I have to live with the fact that I'm human.
I live with the fact that I'm human.
I love the fact that I'm human.
I wrote the above poem as I was thinking about what it means to be human and about the things I like and dislike about myself. The book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? addresses the role of empathy in being human, but humans have a multitude of qualities that distinctly make us human. For example, we can read and write and have invented many languages upon which we've constructed our socities. Yet there are undesirable qualities in our humanity. We have the capacity to hurt other people. There is a constant battle inside of us; and I believe this is why we are attracted to movies and stories that pit good versus evil, dark versus light, and right versus wrong.
In class we have discussed whether or not the science or the application of the science is revolutionary. I argue that the scientific knowledge of nuclear physics is revolutionary, but the paths taken in the application of nuclear knowledge are also revolutionary. New nuclear discoveries did not necessitate their application either to bombs or to medicine. Each one of these applications was a separate leap in itself. By making nuclear bombs, we give into the human response of fear and choose death and destruction. By applying nuclear technology to medicine, we follow our human inclination to love and take care of people.
I propose that all revolutions take place when a person--and it just takes one person-- chooses one side of a certain aspect of his or her human duality over the other.
I love your little poem Cat. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jacob, that simple little poem is super powerful! Your poem and your short discussion about the good and bad within every human made me think of that famous old Cherokee quote:
ReplyDeleteOne evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 "wolves" inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
I also like your proposition that revolutions can occur as a result of individual human choices to take one path or another. However, I think that in that case it is more difficult to interpret human decisions and actions as being strictly on either one side or the other of this “duality.” For example, if a man’s family is being violently oppressed by an entity in power - perhaps to the point that his wife or children are tragically harmed or killed - and in response he sparks a violent revolution with his peers to fight and overthrow their oppressors, what “path” did he choose to follow? Did he strictly fight back and start the revolution out of anger for the oppressors and sorrow for his loved ones (which the Cherokee would call the “Evil” side of his humanity), or was his choice to fight rooted in his love for his family that he had lost, and his want for peace for the families of his brethren (which would seem to fall under the “Good” category of his human duality)? Perhaps he does not choose to follow one specific side of this duality, but rather his revolutionary acts resulted from a mix of these aspects? Or do you think that because the end result of his decision was to violently fight other human beings, then the evil in him overpowered the bad, despite whatever his original intentions were?
Such a simple gesture of parallelism, and with the power of a tercet, Cat speaks volumes.
ReplyDeleteThe dialogue started by Brandon reminded me of a line from Ezra Pound's poem Canto LXXVI: “Nothing matters but the quality of the affection—in the end—that has carved the trace in the mind. Dove sta memoria."