[Note: I’m not endorsing (or, by this disclaimer, criticizing) the viewpoint presented here. I’m just claiming that this is a viewpoint that someone could conceivably hold.]
We are at a unique period of human history where our greatest trials come not from nature, but from ourselves. We have freed ourselves from the simple lack of necessary resources. Through the rigors of science we have freed ourselves from the iron grip of ignorance. Through vaccines and antibiotics we have defeated disease. And so on – fewer and fewer trials to humanity remain, that derive from our world and our place in the universe.
But nevertheless trials remain. Trials which threaten to tear our race and our planet apart. I speak, of course, of pointless destruction of people and property for the sake of the pointless hate of racism, and the dangerous and short-thinking violence we are commiting to our environment, our ecosystems, and our earth. These two, colossal trials parallel in their source in humanity, and yet parallel too in their solution.
For the problems of environmentalism, and the problems of racism, there is no single solution to be found. There is no scientific method by which a few people, giants standing on giants, can defeat racism. There is no vaccine to cure the environment. Any solution which can be found – which must be found, which WILL be found – must come from and be carried out by every person, every component of humanity, as one. As one human race we must dig inside our souls, and find slumbering there the compassion for our fellow humans, for our human race as a whole, for our planet, and for our future, and the creativity to make all of those things better.
But despite that – despite the odds, despite the trials and the naysayers and those, even, who actively oppose these goals – I still believe in humanity. I believe that every person has the capacity to wake up, to dredge up from the foundation of their souls the fundamental and yet revolutionary idea that their fellow human beings are HUMAN BEINGS, regardless of color. I believe that every person has, sleeping inside of them, thousands and millions of those revolutionary ideas, each one able to prop up nature just one more little bit. I believe that such slumbering ideas of such human compassion are the singular components that define the human experience.
I believe this because I can see no other option – no other possibility that could save our collective future but this compassion, these individual ideas of humanity that will collectively destroy the twin evils of racism and environmental negligence. And so I can do nothing but believe, and pray – in the deepest parts of my soul – that in every man, woman and child in this country and in the world, colorless green ideas sleep, furiously.
[Vaguely inspired by Shaenon Garrity’s short story, which you all should read.]
