First Letter To Isla
Dear Isla:
I am very pleased to introduce myself as your godfather, and to assure you I take my small role in your life very seriously.
"What role is that", you ask?
My answer is that my role as your godfather is to provide to you ethics that have both intellectual appeal and practical application to situations in everyday life.
You see, ethics are the fundamental spirit of a person that shape both the person's behavior and views of self and world. If a person is endowed with the proper ethics, that person will understand him or herself and will intuitively know the correct behavior for all situations. This of course does not mean such a person will necessarily always behave correctly, only that such a person will recognize incorrect behavior when they meet it.
My job is to provide you with the "proper ethics,” which are essentially Christian in origin.
In addition to instruction, I see my role as answering as honestly as I know how any questions you may have and, also, to hold myself available to discuss privately with you subjects you may not care to discuss with others.
In short, what little wisdom I have acquired, is yours to command.
How shall I speak to you?
You recently celebrated your first birthday. Recently, I celebrated my 60th birthday. You and I are therefore forever separated by more than half a century of age. Shall I speak to you as a child, as a teen-ager, or as an adult?
It seems to me that none of these will do. Instead I shall speak to you simply as an intellectual equal, since the intellect knows no age. If you read these words with understanding and interest, what does it matter how old you are or how old I am at the time? Our minds are in communication across all the years that separate your life from mine.
Which brings us to the main subject of this first letter. It seems to me that before we can begin a discussion of human ethics, we must first understand what humans are and are not. Thus, the question to be answered by this letter is: What are humans?
The first thing to understand about humans is that for all our cultural and technological achievements we humans are still animals. The genetic coding that determines the most fundamental traits of every human alive today originated eons ago in simple beasts. The human traits that we call civilized behavior are not encoded within the genes of individuals; rather these traits are imposed upon the individual by social contact with other civilized humans. Thus within each of us there are two distinct and separate selves - a primeval beast and a civilized being.
All human behavior can be explained as the success or failure of the civilized being in controlling the primeval beast. When a person behaves selfishly, the beast is in control. When a person gives freely of themselves to others through love or charity, the civilized being is in control. It is the beast in us who hates and the civilized being who forgives. Throughout each waking moment as we go about our affairs of the day, the humor and joy felt by the civilized being is in constant struggle with the waiting anger of the beast within.
Fortunately, this struggle between our two selves is totally unconscious until some threshold is crossed and we recognize that either we or someone else has behaved badly. When this happens to you, you should first realize that all us rarely get through a single day without the beast breaking loose at least once. We all behave badly to some extent regularly - that is merely being human. What is important is that each of us be able to recognize and acknowledge our bad behavior both to ourselves and to others. It is, therefore, very civil to apologize for your own bad behavior and to forgive it in others.
The second thing to understand about humans is that because civilization is imposed upon individuals by contact with others, the standards of acceptable social behavior as well as social values vary from place to place. It is this variation that gives rise to different cultures. The society you are part of is British; whereas mine is American. They are only slightly different because the founders of America were English. There are, however, cultures that are significantly different, and one must recognize that the behavior of individuals in these cultures will be different from that of ours.
The final thing to understand about humans is that of all the animals on Earth, only mankind appears to possess a destiny. Save for mankind, continued existence seems to be the sole purpose of all life on Earth. Human intellect, however, has pondered the purpose of its existence and its destiny for millenniums. Throughout this long, long period the subject was of academic interest only. Now, when you read these words, you will know that the subject of man's destiny is of paramount practical importance for I fear your world will most likely be overpopulated, over polluted, and under resourced. My belief and my hope is that it will be clear to the major governments of the world and to the educated citizens of their countries that the destiny of mankind is to populate the universe.
I believe God has given humans all the attributes needed to go forth from Earth and settle on distant planets. I believe that everything mankind has accomplished has been unknowingly directed toward this ultimate purpose. My intellect tells me that, unless mankind undertakes such exploration, we will eventually perish as assuredly as the dinosaurs perished. Because it may take hundreds of years to develop the technology needed to successfully make distant space voyages of exploration and colonization, we should formally recognize our destiny in your lifetime and adopt it as a universal goal for all mankind.
Isla, with that thought I will end my first letter to you. I will speak further on these subjects in subsequent letters. Until next January then, I wish you a happy new year of physical and intellectual growth and all the joys of youth.
