I'm not sure anyone understands just how special this is.
This planet of abundant, replicating, now conscious Life moving around freely in three dimensions spinning almost carelessly, slightly off-kilter, around a not-so-big but somehow oh-so-special star-miasma perpetual motion heat emitter.
Or another way, this cooling rock at a random point in all of Isness, the tiniest spec of nothing where lives all known consciousness...but again. Too foo foo. Too abstract despite the absolute concreteness of fact.
That Earth exists, that my consciousness experiences this life, at all, seems unlikely beyond credulity.
This is fucking special.
What's going on here, on this planet, is special. Not just the life - though life is something else! But the consciousness. Awareness at a capability level that can build skyscrapers and housing for everyone. Conscious life with the power and versatility to harness itself towards long-term, large-scale, deliberate strategic activities. Build cities out of materials found only here, on this planet. Build tiny electronics that allow long-distance communication. It's amazing.
The achievement of Earth goes down in Universal History, the Guinness Book of Universal Feats. It rivals much larger nebulas.
My fellow humans, we're so close I can taste it - we are closing in on a general, universal understanding that Life Is Special. That every single life, human and animal, tree and blade of grass, river and mosquito, beats together. That this is the only place in the universe to experience this kind of physical consciousness. That this short time in this fallible body is all the experience any one of us gets.
Where are Humanity's parents? We've been raising ourselves on this island alone, with only our most visible minds to guide us. We're a teenaged species left alone at the house with the car keys, a full liquor cabinet and all the peer pressure of insecurity. But just because we've always acted this way doesn't mean we are not capable of growing, changing, deciding to grow up.
While it's absolutely clear from the evidence of human achievement that this species is capable of assembling itself to good purpose, living in peace and tolerance, with a sense of fair treatment for all, Humanity still receives a failing grade.
Believing we can't change, that the systems of governance will always be increasingly corrupt, that the situation of the common person will always be of no true importance, that work will always require subservience and women will always be judged first by their sex and race differences will always result in bigotry - these beliefs negate any desire to try for something more. They are the whiney, self-absorbed beliefs of a fourteen year old who hates his parents for saying he has to take some responsibility. Holding those beliefs is a betrayal to what is special about life.
So many people deciding that it has to be this way is the reason that it is this way.
I can't look away from the specialness. I can't stop seeing how every single atom of this place rings with absolute uniqueness in the universe. I can't stop wanting to honour life - to take the time to let honour of life seep into the pores of everything I do, every day, all day.
But that time isn't accounted for in how we've set the systems up. The competition game, the game of being first and right and the expert and impressive sets us up to run from the gate and keep a steady pace, like every day is a marathon. The money required to maintain the edge of a middle-class-looking life, at the pay offered, requires a high proportion of our time. The productivity we've decided is needed, to speed the concentration of the wealth at the highest power levels, squeezes the honour out of life. It squeezes the life out of us.
Here's a dream: a society, established and set up to sustainably provide for the dignity of all citizens, honouring each life's talents and contributions in the systems of governance and commerce. Does it sound like a pipedream? You are brainwashed. It didn't always ring like the clanging of a crazy ranter. The idea of setting up society for people, rather than adapting people to a minority's view of society, was once and often thought to be the very role of government and citizen alike. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Wow.
When did we stop believing that humans could be decent and power could be harnessed through just systems?
Can you do me a favour? Can you try to believe it, even just for a few minutes, every day? Believe that humans can be decent, and power can be harnessed through just systems to allow for peaceful co-existence and dignity for all.
I know it sounds grandiose, from the slave-mind they've programmed into us, but I beg you this favour and I rarely ask for much. Try to believe in a future where life is honoured. Even for one minute every day, if that's all you can manage. Suspend your disbelief, or wrestle it to the ground. Do what you must, but please, for a moment each day, believe. Give it 50 years, or 100, or 250, or a thousand, however long you think it could take. And then Believe it's possible for humanity to achieve peace.
Because if we don't believe it, we won't turn the ship at all.
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