Society

The nature of Humanity requires some modification to reach a civilized compromise with its social, physical and emotional needs. Education and training in childhood, both at home and in schools, provide the main elements that most of us use to survive our own worst nature. Then there is the last resort of society, the law that governs those who will not or cannot govern themselves adequately. Most of us do not act out in hostile ways or create scenes that have a bad outcome unless we have imbibed too freely or used some other drug to release our inhibitions. Of course when we are young and full of the juices that scientists call hormones all bets can be off until age tempers our mettle.

So what would you like in your Christmas stocking this year? A small sampling of options in regard to who will live in the White House? A final resolution of the debt crisis threatening Europe and coming to a bank near us soon? A job? Participation in an orgy of self-righteous complaint about the system we created and are near demolishing as our final act on the planet? If your stocking is big enough and your stomach is hardy enough you can have it all just by joining one of the two big political parties and participating in our predetermined political process.

Is there any reason to believe that people will survive the next two centuries? Hell of a question to ask at one AM in the morning when there is no one to answer it except a sleepy cat and me. The cat already knows my sleep patterns have driven me crazy, it likes me that way most of the time. This is like a lead into a creepy novel written by any of the famous horror writers in the pantheon of scary; but it remains a serious question. Can any species survive our dubious gift of intelligence mixed in with the dubious gift of a vast capacity for destruction of the world around us? Is intelligence a curse that has doomed our species or a blessing that will bring us to the stars and beyond?