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Category: Nancy Levant
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Published on Friday, 06 September 2013 22:19
I have been reading about singularity. It is interesting to say the least. It talks at length about human exceptionalism – attaining human exceptionalism, but seriously, folks, when we can’t get through a day without getting angry, being unreasonable, dis-ing one or more people, and scratching our bruised egos in one form or another, what is exceptional about any human being? What…that they can read and comprehend books and people who they are told are geniuses? That they can master material long enough to ace test questions? That they can get computers to perform mathematics well enough to construct sky-scrapers and gigantic dams? The term “whoop-de-doo” comes to mind, especially since the world functioned without sky-scrapers and mega-dams for, oh…say, millions of years? We have become so insistent upon grandiosity, self-rewarding and self-importance that, extraordinarily, we forget what jerks we are almost all of the time. People are nasty, vengeful creatures.
I love the analogy of 2 two-year-old boys, both of which wanting the same toy. I recall about a decade ago watching two such children; one taking the toy, one grabbing it away, the other child grabbing it right back, and the fisticuffs began. Two little boys beating the stuffings out of each other, both crying, filled with rage, and pounding the crap out of each other’s faces. I thought to myself…yep, they’re people. As older versions of these two sweet babies, we continue our lives in the same mode of insistence, commanding our ways through life, and all at the absolute indifference of others as long as we get what we want. Then, we tell ourselves, life is good because we are happy when our wants are enforced; to hell with all others as long as we get exactly what we want. We are exceptional people? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. We are far more akin to snarling dogs.
We equate exceptionalism with educational achievement, big incomes, big posts and, if female, with culturally defined beauty, which one notices is becoming a globalized media definition of female beauty, that of the airbrushed model. Okay…maybe once every century you get a Mother Theresa, a person many refer to as exceptional, but she surely does not compare to, say, an Albert Einstein, who was an exceptional jackass during his entire life, albeit apparently intelligent. Again, I say, “whoop-de-doo”. So was my Grandmother, and she was mostly nice and combed her hair for photos.
People are reliably jealous, vengeful, mean-spirited, and they enjoy the suffering of others because they believe themselves always right, even when they know better. People are exceptionally hard-hearted and merciless. They hurt others for pleasure and justification, which fills their egos with vainglorious pride; the proverbial “I got the toy and final say” win.
To be an exceptional human being, money and vanity aside, is impossible, which is why we have a Savior, though He is rarely remembered in vainglorious euphoria. However, remembering such even in the ongoing anger of our snarling natures helps to reacquaint our hearts and minds with the purpose of our Savior and why he was viciously executed to save us from our viciousness. Prayer is a necessity as is self-reflection. We are not exceptional creatures. We are mean and wholly dangerous to hearts, spirits, bodies, families, nations, and cultures. We do not improve, which is why singularity movements exist and why they are making rapid headway to dehumanize human beings. We are all going to have to choose to be Borgs or God’s children very, very soon. Those will ultimately be our choices because we are all snarling and very dangerous creatures, and there are geniuses chomping at the bit to technologically eliminate such nature right out of us, and they are very close to achieving this goal. Peace, dogs. Pray.
