Science may infer how we got here, but scientists can never discover
why. "Why" is a matter for philosophy and faith. Although comforting and
essential to an individual, I've never thought it really mattered to
society. If you wake up as an amnesiac and find yourself stranded with
many others in the middle of the Amazon jungle, does the "why" really
matter to the problem of how to get along? You make the best of it. You
try to survive. You try to coexist with your fellow survivors who have
varying and contradictory ideas about "how" and "why" and "what now?"
This last is something humans can know if we take the time and put our
minds to the problem.
It seems to me in such a situation you can proceed along one of two
roads: you can attempt to coerce others to act as you prefer them to
act, or you can attempt to learn by reason and logic how individuals
MUST act in order for all to survive and thrive. Not surprisingly, after
about a billion years of failed attempts we still find ourselves at the
same crossroad.
When you're young you indulge dreams that all of mankind can and will
travel together along the right and proper road. You believe that "love"
or some other mystical, unifying "human" spirit will take us all there.
But the older you get you conclude that dreams of universal human
concord are chimeras. So you stake out your position on the road you
conclude you MUST take for your sake and your family's sake, the road
that will allow you to survive not only the elements of nature but also
the wrath of those staked out along the other road, those whose purpose
it is to force you to travel with them.
So far, the story of man has been the history of this struggle.
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