, but even these factors mattered less than who ones parents were. Many considerations were taken into account in deciding what constituted a good match, and what children might come of such a paring was often an almost overriding concern.

         Not only were the would be grandparents concerned with the economic welfare of their potential grandchildren, they certainly did not wish them to be weak, unintelligent, handicapped, or otherwise similarly disaffected, and any indication of such weaknesses of potential in-laws was often a paramount concern. Exceptions were made of course when ones own child had a similar perceived defect or disadvantage. In such cases the parents of such a child knew they must lower their expectations accordingly, or hope that such greater externals such as wealth or position might make up for their child’s physical or intellectual shortcomings.

        While there was in some cultures an attempt to even out such differences, marrying the strong to the lame, the bright to the less intelligent, this was not typical of most cultures. The greater pattern occurred was to marry like to like. If ones child was particularly exceptional, strong, bright, beautiful, one could expect a great match for them, or a higher price if forced to have their child marry one of what was commonly considered in their society to be a bad match. No amount of money though, commonly exchanged, could make up for a bad match in status, unless one had other children. The more exceptional ones child was, the greater the chance of moving up in class ones grandchildren could achieve for often this could not be done merely by providing them with more money. In the end, in many cultures, lineage was more valuable than money in the bank. Likewise if ones child was considered abnormal or deficient, it would require greater sums of money to marry them off at what would be considered their own class or level.

         Such notions were the norm of many human societies for thousands of years and remnants of it remain firmly entrenched in our minds today, whether in regards to royalty or to possible spouses of our own children. We might think if we provide them with a better education, not only are we helping them achieve something for themselves, we might also unconsciously or consciously think they might make a better match for themselves, meet some nice boy or girl at college who is going somewhere with their lives. And the more bright or beautiful our children might be, the more forcefully we try to convince them they can do better if they make what we might perceive to be a bad match. I do not mean to imply that everyone is still motivated by such notions, but such notions are ingrained in our attitudes and cultures more than many might realize.

         Such social and class distinctions, though lessened, still cast relationships in the same light. If a doctor were to marry another doctor, or similar professional, it would be considered by many to be a good match, far more prestigious for ones offspring than if a doctor married a stripper or a prostitute. In the latter case, the doctor would be perceived to be accepting less than someone of his status would be thought to expect, and the other person might be perceived to be getting more than they might have reason to expect unless of course they came from a prestigious parentage. The opposite could in fact be the case. The doctor could be abusive or unfaithful and the spouse could be much worse off than with a so-called lesser match in status or wealth. But unfortunately many might think such suffering is the price of having ones children raised in status of the minds of others, the sons and daughters of a doctor.

         Now that the individuals in a marriage are allowed in most cultures to have a say if not the final say in who they will marry, they often confront the same issues they were previously insulated from, though that insulation came at no small cost to their personal freedom. Now they might be lobbied by their parents to consider this person or that person, he’d make a fine husband, she a loyal wife, they’d give you strong children, smart as a whip, the apple does not fall far from the tree, and so on.

         Were one to be bright or good looking one could reasonably and rightly expect to marry someone equally intelligent or good looking. This might be considered crass or superficial to be put so openly in these terms, but unless one is completely naïve and thrown over completely by passion, and even sometimes then, such things are considered at least in some form. Can I do better than this person? What prospects would our children face? Even if one does not think of these things in regard to or as a reflection of their own status, it is not wrong by any means to consider what such a paring might mean for their own children, what kind of futures would they have, would they be strong or lame, would they be bright or less than average in intelligence, would they be accepted by others or would they live as outcasts? These are not pleasant things to ponder, but to anticipate and plan for the future often at some point, however belatedly, bring such thoughts to bear.

