June 29th 2009

    When a Dodo first met the Portuguese, had the Dodo been fierce and aggressive he might still be chasing people off the white beaches of Mauritius.  Summer months might be filled with reports of Dodo attack and grim tales of how best to react when a Dodo is first sighted.

    It is no giant leap of imagination to suppose that in similar circumstances another two legged, slow moving creature, with no sharp teeth or long claws might too have quickly succumbed to predation had he not been both quick witted, social and aggressive.

    There are those who might suggest there is an innateness to our behavior.  Their ally is history.  Boldly they will look at the past three thousand years and claim that within this brief spell the universe lies.  Doggedly they cling to a pattern of understanding because one generation has become an eternity of sameness.  The past always a better arbiter.  Yesterday's man, so much better than today's man, and those who might stumble into differentness worthy only of pity or fear.

    The perfect past always began with Eden.  There are minds in this world for whom this remains fact.  Vengeance is "yes" or "no".  And we do away with the certainty of this at our peril.  Imagine, not being able to get out of bed in the morning for fear the world had overnight become completely subjective.  How uneasy I would find such a circumstance, and yet how liberating.

    But, contrary to rumor, contrary to the process of believing, contrary to the apparatus of state and contrary to Einstein, the innate of the material thing we are possessed of is a randomness.  The harvest is not ordained, as the Dodo discovered.  And as one day I might also discover.

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