Recently, I put a clock on one of my bedside tables. I've never needed a
clock before. I always wake up when I need to, even now. But a short while
ago I began working on a project and I wanted to make sure that I woke up on
time every day without fail, so I took out an old analog clock that used to
be in my son's room and set it up next to my bed. True to my old faithful
rhythms, I've never actually needed it, but knowing that it is there still
makes me feel better.
Now this clock reminded me of something that I have not thought of in quite
some time. When I was seven years old, I had a similar clock. I can
remember it like it was yesterday. Some things from your childhood you
remember vividly. Back then the electric clock had a black plastic housing
and a square transparent faceplate. That was 1973. Here in 2002 this clock
next to my bed is almost the same design. It reminded me of an unusual
thing that I did when I was seven. I talked to my clock back then. Yeah,
strange, but little kids do strange things. I have a six year old daughter.
She does stuff like that.
Back in 1973 I used to say goodnight to my clock. I'd tell it about my day.
I would watch it's glowing face in the dark and feel like it was watching
over me in the darkness of my room at night. Sometimes I would confide my
deepest fears and concerns with my little electric clock.
Sitting in my bedroom, as a 36 year old adult in 2002, I regarded my
electric clock and reflected on my long forgotten memories of 1973. I
thought to myself, what would I tell my clock now, after nearly three
decades?
Well, I'm fine. The world is fine. A lot of the things that were wrong
with the world back then are now fine. Back then there was a lot of evil in
the world. A lot of this evil is still there, but it is being narrowed down
to tiny points of weakness in the human psyche. The age of large scale evil
is over. The age of planet killing evil has been dead now these ten years.
Evil is now known to be nothing more than human misguidance and
misunderstanding. Evil now exists in receding factions, tiny pools of
ill-motivated psychopaths who are desperately receding into dark and remote
hiding places. The world is now a fragile unit of like minded souls, still
tormented by the last vestiges of exposed and frantic bullies. For the most
part, we are divided by differences of opinion on how to best feed the poor,
stimulate the growth of business, and mete out the incredible advancements
of medical science and economy that we now enjoy.
This is a world that we could not have imagined back then. The whole of the
human race sings as one through an electronic medium that could not have
been expected nor envisioned by the highest minds at the time. To those who
attempt to gauge the relevance of this medium are only stunned at the
prospects of what it will become given another thirty years.
True, in this time, there is not one of us who do not have the ability to
witness on demand any and all manner of experiences that the previous half
century of media would have considered highly taboo: religion, sex, violence
and executions, liberal ideas, ancient philosophies, modern philosophies,
and all manner of alternative thought... yet the thing that we have
discovered to be most profound is that it is not exposure to ideas and
events that compel people, yet it is the nature of people, when confronted
with such exposure that compels them.
We thought, in 1973, that if a person were to be subjected to certain amount
of specific media, be it sex, violence, or specific idealism, that such
exposure would direct the mind of the person. But in 2002 we have
discovered that this is not so. A person will react to such media in the
way that befits the character of the person. That person's character is not
defined by the experiences that are presented to the person. A person's
character is defined by the person, prior to that person's exposure to
experience. How that person deals with the experience is merely a testimony
to the character of the person. You do not create character. It is defined
within the person at birth. It is genetic. It is not magic.
A psychopath does not become a psychopath. He does not experience something
that makes him so. He was and will always be a psychopath. That one cousin
who always took the game of croquet too far, breaking mallets and sending
balls into the pond, or when you captured that frog he was the one who
actually wanted to kill it. The one who played with matches. The one who
wanted to see you be as bad as him. You saw the same things. Kids in
war-torn nations grew up among unspeakable horrors, yet they went on to
become upstanding citizens. People react to their environments, they are
not a product of it.
This is one of the biggest lessons we have learned by the year 2002.
Knowing something, seeing something, experiencing something, all of these
things define our character, and allow our character to become evident. We
are born with strengths and weaknesses. We do not develop them. Our
parents can choose to nurture our strengths, or allow the environment to
prey upon our weaknesses. This is a huge variable, indeed.
Nature plays a little game when it creates life For the most part, it
imparts upon new life the strengths and capabilities of a robust and potent
design, yet by the rules of life itself, it must experiment a little, so for
some there is improved vision, greater strength, longevity, or beauty. For
others, however, there may be errors, sickness, or mental deficiencies.
Evolution needs to know what works and what does not, and we, as are all
species, are it's uncompassionate laboratories.
So when our founding fathers stated that All Men are Created Equal, they may
have been saying something profound about human morality and justice, but in
reality they were quite wrong.
Yet, human morality and justice trumps reality here, for it is not our place
to pass judgment on our fellow science lab experiments. We are all equally
the result of Evolution's roll of the dice. We have to know our place here,
and must have compassion for our fellow species. Who knows? We've learned,
here in 2002, that a demon possessed lunatic in one age can be Stephen
Hawking in another. We are humbled by our mistakes. We ought to be.
But my point is this: Talking to my clock, having not spoken to it since I
was seven years old, when to me back then the world was a very big and scary
place, I have to say first and foremost, that things are okay for the human
race, and the planet Earth. We still have a lot of problems, but things are
a lot better than they were even in my own short memory. People are far
more wonderful, and on the vast planetary scale things are so much more
stable and predictable. We're all discovering something that I guess we
just forgot a long time ago: We're all just people. We're all brothers and
sisters. We're all here alone in a big an amazing Universe that has
wonders, delights, and terrors of it's own just waiting to be discovered.
We're all breathing the same air.
We're all being terrorized by the same little group of psychopaths.
And that's where we are now, on this 4th of July, in the year 2002.
-Erik
posted by Erik at 10:46 AM 