         And now to attempt to jump the Grand Canyon, too foolish for most to attempt and so certain to fail. To even begin to attempt to align these aspects of our cultures and historical attempts at matchmaking with what we instinctively fear will be a horrible precedent of scientists at creating or arranging births cannot help but be construed by some as an attempt to justify it. To attempt in one small paragraph to go from speaking of our respected if not treasured past traditions, of our present dealings with the repercussions of such traditions and how they affect our present judgments and outlooks, and then to go on to speak of what we all today find the most objectionable of objectionables, the most unthinkable of unthinkables, is indeed for many a leap in logic so unthinkable that no matter how eloquently tied together, cannot come off as anything other than a justification, an explanation of what we believe should never come to be. I can say it once or a thousand times and no matter how loud or often it is said, to some it will never matter. I have not written this to justify or excuse anything, only to put what I think might happen, to some degree what we all fear could happen, into historical context for, as the choice of who to marry and planning and trying to predict what type of children will or might be born has passed into in many cultures, to the would be parents themselves, and those parents will be given only greater controls than we can imagine, and it is through the door of helping parents that everything will start, but to where it will lead and how far it will go is anyone’s guess.

         We know quite well knowledge can, has been, and will be misused. Parents have when finding out the sex of the child to be born did not match their expectations or desires, have chosen to abort such pregnancies. Such instances may be so statistically remote that it would be a fair accusation to question what possible relevance such rare occurrences could have to anything. Should no one be told early in their pregnancies the sex of their child if one out of one hundred thousand or one in a million chance they might take some rash action in response? I only mean to imply that any such knowledge especially in regards to a child’s future, however innocuous and seemingly insignificant and harmless that knowledge can seem, still has the potential to be misused.

         In-vitro fertilization is far more unnerving for some and much more apparent as a source for controversy. Some adamantly oppose it in any form as unnatural, fertilization occurring outside of the human body in controllable circumstances and often in greater numbers than required to achieve pregnancy. Here the social dilemmas run rampant. If technology were to advance to the point where one could tell in advance which embryos might become boys or girls, and using certain ones of those cells first to attempt to create pregnancies with, would this not be the first step towards selecting who might be born, one seemingly small step but definitely in some distinct direction? Now add being able to screen for genetic deficiencies. Say two out of five embryos would if they were to be used might die before reaching twenty five years of age, yet the other three would not, would such knowledge not be considered if available?

         While in-vitro fertilization is rare, occurring most often among only those who cannot conceive a child by ordinary means, such speculation is usually written off as trying to incite controversy. Knowledge does not preclude action in and of itself. Many things are known and kept from others, but once having such knowledge one becomes responsible for using or failing to use such knowledge. Either way everything is different than had such knowledge not existed.

         In-vitro fertilization makes many more things possible. While it is not possible to determine yet and possibly never what sex an embryo might develop into, genetic screenings for inherited diseases soon should become available. Less controversial than choosing among different embryos would be to remove defective genes from pre-determined embryos which have already been determined to be born whether in a dish in a lab, or soon, directly in the womb. To take a child which might be born with a fatal or chronic disease and remove that disease prior to birth thus not altering who is born but merely improving that child’s chances of survival. There are those who will say absolutely such tampering is unjust however beneficial and should never become discovered. But once discovered how can one tell expectant parents their child who has leukemia and would not survive long, that they would not cure that child before birth, before it became too late to correct, because some might consider it to be wrong.

        Therefore such knowledge if not used could condemn those weak who would otherwise not live to certain deaths, thus deciding who should not be helped, or if used would for two people simply save the life of their child from a disease or condition which would prove fatal. Once one has such knowledge and capacities, to use it or to fail to use it, either way could be viewed or misconstrued as attempting to play God, unless one either always does whatever one can to save a child, or determines to always let fate run its course and never do anything to help. To have but withhold treatment which can cure is an awesome if not unnerving responsibility.

         So say one wishes to draw the line at disease. Say we or future generations say it is acceptable to eliminate potentially fatal or debilitating conditions without killing or adversely affecting a single unborn child. It might seem reasonable to many that no great harm is being done, after all is that not why we immunize children, to prevent them from later getting diseases which could kill or cripple them? But the same knowledge which would enable us to help children from being born with less than optimistic chance of survival could if misused, be used to enhance other so-called "normal" others chances of survival. I am not saying these two aims are not different, nor might be the methods even be remotely similar and therefore to scientists two entirely different fields. But to some parents wishing to give their children the best hopes for survival, to give them more tools for a better life, might not some be tempted to go that extra mile and have their children be born a little smarter or a little stronger?

