Even though this was my most fervent blow-out-the-candles wish, I’m sad, very sad indeed, to report that this is, unquestionably, an impossibility.  There is no evidence whatsoever, that human beings have the capacity to even imagine such a thing.  Since the dawn of our species-dominant, upright beginnings, our tendency has been to form clans and tribes, invent religions, nations and boundaries and to focus on our differences, falsely accepting such behavior to be vital to the welfare of the few as defense from the many, and we have been bashing each other’s brains out to prove that point since bashing out brains was invented…a very long time ago.  We have suffered Crusades and pogroms, a Hundred-Year’s War, a bevy of revolutions, a shitload of civil wars, an Inquisition, a war to end all wars, another war to end all wars, a Holocaust, Korea, a Vietnamese debacle, omigod…the Falkland’s, Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Israel, Israel.  Some guy with a big stick, potentates, poohbahs, pharaohs, kings, queens, emperors and a panoply of charismatic tough guys, (and a couple of tough girls), have riled, rankled and readied their minions to sacrifice limbs and lives for the conceptually idiotic premise that the horror of warfare is the solution to any problem, large, small or imaginary.  In essence, even with the “love thy neighbor” shaming that has crept into most religious dogma, we are mostly focused on how to hate each other.

To quote the brilliant observation in Tom Lehrer’s National Brotherhood Week, “…the poor folks hate the rich folks and the rich folks hate the poor folks, all of my folks hate all of your folks, it’s American as apple pie…the protestants hate the Catholics and the Catholics hate the protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews”.

A lot of things piss me off, but I’m extra pissed, not to mention more than a little embarrassed, to have wasted such a perfectly fine candle-wish.