In your lifetime, have you seen a noticeable shift toward compassion? Have we learned, or even begun to learn, that kindness towards others is not just a pleasant habit, but an absolute necessity if we are to continue as a species? If so, I can’t see it, though I confess to myopia on the subject.

I think maybe your prospective is too short, this isn’t intended in a mean way, but as a different perspective. Mankinds recorded history is about ten thousand years. Our species has been here maybe 20,000, and going all the way back, possibly two million years. A single lifetime is as momentary as a breathe when measured against the whole of our time on earth. A single lifetime is simply too short to grasp the magnitude of the changes we undergo.

If you consider that for the first 9,850 years of recorded history slavery was an accepted practice, then you see what I mean. Universal illiteracy until the invention of movable type made books cheap. Child labor abolished in most of the world,… most of it. Death was so easy and cheap, and yet now we worry about our ability to feed the billions of the world. Diseases fought, wars while still a plaque, aren’t fought as easily or as arbitrarily as in the past. No one dies for Kings anymore, but at least in our case for an ideal, freedom. The pace of change doubles, then redoubles, moving faster and faster with each generation. While humans aren’t any different than from the bronze age, our knowledge is growing like a virus unrestrained. I believe it’s a good thing.

In the years since our founding we have learned much, changed much, I don’t see that trend stopping any time soon. On the small scale of one mans eyes the evils of man are easy to see. The light we can achieve is there too, you just have to look a little harder, and be open to it when you find it.

People as a mob are evil. But we aren’t always a mob. Sometimes we can even find greatness in the tinyest of places. My daugthers hand is so very small, but I see everything worth saving in the tiny palm of her hand. You have to have hope, my life may be one that I’ve filled with past regrets, but not her’s, not yet. There lies the hope that things can be better. If not for me, than for her.

That is the driving force of our history. Our children and the world we wish them to live in. No other motivation could account for what we have achieved in so short a span of time.

I believe Lincoln said something to the effect, that everything is transitory, in the often qouted line, “this too shall pass”. Obviously it’s hubris to believe we are the penacle of achievement, eventually as you say, we’ll evolve or be supplanted.

But not today.

I like to think of the unbroken line that is family. A form of immortality, my son and daughter have my eyes, my wife’s mouth, and we in turn have features and talents that were bequeathed to us by our forebearers. I will not see the turn of the twentyfifth century, but my blood will flow in the veins of one who will. They will see what has become of us, wether we were a successful experiment, or a failed one. I take a comfort in that.

I see the centuries in my childrens eyes, the past and the future. I hope that we continue to learn, to grow. So maybe someday when our sun grows red and then cold, my eyes will see mankind’s future continue. A different world, different stars perhaps, but an unbroken line of aspirations and wonder.

I’ve bookmarked this place, I hope you don’t mind if I stop by from time to time.

Excellent advice, if I follow: to ensure the survival of humanity, do the human thing, tend to your own vine and fig tree.

Go! Enjoy your vacation! ::smile::

M

I wouldn’t offend you for all the world, and your insight is particularly valuable. If anyone can be said to have perspective when it comes to human nature, it is you.

Initially, The Question was a means to find some external encouragement to do something that is unpleasant, somewhat dangerous, and that no one around me was willing to do, but that I new, deep down, that I would do anyway because it was the right thing to do. Your response, though, has struck upon the long-term question of the value of acting in the best interest of society at large, rather than personal interest.

I think the heart of the question rises from humanity’s peculiar penchant toward inhumanity. Of all people, you may understand what I mean when I raise the topic of the collective weight of the centuries of cruelty people have perpetrated against each other.

In your lifetime, have you seen a noticeable shift toward compassion? Have we learned, or even begun to learn, that kindness towards others is not just a pleasant habit, but an absolute necessity if we are to continue as a species? If so, I can’t see it, though I confess to myopia on the subject.

Before you disparage my postulate that kindness is vital to our survival, let me clarify what I mean. If we accept the concept of human evolution (and I mean macro-evolution), then it is in the interest of humanity to move toward greater and greater levels of cooperation in order to ensure that ideas are shared and dispersed, cataclysmic events are survived by appropriate numbers of people, desirable genetic traits are passed to the widest possible cross-section of the next generation, etc. Evolution on all fronts (physical, intellectual, and sociological) would appear to demand that if cruelty continues to be common practice, then those who are most effective in selfishness will rise to the top of the pyramid. If such is the case, can Federalism, or any other society that relies on something other than force to rule, long survive? If we isolate ourselves from others because of distrust, which would surely be the case if we degenerate into a society that ceases to value kindness, what will the long-term repercussions be?