What it means to be human is to have a set of limitations and potentialities and somewhere therein our short life is rooted. As an infant, we can darken the entire world by simply closing our eyes. With this great power we understand our free will, and as we grow older, we impress on the world causes and effects that surrounds us. As a child the trials and tribulations of social life occurs. With social life language evolved. This natural language, of which all other artificially contrived languages arise from, comes in the form of the modulation of the voice, body postures, hand gestures, grimaces and smiles. Without the innate understanding of this natural language we could not have a universal basis on which to communicate to each other at all under any circumstances. Out of this arose an artificial language built upon words. The crafting of words is what we uniquely do as human beings, its what sets us apart from all other animals.
Through words we are able to safe guard meaning and create a coherent world, and even reflect and question that world. Through language laws can be written. The central role of democratic law is meant to aid humans in becoming ever greater friends. Laws in its purest form is not suppose to act as the whip and the chair but as friend. Through law we come to intuitively believe with greater clarity that we do have a will and that it is free to act or forebear from acting. Although many try to prove we are nothing but a perilous ball going down an incline plane, they must go on with the day and take responsibility for their actions and their duties.
Through this functioning friendly quality we can construct a political rule of law and we can trace the lineage from the necessity of a social life to it’s more refined evolutionary progression into political life. Also, the short breath of life contains more mysteries than we’re able to understand. We’re restricted by time and experience. Lastly, part of being human is to be mortal. Would you choose to be a god or a man? Accepting man’s fate comes with an urgency because we are vulnerable beings and our time is limited here on earth. Unlike a god, man is not perfect in any sense. Therefore, the task set before us is to accept all of this and take up the doomed but defining task of self perfection, while patiently waiting for whatever mysteries the future will unfold.
If I may, I believe Death will shroud us in darkness for eons, but it will seem like mere moments, like a snap of the fingers. Then we’ll be blinded by the light of some sort of consciousness, either of the deity or chained to a narrow chink of a cavern such as we already find ourselves, plus or minus to infinity. Many ask, “But where will all the Love go, what about all I’ve learned about Good and Evil?” The regretful fool says “Youth is wasted on the young,” but this is folly, for the truth is that wisdom is wasted on the old. We live to old age so we can learn everything and pass on our knowledge, but Nature is more prudent than one imagines, for it also passes on ancient reflexes, reactions, inclinations, emotions, and intuitions, so that very little is lost in the grand scheme of things. Even if one sits alone in a dark room, with just a candle glowing just enough to enlighten the paper before yourself, the outline of your creativity will be the eternal story that’s been told throughout eternity, with just one’s final touches and sentiments.
Stephen C. Pedersen 