Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 January 2010 21:53:14
Humanity sprang from a vicious undergrowth of natural selection, and we're kidding ourselves if we think we're more than a whisper away from the wild animals who fathered us. I hope we brought a small element of instinctive love along the way - I hope it kept us sane while we let the countless casual genocides of our ascent slip by us, unremarkable and unremembered.
That love is what we now call God, and we've done big things with it, and it with us. But we still have a long way to go, and though we fancy ourselves capable of great love, we're on one another like jackals if something triggers our baser instincts. They're just barely beneath the surface.
The scale of devastation in Haiti is beyond me at the moment. It hasn't been turned into statistics far enough removed from human suffering for me even to take it in. But it's just the latest example of how close we still live to the edge.
As we make our tiny efforts to help with something we can't even understand, let's pledge not to imagine ourselves above and beyond flesh and blood. Let's hope the small scraps of love we've kept bundled away will be enough to drive us together for warmth, instead of tearing at one another for survival when ruin finally reaches out for us. Let's hope we've invested enough in our hearts.