         Surely such considerations by loving parents to give their children the best lives possible which those parents can provide deserves not to be lumped together with what governments might do with such knowledge. Governments might not even need to wait for such advances to be made to the general public before beginning their own forays into such fields of research. Though having the general public engaged and supportive of such genetic modifications is easier, many fear that some governments might in secret create their own enhancements for their own aims. What some might fear as growing super-soldiers or genetically modified fighting forces might one day lead to all out control by a government or society determining what types of people it needs and in what numbers. It might sound like fantasy but the only thing to keep it from happening is not science but people attitudes, and unfortunately in this case, attitudes change over time.

         Most might think that could never happen, or could but never would happen. The path to that happening lies through that other more controversial field than either in-vitro fertilization or genetic improvements combined, and that path is called cloning. Cloning now has one element which will keep it from popular acceptance at least in the near term. To make a clone one must eliminate the DNA of the host cell. In other words, highjack the means by which one new genetic combination, one new person who could be who never has existed, and use that means, that cell, and transform it into a patter of someone who has already been. The religious and the spiritual questions and concerns are also substancial though harder to articulate than the death of what might other wise have been a quite different and unique child. That is concrete and easy to comprehend, and that will slow public acceptance of cloning more than any other factor until that hurdle is overcome, leaving only the countless other valid arguments against it.

         However, I doubt public sentiment will prevail. The possible ill gotten gains from private or secret cloning are impossible to measure and will prove too tempting to resist for many governments and groups, should effective long lasting cloning prove within reach. The trade off, however barbaric, is trading an unknown quantity for an known quantity. When that known quantity is not valuable it would never be considered. When that known quantity is priceless, it is inevitable to be attempted. Imagine this technology in the past. Instead of hoping for the best chance for a new Alexander or Caesar through the imperfect and inexact science, if it could be called a science, of what can only be called breeding with other royalty, if one could instead be one hundred percent certain of creating an Alexander 2 every bit as strong, courageous, and wise a leader as the first, they would have leapt for it unquestioningly. It may seem wrong to make such comparisons for those were different worlds than our own but who could not see what a difference an Einstein could make for one nations balance of power. Knowing what capacities one might possess before birth, planning ones education around it, even segments of society around bringing out those abilities to the fullest, such potential power will not be long ignored in today’s fractuous world.

         Even now as I write of clones used as weapons for one societies benefit or advantage over others, some might still suspect I am endorsing it simply because I understand the typical if not brutal human motives that lie behind such interests. Understanding is not the same as approving or condoning. To be sure, once cloning can or could be achieved with no loss of potential life and perhaps even before, many good men and women will believe the advantages to humanity will outweigh the risks. If not one, then a hundred Einsteins might well take this world further and faster into the future where no potential benefit is beyond humanities grasp, yet it took only one Einstein to bring us into a future we were ill prepared to deal with the consequences of. It is that example which we must always keep in mind whenever tempted to accelerate this process, for whatever we learn which we think might help us to survive often is easily perverted to be used to destroy us.
 

                                       As people came together and began to join hands,
                                        they learned how to share ignoring their separate lands

                                       They formed a language to achieve understanding
                                        This helped them to think and made possible planning

                                       Now they could talk and discuss what to do
                                        By this they learned the joy in creating something new

                                       So they began to paint things which they had seen,
                                        pictures of their lives and scenes from their dreams

                                       They learned how to sing and they learned to dance
                                        Though they knew of love, they invented romance

                                       They began to build cities in which to live
                                        For the common good they had learned to give

                                       But they also learned of evil in this new world they did create
                                        Of all the things they had made, there was nothing worse than hate

                                       When they united in purpose it was usually to kill
                                        They sought to destroy each other and to take away their freewill

                                       This was their burden which they did not overcome
                                        so it had destroyed them and all that they had done

                                       All that they had needed to save them from their end
                                        was to remember how they began and that end wouldn't have been

                                       It was the co-operation which enabled it all to be
                                        Without it all empires crumble and become faded memories

         Society depends on trust. Trust that your money, stocks, and other commodities will keep their value. Trust that invaders from far off lands will be kept off our shores and outside of our borders. Trust that the police and others entrusted to protect us from ourselves will not become yet another force to fear. Trust that our leaders and politicians are not too tainted by corruption to remember who they represent, and how much of humanities hope lie upon their shoulders. But above and beyond all else society depends upon trusting one another.

