Mortal Humanity

By

Kim Rush

                       

Socrates: “You are wrong, sir, if you think that a man who is any good at all         

should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his actions, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting like a good or a bad man.” (Apology, Plato)       

 

    I sat alone atop a six thousand foot mountain. Wind spoke through the pines. The absolute blackness of no human light caped this world. Cold, cold, cold seeped up from the granite rock through my jeans/genes to shiver my bones. A dead tree cracked loudly in the cold night. The sound echoed around the canyon walls below. All was alive and part of me and I part of the whole of the living entity of animal, plant, and earth; the Dream Time. 

 

The Law: 

 

     Clotho sings/spins out the golden thread of life. Laohesis sings/measures the breadth of the life span. Atropos sings/cuts the thread for death and that is life.  In such a true destiny all living things live and die. Funny to modernity, isn’t it, that those Ancient Greeks showed the reality of life through three female metaphorical goddesses (Fates) who determined the life length of a person, psyche, entity? While in this linear, past, present, future, truth of life determined by the Fates, each person was given equal levels of good and evil, and it was what each chose to do with these levels that determined their life; fate.

 

     Today’s theocratic—although not theocratic politicians (ha), religious conartists, and TV—modernity’s demigods--news people would say that the Ancient Greeks must have been a bit crazy in their primitive understanding of life, for the current belief system(s) (theirs) is the only right understanding of life.  But isn’t the drawn golden thread representation real life? All life is born. All life lives for awhile. All life dies. This is an undeniable objective truth. The Ancients—unlike present day people, lived in the direct physical reality of earthly vicissitudes and understood the truth of life and its struggle, so their Fates came from this understanding of the nature of (levels of good and evil) man, physical reality, and the Fates were thus presented to represent and teach the Greek culture--to offer a realism of the human life experience--truth. 

 

    So, following this truth of all “real” life, let us see the reality of humanity as a collage structured singular life entity.  All sentient life, at birth, then through early childhood, begins self perceptually as mother, father, and unaware offspring (innocent); the three are we and the we is one, and thus to the innocent child all three are “me.” In this way, so has begun the collage structured singular entity of humanity. At the initial drawing of its golden thread of life the entity humanity was comprised as a happenstancial grouping of humans.

 

    These groups as family, clan, tribe, with all members as a unified entity for survival, functioned as a single entity of group, innocently ignorant yet of the whole entity of humanity. Each group member saw him/herself not as a singular being, but as the unified whole of the living group entity. So in objective reality, each group in accordance to environmental demands developed somewhat different but yet humanly common social binding rules, allowing the unified group to function as a singular entity.  

 

    Since all life runs in a linear growth movement--like the growing child--following along the golden thread of the humanity entity, these groups of humankind then began to merge, for mankind, via its evolutionary lexis, has a pack animal mentality and all wish to be part of the larger pack for safety.  So the groups grew into villages, towns, cities, states, then countries, and consequently, with the recognition of the larger world, the humanity entity became known, and perceptual reality changed. When the group entities merged into countries, then, the former self identity of “us/me,” led to the countries’ identities as a cluster grouping entity through which they had to face the whole world humanity entity.

 

    But the clustered group entities of countries, in losing their self identity, became irregular puzzle pieces that could not blend to remake the former unified perception into a whole singular picture of the country.  In this came the conflict of bound groups, so the concept of control by power bloomed. Thus, power, conflict, and the need for control became a powerful and influential element of the humanity entity. Two things then grew, in a hegemonic sense, and took over the countries, the world, and the humanity entity. These two things seemed to naturally come into being as the innocent group self-perception identity had happened.

 

The Flaw:

 

           First, the former sharing to allow the singular group’s survive turned into barter, then into capitalism.  Second, the need for social control arose, because the unified group had gone. The onset of belief systems functioned as that joining force.  But, over time these two systems became fused into one and these two systems as a symbiotic power created an “evil” falseness of life for the groups. The major belief systems changed the truth of earth and life reality and demanded that the effect of life was for death. With the capitalistic approach for the now disembodied groups as a new driving force, the true recognition of the golden thread of life was lost to the “right now” acquirement of the symbols of capitalism. With the belief system’s allowing for “man” to rule nature, and the capitalistic system’s demand for constant growth, in this fusion the eating of the entity earth was proper for the countries; life was for death and the living earth was for profit. The human consciousness, in this lie of life and life’s value, then lost its ability to recognize that all life ends in death and that the momentary material value is only momentary. 

 

    In this sense, in the symbiotic belief/capitalistic drive, as Laohesis pulled out the golden thread of the entity humanity’s life farther, the emerging pubescent acts of the lie of life and the embellished “us against them,” war blossomed, grew, and became the norm—trying to achieve sibling power, redundantly leading to the childish game of “King of the Hill.” These young country entities, in the growth continuum, then moved along the golden thread in a very, very, very slow maturation process, and thus, presently, in the humanity entity these adolescents rule the modern world via their ignorant fury—and the earth, the humanity entity, continue to suffer. 

  

    Aristotle posited that a person must reach middle age before he/she can be moral. Since we, the countries, the humanity entity on earth’s entity are early in the golden thread continuum, then it can be seen that the humanity entity is yet immature and has not the understanding of morality, thus the countries immorally play “King of the Hill,” and many still die at this childish game. So at this position on the golden thread, what is the future of the humanity entity?

 

 The Question:

 

    Will the golden thread of the humanity entity go beyond its present ignorant childishness? Will the humanity entity be able to return to the truth of life? Will it get to its middle age then to old age?  Will humanity ever understand its unity as the humanity entity and reach morality? All life is mortal, and its only value is not in death, but in what it has done for the entity of humanity during its moment of life?  Will the humanity entity choose to continue its embrace and embellishment of such a level of “evil,” or will it, as Socrates understood, show its value in its “good actions?” It is time for the humanity entity to repudiate the children who cause the “King of the Hill” wars, kill the innocent, eat the earth for capitalistic profit, throw tantrums, and it is time for the humanity entity to grow up to middle age and recognize morality which values all life; even the life of the humanity entity itself. If not, the humanity entity will die sooner than it has to in the effort to make some symbolic profit, greedily eat the earth for that profit, kill off other humanity groups, and to live in an ignorant falseness of life for death. Humanity, it’s time to mature and recognize we are a single, mortal entity on a single live planet.  In the ancient Greeks metaphor of life, when Atropos cuts the golden thread what will be written on the tombstone of the humanity entity by the next sentient entity that too must follow the golden thread?

 

The Fate:

 

All Life is Mortal.

 

The End