Extinction

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I’ve been thinking about the universe and what matters most. I begin with the knowledge that planet earth is just a small speck in a much, much larger universe, and while scientists debate the existence of a multiverse a la Marvel comics, all we know for sure is that this universe began with a bang, we have no idea what was happening before the bang which was theoretically before there was time, but since the bang, our universe has been expanding, with galaxies accelerating away from each other. In a couple of billion years if humans are still around the night sky will be dark as the stars will be too far away for us to see. Much more locally, our sun will eventually consume all the energy it has, and become a red giant that will be so large earth will be consumed. That is probably about 5 billion years away, but even so, it is coming. Planet earth will end. The universe will not notice. If humans are still around we will become extinct like all other life on this little blue marble.

So if we know that is our eventual future what should we be doing now? IMHO, we should start doing everything we can to preserve and improve our only planet and we should be doing everything we can to find another place to live. Failure to do either will end us. There will be no other life forms who will ever discover the existence of humanity and all we mucked up and accomplished. When 7 billion or more humans drop to their knees and pray for a god to save us, nothing will happen and we will finally accept that we made gods in our own image, then we will become extinct.

If my assumptions are true, and there is no evidence that they are flawed, then as a species we must learn to cooperate, tolerate and embrace humanity. No one nation can avoid these eventualities. What we consider “good” and “evil” must be redefined. We must accept that anything that benefits me but hurts you, or hurts others, or hurts the planet is evil. We must accept that collaboration is powerful, dictatorships, my way or the highway, top-down decision-making is evil. We must embrace each other regardless of race, gender, gender identity, beliefs, and income. When the end comes no one will care who has the most money or the most toys.

Organizations that grow rich at the expense of the planet must be seen as evil. We must stop global warming or we will never have the opportunity to find another place to live. That will turn economies and our social class system upside down, but upside down is better than not around.

And at the simplest level, we must honor truth, we must honor each other, and we must not insist on having our own way. We must, we absolutely must, recognize we are one species on one planet and we are racing to extinction. We have no time for the KKK, for Oath Keepers, Putin, Xi, Trump, or their ilk. Honoring those who would seek power and wealth is evil and is condemning us even faster.

5 billion years may seem like a long time to get our act together. I think getting our act together requires action much sooner than that. We may only have 100 years or so before our planet becomes uninhabitable.

So vote.

Tories

You might remember reading or hearing that in 1776 when our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence not everyone here was happy about it.  We glorify and glamorize the Patriots, those new Americans who took up arms against England and King George.  But, there were people who remained loyal to the King.  We called them Tories.  It was not good to be called a Tory, not in those barely united states.

But Tories were more in line with the rest of the world than were the Patriots.  Before our Declaration of Independence, governments fell into one of four general types:  a government that was ruled by a noble class and to be a ruler one must have been born into that bloodline.  Kings and Queens ruled by birthright and the thought of opposing such autocracies was rare and almost suicidal.  The second type of government was also autocratic and that was the military junta type.  In such governments, a strong-armed man would gain control of the military and beat everyone else into submission.  Again, it was not wise to challenge such autocratic authority.  Think of Napoleon as an example.  The third type was the demagogues using demagoguery to convince the common people that there were things to fear and things to be angry about, most of which were not true, but these men would use anger and fear to gain control and rule as autocrats.  Hitler was a great example of this type of demagogue and the government he set up was autocratic.  And finally, the theocracy form of government wherein religious rulers ruled by reference to some sort of holy book and threatened hellfire and damnation of the common people if they did not comply.  Think Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Tories in the Americas supported autocracies ruled by bloodlines and where the common man would simply maintain his place in society, peasant, skilled craftsman, artisan, or nobility.  The American Tories did not want to see anything as bold as a democracy.

And that was the term that terrified autocracies around the world.  Democracy was to be of the people, by the people, for the people.  Democracies believed all men were created equal.  Democracies believed that all men had certain rights, given them at birth, that could not be separated from their humanity.  (I use the term “man” because it took us a while to understand that rights applied to women and minorities as well.)  Democracies believed people should vote for their leaders.  Democracies believed the government existed with the consent of the people.  Democracy was a brand new thing!  And when our forefathers penned our Declaration of Independence from the nobility of England a revolt not just in government structure but in the philosophy of government was initiated:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

Had one studied Descartes, Hume, Espinosa, Plato, Aristotle, Newton, Bacon, and most importantly John Locke one would know this was a real revolution.  It displaced the powerful and wealthy by giving everyone the right to rule their government.  This was the opposite of an autocracy, it was a democracy.  It was the most liberal form of government ever conceived.  John Locke, the English philosopher is called the father of liberalism for his thinking.  Our Founding Fathers read every word of his and loved every word of his.  We are not a nation ruled by the nobility, nor a nation ruled by the military, nor a nation ruled by a demagogue, not a nation ruled by a specific type of religious leader.  We are a nation ruled by the people.  A liberal, secular democracy.  Wow. 

If you do not understand the above it is very difficult to understand America.

In a democracy citizens’ rights are protected, they are not dismissed.  They surely are not dismissed for religious reasons.  In a democracy, citizens are encouraged to vote.  They surely are not restricted or oppressed for voting.  In a democracy, no man is above the law.  Surely not the wealthy, not the pious, not the military, not anyone.  The law applies to all citizens.  In a democracy, truth matters, and respect for the law matters. 

It occurs to me as we approach the mid-term elections that the Republican Party has become a group of Torries.  They want their religious perspective to become law at the expense of citizens’ rights.  They only want certain people to vote.  If they do not like the outcome of an election they declare fraud.  They monger fear of immigrants and others in our society.  They foster anger along racial lines.  They seek to improve the wealth of those at the very top at the expense of everyone else.  They seek to put all the power in the hands of those at the very top of the capitalist ladder, rather than have citizens govern and restrain unbridled money-making.  Yep, Republicans are the Tories.  They are conservative.  They support a man who lost an election but falsely declared the outcomes fraudulent.  They have celebrated religious beliefs becoming the law of the land.  They do not support the civil rights of anyone other than their chosen group.  They even talk about a Constitutional Convention to rewrite our constitution so that it aligns with autocracies, not democracies.  They oppose supporting other nations fighting for freedom and democracy.  They oppose our membership in organizations that defend democracy and hold autocracies at bay.  Quite frankly, I can in no way see the signers of the Declaration of Independence supporting anything they stand for.  They are un-American.

Please vote on November 8.  Please vote for our democracy.  Be wise and careful:  Be a Patriot.  The Tories are coming and they want to take our democracy away.