I have not reread any of my nearly 600 entries since I began this blog, but I’m pretty certain that the stated, implied or outright snarky opinion in any of them was not preached to a unified choir of, well, absolutely everybody.  These being very unusual times, let’s give that a try.

Raise your hand if you give a shit.  I’m going to assume that the non-specificity of that request has registered a nearly unanimous uplifting response.  You see, we humans have a very complicated control center, our brains, each with thought processes, quirks and foibles that individualize and monitor our intrinsic and learned behavior to coexist with other humans, other animals and our changing and often challenging environment.  Thankfully, unless your thought patterns snap, crackle and pop like mine, you never really have to think about any of that, it’s just who we are, and mostly we each rate ourselves, deserved or not, quite favorably. Moreover, what makes our species particularly special, are the choices we each get to make with the mental and physical hand that we’re dealt, and that wagering metaphor is not merely a stylistic tool.  On the contrary, our dive into the gene pool is as unpredictable as the spin of any wheel of fortune, pure happenstance.  The chance meeting of our parents and the strings of chance meetings that make up our ancestry can never be adequately summed up in a pie chart, no matter what 23 & Me claims.  What is a sure thing, what you can take to the bank no matter what parochial or atheistic catechism you may embrace, (sorry, Scientologists, you’ll just have to cover your ears or la la la for a minute), is that in every creation story or evolutionary treatise, we humans are all leaves on the same family tree.  And yet, as we eagerly claim to give a shit, some of the shit many, (most?), of us are eager to give is based and biased on irrational sensory observation.  If we were all blind, skin color would suddenly cease to be an issue.  If we were deaf, our socially adaptive hearing would not create aversions to the drawl and dialect and didacticism we perceive as obtuse.  If Republicans didn’t think that all Democrats stink…well, you get my drift.  There’s enough Googleable empirical information to support this thesis, beyond a reasonable doubt and the ancient supposition of tribal protection that led us to demonize others is counterproductive to everyone’s survival in the globalized twenty-first century.  So, if you’re still raising your hands, put them down, close your eyes, cover your ears and imagine how much better your life would be if we were all kind, accepting members of the same loving and supportive family.

Your brother,

Joel