A part of me dies every day.

Yet, I don’t know why.

Violence is inherent in the system, I know.

Alpha behaviour is part of the game of life on this planet.

Fairness is an illusion.

A bear takes a bite out of a live fish and tosses it aside because it doesn’t taste good, regardless of whether the fish, fat with eggs, is the last in its family line.

We murder one another over useless arguments.

Tens of thousands of us die on roadways for no reason.

McDonald’s and other fastfood fried “potato” sticks probably contribute to more obesity-related deaths in one month than nuclear technology has killed in its manmade existence.

Yet, we badmouth nuclear technology like it’s the plague.

I am of my species.

There is no doubt.

I know things that I should and things that I shouldn’t, and don’t understand half of what I know.

The power of the written word affects my species directly and the rest of the beings of this planet indirectly.

Pictures speak louder than words, except when words are pictorial representations of themselves.

Words are never examples of themselves to themselves.

They are not conscious.

They have no conscience.

Consciousness and conscience are words, concepts, ideas that lead to relativistic moral arguments/discussions.

Discussions that lead to death on individual, subcultural and genocidal levels.

If members of my species act unconscionably, killing my leftover childhood innocence little by little, and all the symbology that developed in my thoughts during my formative years is completely rearranged, who am I?

In the Biblical teaching of my upbringing, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was often repeated.

Setting aside the argument/discussion concerning the existence of a Supreme Being, I am left with the lessons of life presented to me by my elders when I was a child and by my peers (the whole species) during the rest of my life.

What are you teaching me?

What am I teaching you?

The scientific method is equivalent to a religious practice these days, taught to everyone regardless of religious belief.

Who am I?

How do I reconcile the teachings of other versus their practice and use both as examples for how to live the rest of my life?

If I was Klaatu, and truly understood that the evolution of a planet includes nonmoral, normal wholesale changes that wipe out complete ecosystems periodically, would I still believe that my selfdestructive species, Homo sapiens, deserved to live to populate the cosmos?