         This trust did not come easy, nor was it at first warranted. It came after brutality too immense to comprehend and too painful to long remember. Thousands of years of endless slaughter culminating in recent wars in which the number of victims not long ago would have surpassed the number of all humans living. If we call civilization the peaceful co-existing of differing cultures or nations, most often these differing nations met first under the reality of war. Sometimes they were enslaved by one or another of these other nations or ethnicities, brutalized in ways too disconcerting to write here, with attrocities beyond almost even all but the worst psychopathic criminals today would elect to subject others to. Yet they fought back, regained their freedom, mended as best they could their battered spirits, and one day maybe generations later, made peace with their tormentors.

         What reason had they to do this, make peace with those who committed unspeakable sins to their entire populations and upon their own soil? Had they forgotten what as done to their people, how they swore they would avenge them? No. They made a minor but world altering change of strategy, they would first try to make peace with them and try to come to some understanding if at all possible. Maybe they did not mean it, maybe it was just a ploy to buy them more time or to try to catch their enemy off guard. If that was the intention, it backfired because between those two differing cultures a fragile peace began to take hold, upset at times with frequent flare ups of more wars, but eventually those wars became shorter with greater times of peace in between.

         How amazing it was this happened and how far apart some nations today remain from it happening for them now. The peace became more important than the wars, and the wars were somewhat ironically fought under the guise of how best to keep the peace, but the mindset had changed, at least for two, then three, then many nations or cultures. It was no longer about killing all others, or enslaving them, or even subjegating them. It was how best to coexist with them. The greater and more damaging the wars between them, the more reasonable the path of peace became. This growing affinity progressed until leaders of opposing lands would journey to the others to pay respects and honor the dead of those who fought against their own people, literally their own sons and brothers and fathers. Amazing. They were at heart and sometimes in fact still enemies but war was the greater enemy and in that fight they needed to be allies.

         Yet this trust between nations sought to foreshadow a greater trust. If it was merely a truce, if it was not believed by the majority both regions that these bitter enemies, tormentors, doers of unspeakable evils in days gone by, could not now be trusted, re-humanized and rehabilitated in the minds of their former enemies, any peace effort would be sure to fail. Any change in political winds, changing fortunes of political parties, any act by individuals, could re-ignite the wars. The people had to believe in the humanity of those who they had learned to hate. And they had to trust in them.

         Once they imagined that trust, the road to peace got smoother. Now flare ups of tensions or sporadic fighting became the faults of radicals or leaders out of touch with the wishes of the common man or woman. The people of the other region were now still human, still worthy of trust, and sometimes considered helpless victims of a war they did not desire either. People were not punished for airing these views, leaders after the fighting subsided even claimed similar views, for now so great the stake in keeping the peace had become. The same events happened as before which would have lead to escalations, but the interpretations had changed.

         As the bonds of trust grew between nations or ethnicities and more importantly,  between most of the people of those nations, they began to see others in those other regions as being as diverse a lot as themselves. No longer was the enemy a monolith sworn to our destruction. There could be people over there every bit as honorable and decent as anyone we know over here. They could have terrible leaders but fine composers, musicians, playwrites, or scientists indifferent in demeanor or tastes to our own artisans, intellectuals, and elite. This seems so natural now, so accepted, for such cultural exchanges and travel have been going on now between peaceful countries for hundreds of years now but how unthinkable and peculiar most at first and some even now must have thought such views to be. Not to admit the humanity, and that decency and goodness can exist in someone else within another group with which they are currently at war with. Such beliefs by the populace of some groups will determine to keep them perpetually at war.

        But it is not the common people of countries to bring upon wars. Throughout history the average person has been kept quite busy trying to provide themselves with adequate food, shelter, and a slim guarantee to keep these in the foreseeable future. It has often been the acts of a few that engulf the many and eventually affect all. Whether it be some ancient grudge or some newly created enemies, there always are and always will be groups that wish to start or restart the cycle of violence. Most people are generally in some ways free of prejudice in thinking that not all of another country or ethnicity all think and act alike. But when others who view all of this group or that group as being the same, all equally bad or equally guilty for whatever any one member of that other group did to them, they can create a chain reaction of hate.

