I have a lot of faith in people, beautiful and broken things that we are, which is one of the reasons why I find it impossible to believe in sky fairies.
I know a lot of very wonderful people, who have achieved amazing things, created amazing things, and who fill the lives of others with light and love. I try to emulate those people, to live up to their example.
I watched a documentary recently that dealt with the possibility of finding intelligent life beyond our own world. One of the things we have to rely on to find that life is that they have developed at least to a level that we did back in the golden age of radio, and are inadvertently broadcasting to the Universe as we did.
One of the things we also have to rely on is that intelligence is not a death sentence.
Our evolution has dictated certain survival mechanisms that are, in these modern times, more of a hindrance than a benefit. We are suspicious of new things, of change, even of new flavours. When we lived in the wild, sensing change was vital. Change could herald disaster or opportunity. It could feed us or feed on us. We learned to come together in families and communities for protection and to make gathering or growing food easier. We learned to protect those communities, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Within those communities, individuals led. Sometimes, this was for the good of all. Communities that had such leaders thrived. Those that had leaders who gathered unto themselves, who sought to protect their leadership over the good of the community, they did not thrive in the long run. They stagnated and either destroyed themselves or were destroyed by others.
Intelligence breeds negative traits as well as positive. It breeds greed and fear. Defeating those allows an intelligent species to live on. How long an intelligent species is likely to survive its own intelligence is part of a lengthy equation used to calculate the number of possible intelligent species in the Universe. Consider for a moment how close we have come on a number of occasions to manufacturing our own destruction, not to mention how close we are right now (climate change, over-population, war, etc), and you get the idea.
We can only survive as a species by looking outward, not inward.
Our world, our species genuinely stands on the brink. We face dwindling resources here on Earth. There are those who believe the Great Sky Fairy will provide, and not to worry about it. Wrong. There are those who believe science will, without proper funding or support, somehow solve everything. Wrong.
We can only survive as a species by looking outward, not inward. We must all take responsibility.
We cannot protect our own by isolating ourselves. This is a connected world, a whole world. Looking around, I see our so-called leaders seeking only to protect the structures that support them. I see them seeking to protect only what they have. To do that, they must distract us.
They create enemies. They seek to make us scared. To make us small. To make us hate.
We are at our best, our strongest when we stand together. When we love.
Ironically, the so-called holy books of the wide variety of Great Sky Fairies tend to say just that. Unfortunately, they also tend to create enemies of those who follow other Great Sky Fairies, so sod 'em.
We are surrounded by solutions. It's enormously exciting. You should look for those solutions, though I do warn you that, once you find them, you might be a little sad. Our leaders don't want the solutions, as it will be hard for them to give up what they have gathered to themselves so that we can pursue and embrace those solutions.
Alternative energy sources exist, for example, but jeopardise the wealth and position of those who have committed to the very energy sources that threaten our survival.
There is an alternative to carrying guns (it involves not carrying them), but that threatens the position of those who make the guns.
The Universe beyond our Earth can provide every single thing we need, but that too threatens those who control the resources we have on Earth.
Our leaders, political and religious, stand in the way, preaching hate and fear and smallness.
If we are to survive our own intelligence we must do better than hate and fear and smallness. If we are to survive we must remember that *we* are the leaders. Those who rule over us do so because we put them there, because we allow them to lead. They like us to forget that. If our species is to survive, we must remember the power that each of us holds.
Be a solution, part of the exciting future. Have faith in yourself.
Don't fear.
Don't hate.
Don't hide away.
Don't be small.
Love.
Explore.
Learn.
Change.
Join in.
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