You’ve got to be kidding.  Not more on religion…  But I have to — because I am not finished. 

There is much at stake.  To risk overstating the matter, — “the survival of humanity!”  At least that is how it seems from my vantage point. 

I know that I am the least likely in this room at Starbucks, to “save” humanity.  Someone has to make the effort, unless we resign ourselves to a premature end of our history, to all that we’ve managed to accomplish, despite the confusion, the sometimes panic, our flawed and cruelty-laced attempts at civilization.  What have we managed to accomplish?  I have in mind Beethoven’s fifth symphony, the Taj Mahal, the Sony transistor radio, and Walden written by H. D. Thoreau.   The list could be made much longer.

So what is the problem?  The fly in the ointment, the flaw that will unravel all that has gone before — is the notion that there is something essentially wrong, an indelible stain on your soul.  In the Christian tradition of the West it is the idea that humanity is fallen, destined for violence, murder, and all manner of mayhem, — the consequence of an original act of disobedience, of rule breaking.  There’s no need to get into the weeds of the story.  The problem arises when many of us believe that to be the essential truth, the most important “truth” of what it means to be a human being.  Certainly many of my neighbors, sipping coffee here in Starbucks believe thusly.  Even the most secular minded among us, nevertheless “feel” that no one can be trusted, that there are only winners and losers, — what matters most is by any means possible to be on the right side of that line.  Winners and losers — and the winner takes all.

That is a recipe for violence if there ever was one.  This notion is why negotiations easily break down, as one or both sides refuse to “split the difference” when there is a difference of viewpoint, a conflict of interest.  The idea of “fallen humanity” is enough to describe the impending failure in congress of the badly needed infrastructure bill, and the bill to fund “human infrastructure.”  “Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and hate your friend…”  The antipathy increases and finally we’d prefer to “let it burn down” than to compromise. 

I propose an alternative story, another way of describing you and I, what it means to be Homo Sapiens, a language enabled mammal.  I propose that each of us is a “basic issue” human being, nothing at all is essentially wrong with you and I.  Each of us is the outcome, the effect of genetic inheritance, and the effect of conditioning of our formative years of upbringing.  Think about it!  My genes and my upbringing were less than optimal.  Those factors figure into the adult that is writing these thoughts.  I have diabetes, — likely the effect of genetic pairs distributed within my chromosomes.  I love to read, find learning from books agreeable, — no doubt the effect of upbringing.   I am all of this and more.

So here I am a “basic issue” human being, nothing fundamentally flawed, no disposition for violent, predatory behavior.  In fact it has been the love and solicitude of a mother and caregivers that have allowed me to survive to adulthood.  (I could add a short list of teachers, my extended caregiver-family.)  Others have said it better, with more literary elegance than is possible in this short blog post.

Lao Tsu put it this way:

II

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect,
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, Trans. by Stephen Mitchell