         Suddenly attacked by one of another group not for who I am but as a member of this group or that, I am now likely to do the same. Who is in your group, who can I hurt that you know that can cause you to feel bad? Criminal organizations do it, family feuds do it, gangs do it. It no longer matters who you are, it matters to what group you belong to, this determines who your friends and enemies are. You may not wish this, but apparently someone else has made it so. Someone who wanted it to be this way. Someone who shot one man, one leader, began World War I. It does not matter now as much as it did then to what group he belonged or what he believed he would accomplish by doing so. He wanted to start something with that assassination and he succeeded beyond measure. As nations learned to view war as an enemy, this too is a different kind of enemy. The enemy is not the man, though he is more to blame than his ethnicity, the greater enemy is the effect of the actions. A murder in and of itself is a horrible thing, but when it sets off a chain reaction leading to many, then many times many other horrible acts, it is an even greater horrible thing. And when that was the intention all along it is revolting to the extreme. The target is nothing less than our goodwill, our trust of each other, and nothing can we afford less to lose.

         Once the chain reaction starts it is difficult to put down. Once attacked for simply being a member of a group, I have been subjectified, classified, and codified, it is only natural that I cannot help but to react to it in one way or another, but react nonetheless. If I were to be cautious I would try to find out who else might be inclined to view me in a similar negative way and be wary of them. Or at the other end of the spectrum I might be pleased with myself for not treating people differently who have not done anything themselves to warrant being treated or viewed differently. Surely just being wary of this one group of people who might look like that group is nothing to be overly concerned about. There are still many groups different than my own I can look to the same and forget what was lost. It may seem like an insignificant loss of trust but no loss of trust is insignificant, especially when spreading quickly.

         For countries unaccustomed to long periods of peace it need not even have to spread. It is a given fact of life that those people are not like us. They don’t think like we do, they don’t value the things we value. They kill twenty of our people, we kill forty of theirs, it does not matter which forty they are for they are all the same. For someone who has been fortunate to have lived in a region free from this mentality, it is nice to view it from a distance, though that distance is what makes the difference possible, and the struggle to see beyond that point of view is not as hard as it is for others. Nothing could matter more than which forty others, lest one is drawn deeper into the endless cycle of violence some regions might never escape from.

         Once trust is gone, especially undeservedly, it is hard to view people the same. Imagine everywhere you go people shy away from you or go out of their way to make you feel uncomfortable, even threatened. It is hard not to resent them back, even wish to get back at them for treating you badly when you have never done anything wrong to anyone yet suddenly made to pay for something someone else did. For those who wish foremost to sow the seeds of hate, no result could be a greater success.

         Once one begins to accept always feeling suspicious or wary around others it becomes second nature. They may take to carrying weapons to feel safe or frequent only those places where those others rarely go. It becomes a way of life. For those who have not known such ways of living can appreciate their own all the more when traveling to places where such a lifestyle is commonplace. And once that foothold of fear takes root, it can quickly spread toward other groups which have some unsavory members. Soon no fears seem unwarranted and no precaution too great or too costly. No more human sea of differences, just clusters of groups all ever more wary and conscious of each other.

         For me now I can still go home to a place where everyone still trusts each other and likewise enjoy the company of all others without fears, whatever the truth may be. Yet this has become rare and seems destined to become rarer still yet to come. Yet openness and trust, however misplaced and irrational it seems at times, can have subtler chain reactions of their own. To walk past someone on the street and not have them clutch their bags tighter, to ride in an elevator not having someone not so secretly holding onto mace in their pocket just in case, it is easier when constantly shown trust and respect to trust in others and to believe that most people are good, for in fact they are, even if because of some few we stop treating them that way, or even worse, stop believing it.

         Where trust does not exist, nations cannot long endure, so much in life are we dependent upon one another. There are those who would pay any price to destroy that trust in each other, and thereby any trust in any good or positive future, and we must always be on guard that these visions of our future do not prevail. So many more good men and women have given their lives for the future, a better future, one where people don’t live in constant hate and fear, and it is to those who hoped so greatly for their children and their children’s children, for us, to live beyond their dangerous and uncertain times in an age of peace and goodwill.

