Get out of my way.

The history of humanity is one of marginalization, subjugation, and elimination. This is facilitated by genetics, class, wealth, technology, and combinations of those and related things. It has been that way for recorded history and has analogs among animals and plants (alpha males, invasive species).

Editorial cartoon, 'Paper or Plastic,'
by Tom Cheney

We've certainly tried to overcome our biological intransigence, from prophets and liberators (Jesus, Martin Luther King) to formalized rules (Code of Hammurabi, the US Constitution), but our efforts are ever and always nulled by due process, conflicting interests, happenstance, natural disasters. (Consider, eg, the rise of the peasant class in Medieval Europe following the Black Death when the ruling class was forced to bargain with the dwindling number of laborers who maintained the land and livestock).

I do believe some systems have more merit than others, but what I think doesn't matter. The USA we know is foundering amid a noisy snarl of competing ideas and will someday succumb to one or a mixture, and future generations will uncover statues, circuit boards, plastics, and analyze us like we do the ancient world.

Neither Dawkins nor Pope Francis, Black Lives Matter nor the alt-right, Islamic Reformism nor ISIS can change this.

And the ideologues who replace us won't understand that, in time, our fate will be theirs. And between now and then, millions will suffer who are guilty of nothing more than being born and being in the way.

c0

From the drive into work to the the fate of nations, the whole of humanity distills down to "Get out of my way."

Revolutions are satisfying, but only set the stage the more revolutions. Interesting, isn't it, that "revolution" is related to "revolve" (as in doors and planets and handguns).

c0

Good ideas sometimes need to be enforced, and bad ideas discarded, because too few of us are able to distinguish among them (cf Thomas Jefferson).

Some modern examples are immunization (a good thing), climate change (a real thing), freedom of expression (a vital thing).

I'm tempted to extend the idea of the "wisdom of the crowds" to large scale human events and patterns seen over decades and centuries. (I.e., that enough people given enough information will make a good decision without needing to now how or why they are doing it. Cf Francis Galton's county fair experiment where attendees accurately guessed the weight of an ox►.)

There's a Darwinian elegance to this that I like, a "survival of the fittest idea" idea. (See Nicholas Wade's excellent The Faith Instinct - How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures►).

c0

This blog entry was sparked by:

1. A coincidental encounter with Robert P Jones's The End of White Christian America.
   
   As far as I know, Jones doesn't propose that the end of White Christian America is a good thing or that what's replacing it will be better. Being white, Christian, and American, I'm rather fond of the environment that fashioned me. I have trouble seeing anything wrong with that, or why I might have wanted to prevent it (if that were even possible - leopards and spots and all that).
   
2. And the driver who tailgated and honked at me for 100 yards on a 35mph side street until I pulled off to the shoulder and let him/her pass.
   
   I had children in the car and used it as an object lesson. I waved and smiled. He/she may have recognized me or felt guilty; he/she slowed down considerably after passing. This was in Ada, MI. If you don't know Ada, think Podunk. 

c0

Novel nearly done, approaching 100,000 words, which is where it will likely end. Summer and vacation draining my time and energy. And as anyone working on a large project knows, if you spend too much time away, you have to reassemble some mental bits, which is painful, and takes even more time than you spent putting them together the first time.

Started: 07/07/2017