Your loving Godfather,
Bob
I am very pleased to introduce myself as your godfather, and to assure you I take my small role in your life very seriously.
"What role is that", you ask?
My answer is that my role as your godfather is to provide to you ethics that have both intellectual appeal and practical application to situations in everyday life.
You see, ethics are the fundamental spirit of a person that shape both the person's behavior and views of self and world. If a person is endowed with the proper ethics, that person will understand him or herself and will intuitively know the correct behavior for all situations. This of course does not mean such a person will necessarily always behave correctly, only that such a person will recognize incorrect behavior when they meet it.
My job is to provide you with the "proper ethics,” which are essentially Christian in origin.
In addition to instruction, I see my role as answering as honestly as I know how any questions you may have and, also, to hold myself available to discuss privately with you subjects you may not care to discuss with others.
In short, what little wisdom I have acquired, is yours to command.
How shall I speak to you?
You recently celebrated your first birthday. Recently, I celebrated my 60th birthday. You and I are therefore forever separated by more than half a century of age. Shall I speak to you as a child, as a teen-ager, or as an adult?
It seems to me that none of these will do. Instead I shall speak to you simply as an intellectual equal, since the intellect knows no age. If you read these words with understanding and interest, what does it matter how old you are or how old I am at the time? Our minds are in communication across all the years that separate your life from mine.
Which brings us to the main subject of this first letter. It seems to me that before we can begin a discussion of human ethics, we must first understand what humans are and are not. Thus, the question to be answered by this letter is: What are humans?
The first thing to understand about humans is that for all our cultural and technological achievements we humans are still animals. The genetic coding that determines the most fundamental traits of every human alive today originated eons ago in simple beasts. The human traits that we call civilized behavior are not encoded within the genes of individuals; rather these traits are imposed upon the individual by social contact with other civilized humans. Thus within each of us there are two distinct and separate selves - a primeval beast and a civilized being.
All human behavior can be explained as the success or failure of the civilized being in controlling the primeval beast. When a person behaves selfishly, the beast is in control. When a person gives freely of themselves to others through love or charity, the civilized being is in control. It is the beast in us who hates and the civilized being who forgives. Throughout each waking moment as we go about our affairs of the day, the humor and joy felt by the civilized being is in constant struggle with the waiting anger of the beast within.
Fortunately, this struggle between our two selves is totally unconscious until some threshold is crossed and we recognize that either we or someone else has behaved badly. When this happens to you, you should first realize that all us rarely get through a single day without the beast breaking loose at least once. We all behave badly to some extent regularly - that is merely being human. What is important is that each of us be able to recognize and acknowledge our bad behavior both to ourselves and to others. It is, therefore, very civil to apologize for your own bad behavior and to forgive it in others.
The second thing to understand about humans is that because civilization is imposed upon individuals by contact with others, the standards of acceptable social behavior as well as social values vary from place to place. It is this variation that gives rise to different cultures. The society you are part of is British; whereas mine is American. They are only slightly different because the founders of America were English. There are, however, cultures that are significantly different, and one must recognize that the behavior of individuals in these cultures will be different from that of ours.
The final thing to understand about humans is that of all the animals on Earth, only mankind appears to possess a destiny. Save for mankind, continued existence seems to be the sole purpose of all life on Earth. Human intellect, however, has pondered the purpose of its existence and its destiny for millenniums. Throughout this long, long period the subject was of academic interest only. Now, when you read these words, you will know that the subject of man's destiny is of paramount practical importance for I fear your world will most likely be overpopulated, over polluted, and under resourced. My belief and my hope is that it will be clear to the major governments of the world and to the educated citizens of their countries that the destiny of mankind is to populate the universe.
I believe God has given humans all the attributes needed to go forth from Earth and settle on distant planets. I believe that everything mankind has accomplished has been unknowingly directed toward this ultimate purpose. My intellect tells me that, unless mankind undertakes such exploration, we will eventually perish as assuredly as the dinosaurs perished. Because it may take hundreds of years to develop the technology needed to successfully make distant space voyages of exploration and colonization, we should formally recognize our destiny in your lifetime and adopt it as a universal goal for all mankind.
Isla, with that thought I will end my first letter to you. I will speak further on these subjects in subsequent letters. Until next January then, I wish you a happy new year of physical and intellectual growth and all the joys of youth.
Your loving Godfather,
Bob
posted by Bob Baker at 3:42 AM
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