         These are the visions of the future worth believing in, however unlikely they may someday seem likely to exist, but due to others suffering long ago in less optimistic times than we can imagine, they held close to these extremely radical beliefs so out of step with their times as any could ever be, and made that optimism prevail on an Earth that comes tantalizingly close to what they believed could one day be achieved. Remember those people and what they hoped for us, how they were tortured and killed for their dreams they could not have known would one day become our dreams and define our world. Remember those millions gone, their hopes for this tomorrow, when contemplating those would kill to destroy that better world they died for. Whose vision for which future will prevail is no ones hands now but our own. No matter the odds, one cannot bet against the brighter future. It is a reality built on trust, and losing faith in it, betting against it, against ourselves, will destroy it.
 

                                                   First or last
                                                    into the unknown
                                                     or into the past
                                                      the dawning of tomorrow
                                                       or today’s last gasp

                                                   Together again
                                                    held firmly in grasp
                                                     what is now and then
                                                      what is now and past
                                                       what is which has never been

                                                   No words spoken
                                                    no words left at all
                                                     no pattern broken
                                                      no grand summation
                                                       only what was chosen

         One of the most intrinsic aspects of intelligence is the capacity to recognize the relationships between objects and between beings. A rock and a metal are related, yet different. A man and a bird and a fish seem very different yet possess many aspects which make them related, or have much in common. Each lives and dies, each has eyes to see, breathes oxygen, has children, a heart, some sort of blood fluid, and so on. Each is a species or category of species of Earth. To see and understand the relationships between various things seemingly very different, and the patterns these similarities and differences adhere to, this is the essence of productive thought, and it is creative as well.

         Sometimes the relationships between things requires abstractions, invented ideas which are not things which have ever existed in reality but only within minds, to see and understand the relationships between things, or even between other abstractions which also only exist in thought. The most often used of these abstractions is language. Language allows putting things into groups, then putting those groups into larger and smaller groups. By inventing a word and defining the parameters of that word a connection is made between different things. Between the word and the thing it represents first and foremost, but also the word can tie to together many things. Up until the word mammals was largely used few people understood as clearly the relationships between animals, itself a very abstract group, and porpoises, sharks, and whales, seemingly very different and unrelated groups of beings from animals, which were previously considered part of a different abstract group called fish. By changing the definition of fish to include breathing oxygen from water instead of breathing air as porpoises, sharks, and whales do, and grouping these beings into part of a different grouping of beings existing on land and water, mammals, or air breathing live birthing creatures, perception of these creatures changed merely by adding a new word and understanding a new relationship.

         Another aspect of creating or recognizing the relationships between seemingly unrelated things is in using the highly structured languages of mathematics and logic. By manipulating symbols extremely abstract in nature, yet highly defined, we can look for patterns which would otherwise go unrecognized but again what patterns are sought after are defined by our ideas of existence, thus creating our ideas of what to look for, and having or creating names for what we find to attempt to understand it. Once you have a name or concept for a numerical relationship, and you reduce that relationship down to a single concept, the relationship of a right triangle’s angles to its sides, the radius of a circle to its circumference, you can begin to take this new concept, new idea or way of looking at things through this new relationship and begin to see what you can do with it.

         The ancient Greeks had a name or concept called an atom, and a definition that it was the smallest piece of a thing you could have of that thing, and that all things everywhere are made up of these ‘atom’ things. Such a view is theological if not backed up by science, yet posed an answerable scientific question and gave a direction to look, namely dividing things up into smaller and smaller parts, and once you have something so small it cannot be divided without turning it into something else, you would have a thing called an atom. That notion took thousands of years of science to begin to understand it in the way we now do, smaller than the ancient Greeks could ever have imagined in a state that does not conform to any laws of nature they knew, but that word, that abstract concept, gave a direction to look, an idea or category of ideas to be proven or disproven to exist. And it can only be explained or understood with other abstractions such as language and mathematics since we will never be able to see or touch a single atom.

         Thus we go about naming things creating new abstractions to forge new understandings of the relationships or differences between things. The word precipitation to group together rain, snow, and hail for instance. The often quoted but inaccurate example of how Eskimos have many different words to describe different types of snow. Since I don’t wish to perpetuate the common misapprehensions regarding the number of words for snow, I will address instead their dozen or so words for types of ice, such as old ice, fresh ice, ice without snow, ice which you can walk on, and so on. Their experience has led to grouping together what takes for others many variously inter-changable words to describe a kind of ice or ice related situation they can express with a single word. The more words used to describe something, the more potential for one to misinterpret the meaning or degree of what one is saying. For those who live on ice communicating about it to others accurately with short but well defined unambiguous concepts based on experience can be important to survival. A word simply for hard ice one day might prove insufficient depending on differing perceptions of hard. Well, it seemed hard to me. Thus a more defined word for a type of ice so hard many fat men could walk on it at once might become handy to have as well. Thus the list of words grows to accommodate growing experience or necessities, to differentiate between seemingly similar yet subtly different concepts.

         We now have, or now have use for more broadly based concepts as humanity spreads further outward across our planet and possibly further into space. We find new species in our oceans requiring new concepts, names, and new processes of life requiring new categories for these new species to be more fully understood, and for these categories, new names. And sometimes as with the new category of mammals, the new categories of life we will find will require rethinking and reshuffling of some parts of old categories previously thought well defined and nailed down, but only because it previously had been sufficient for our experiences and known criteria at the time to have to deal with, explain, or include.

         Where the sky once held simply the moon, the sun, and the stars, and perhaps heaven, those were sufficiently broad enough categories to match our experiences at the time. Now we have many new names and concepts to learn, planets, galaxies, solar systems, novas, quasars, and so on. And the more directly we see or experience these new-to- humanity concepts, we will need more concepts to understand the relationships between them, and countless numbers of terms to break them down into sub-categories. If humans were to commonly live or work in space they may develop out of necessity or experience, more terms for asteroids than Eskimos have for different types of ice. The more experience you have with something, the easier it is to grasp the similarities and differences between those things, and the more words or categories or relationships recognized about those things, the better you can understand it.

         Just as astounding as the number and variety of things in space, and by having things there, places in space, so to is the variability of possible lifeforms. Even on our now seemingly small little planet, the variety of lifeforms is incredible. With insects alone there are possibly millions of variations and hundreds of thousands of potential group characterizations between them. What we have the best understanding of since they share our approximate size and spaces where we live, and since we vie with them for food and water, I am speaking of the category we term animals, the variety of their sizes and shapes cannot help but stir the imagination when first exposed or taught of them. And this is just a fraction of one type and size of life on one planet and defined by one atmosphere at one point in history. Take the same planet with a slightly different atmosphere millions of years ago when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and you have another amazing diversity of species, some similar, some very different than what exists today on Earth. It would take millions of man-hours to classify all the species of just one planet at just one point in time. Multiply that now times millions of years, or millions of ages in billions of years of varieties of life on just one little planet, how much and how elusive that would be to know or understand or record. And that would just be for one planet.

         Add in the possibility of millions or billions of possible other life sustaining planets each with millions of new species coming into and out of existence on each and every one of those rare by percentage but giant in number planets which happen to also have the potential to support life as we know it. No matter how intelligent any species might become, by our understanding of intelligence by using words and numbers and broad categories and sub-categories, they eventually would fail to comprehend even just the potential varieties of life, or understand anything more than the smallest margin of over generalization should they or we ever even begin to be lucky enough to accurately grasp even that much of it all.

         For those willing to admit that Earth was once populated by many species different than what exist here today, they might be able to envision that a million years from now the species that today exist on Earth, many might be extinct, new ones not existing today might arise, and others  lucky enough to still be around might bear little resemblance to how they exist today, humanity included. With over five inches of average height added to some ethnicities in merely the last hundred years, humanity is in a period of such rapid changes it would certainly take far less than hundred thousand years if humanity were to survive, perhaps just a few thousand or less, for we as we exist now to be difficult for those humans to withstand at the very least, and most of us probably would seem as deficient, as sub-human, to them as a human of a hundred thousand years ago would seem today. Many generations from now we who live today would not belong even among our own kind, our own species.

         To many this biological link is of the foremost importance. Will those people, should Earth be populated with the descendants of humans at all, be the descendants of our own sons and daughters? Will they speak variations of our language whichever one that may be, will they pray to the same God or gods, revere the same stories and plays, teach their children the same morals as we teach ours? If not our direct children, many might take comfort that what we now term race or ethnicity might still be present in some form, if not that then they might take heart that some elements of our cultures or institutions remain. The further into the future one imagines, the less it will matter for though those cultures and peoples could not have existed if we had not existed, if we had not avoided destroying humanity, eventually they would not be recognizable as ethnically related to us, would not speak our language in a form or dialect we could understand, they who came from us would have moved beyond us. Given only a few thousand years, we might have more in common biologically with those humans most distant to us genetically who also live today then we would have genetically in common with our own children’s distant progeny.

         The point that I strive to make is that we are beings of our own time, beings of a certain period of development culturally. We do not belong in the far future any more than someone from humanities distant past would belong today. We have a certain type of world view largely shaped by religious and spiritual beliefs and influenced by what little but rapidly growing information we have gained through scientific exploration of our universe. Who we are is defined by what we know and our level of ability to reason. Among other species, or possibly one day our own, whose capacity to reason lie as far above our own capacities as ours do above early humans of a hundred thousand years ago, we would seem like children at best, animals at worst, in comparative terms to how we judge other species now.

         What level we are at now we cannot know for we don’t know how high the scale goes above our level of understanding. Spiritually we can hope, as we often have, that we stand on the brink of some grand new age of enlightenment. Like believing in a concept called an atom did, hopefully this belief is pushing forwards toward that end or at least aiming us in the right direction of where to look. Or we could be at the high end of the evolutionary scale, where a species can come to possess so much knowledge, that if they are deficient, they inevitably use that knowledge to destroy themselves. By looking at other species, we can appreciate how far we have come, the ability to think in abstractions, to communicate such abstractions, to experience shared imagined realities with others across time through stories, films, and plays, to experience physical reality almost as a mere impetus for creating ever more complex conceptual realities, to build fairly accurate working models of the known-to-us universe using ideas, mathematics, and logic, and using those models to give us ever more control and extend our reach and knowledge far beyond our senses limitations through more powerful machines augmenting our own eyes abilities to see, our ears capacities to hear. To form rudimentary civilizations in an attempt to keep peace and order, to provide a stable food supply, and give many a good shot at living a long lifespan. That is really all. Our civilizations are crude, dissent is often violent, sometimes out the wish to have it completely non-existent. Peace and order are subjective and relative, with the most peaceful ordered regimes often being the most repressive. The food supply globally is not stable and the means of distribution erratic and unpredictable to those who live in countries far from where the food originates. Systems of bartering between regions is in constant flux, often that lack of agreement results in food and medicine not reaching regions in sufficient amounts unless there is widespread death, disease, or malnutrition. Obviously we have refined these systems somewhat to the point of being able to provide for billions of people to exist, but adding a billion or so more every decade will always make whatever current methods in need of improvements, meeting our successes with ever greater challenges, and our shortcomings becoming ever more apparent when failing. No longer thousands dying in famines and war, but millions, and one day billions when we fail to get it right.

         All species or cultures sometimes reach a point where it becomes necessary for differing groups of power to come together and reach some agreements on issues in which they have profound deep differences, or all perish. To know that time, to recognize it, to know it and to say it is better to die than to compromise on this belief or that, on this issue or that, these species and cultures perish. Those species which cannot recognize when such crisises or times are upon them and demand such agreements and compromises, they also perish.

         It could be said that no species once attaining the means of its own destruction ever gets past that point. unless every person is wholly or fully suppressed there is the chance, even if all of societies do as they must and such crisises are averted, rebel groups could arise that would choose death,their entire species death, over submission or integration. Eventually all species may be tested upon its weakest members, its weakest link. Be it individual, group, or nation, every effort must be made to stay on the same page, to see the world as others see it, as well as how you see it. We are either at the end generation of a fatally flawed species or at the beginning of knowing how necessary it is to deal with each other on terms more complex than we can today imagine. An age of enlightenment and understanding may seem too much to hope for, yet in that vague concept is the key to understanding the only human, or humane, path forward, if it exists at all.